How it started
Karen Dolva founded No Isolation in 2015 after meeting a woman, Anna Fi, who has lost her child to cancer. While Anna Fi's daughter was ill, she said the separation from school and normal life isolated her. This led to her suffering severe loneliness on top of the physical pain of illness and treatment.
This set Karen on a course to develop technology to solve this problem.
No Isolation developed AV1 over many months of research and testing. Children, teachers, scientists and St Olav Hospital School helped to develop the technology. Putting experts at the centre of the design process is what helped make AV1 so well-suited to its user group.
The resulting technology is the AV1 robot, which children connect to via the AV1 app. It gives them a live connection to school, so they can learn alongside their peers and maintain a sense of belonging.
When children suffer from long-term illness, the isolation makes it harder to recover and return to school when they feel better. We are aware that developing speech and social skills are equally important as following the curriculum. When they are not a part of the social scene, children miss out on important learning through play and interaction.
Karen Dolva, 2015
Awards and accolades
Karen was a finalist of the Innovation Norway Female Entrepreneur Award 2016. In December 2018, Forbes named Karen as one of the World’s Top 50 Women in Tech, while in June 2018, she was announced as one of the four winners of the EU Prize for Women Innovators 2018, being awarded the Rising Innovator award for her work with No Isolation.
No Isolation received its Seal of Excellence from the European Commission in 2016. Since launch, the company has achieved a number of accolades, such as being named 2018 Company of the Year in the Norway Health Tech Awards. No Isolation was recognised as Norway’s Best Social Impact Startup by the Nordic Startup Awards for three consecutive years, in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively. The company was also named Norway’s Startup of the Year in 2017 and Norway’s Best Newcomer in 2016, both by the Nordic Startup Awards, and in 2020 won the Oslo Innovation Award.
AV1 was the Education winner at DigitalAgenda's Impact Awards (UK) in 2019, won the "Just Special Award" for innovations in Special Education Needs, 2018, IPON (the most prestigious conference for innovations in the educational sector in The Netherlands) and DOGA's Design Award 2017 (Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture).
Komp
In 2016, No Isolation was tasked by the Norwegian Cancer Society to design another solution to loneliness and social isolation – this time for seniors. This led to another thorough product design process and resulted in Komp, the one-button computer connecting generations. Learn more on the Kompany website here.
Today
No Isolation partners with over 850 high profile charities, government organisations, universities, schools and hospitals. Over 3000 AV1s are now in 17 countries across Europe, and is successful for students with a range of absence types.
