About DDQ

Small by design. Broad by experience.

DDQ B.V. is an independent technology company in Heerlen, the Netherlands. We design, build and operate private AI, autonomous agents, software, scientific technology and the infrastructure beneath them.

Who we are

DDQ is Norbert Schmidt, Joep van der Heiden and Demelza Ramakers. Customers work directly with the people thinking, building, planning and operating the work. Norbert founded the company and leads its technical direction. Joep develops software and contributes research expertise. Demelza is responsible for project planning and the office. The three-person model is deliberate: decisions remain close to the problem, communication stays direct and more of a customer’s budget goes into experienced work.

The company began in 2010 during the first generation of native application development and became a B.V. in 2018. Its work has since expanded across medical production software, mobile and backend systems, citizen science, scientific sensing, machine learning, private cloud infrastructure and autonomous AI. The name DDQ was originally imagined as an alternative to DDS, De Digitale Stad, one of the pioneering Dutch online communities.

What we take responsibility for

DDQ works with companies, healthcare organisations, research institutions, universities and consortia. A typical engagement starts with a goal or a persistent problem, not a prescribed technology list. We can move from technical investigation and a bounded first version to deployment, private operation, maintenance or responsible transfer. For research and innovation work, we also help shape credible technical work packages and funding proposals, then remain involved to deliver the awarded work.

We prefer open standards, open science, open source and open-weight models where they serve the job. Privacy, security, data minimisation, provenance, European regulation and meaningful customer control are engineering inputs from the start. DDQ does not replace a customer’s medical, scientific, legal or operational authority; qualified owners retain those decisions while scope, permissions, evidence, logging and human control are made explicit.

Public evidence

Our public record includes the long-running TOP/trombose.net medical production system, Horizon 2020 work in COS4CLOUD and MONOCLE, iSPEX, Black Hole Finder, Dark Sky Meter and Mini Secchi. Current and past relationships, publications and independent coverage are linked from the proof section on the home page. Machine-readable company information is available through the developer interfaces.