Meet Venture Leader Luiza Dobre's Slack-for-Healthcare Startup

Komed Health AG makes software to connect doctors and medical staff inside hospitals. The Zurich-based company’s first two customers – Inselspital, with 10 hospitals linked to the University Hospital of Bern, and Swiss Medical Network SA, with 19 private hospitals across the country – represent 12,500 users. Potential monthly recurring revenue is set to double as two more Swiss hospital groups are poised to implement Komed Health's software.

You describe Komed Health as ‘Slack-for-healthcare’. When did you realize hospitals needed better communication?

 

I was thinking of building a booking.com for medical travel, when I read an article saying that the third cause of death is medical error and 70 percent of reported cases are because of communication inefficiency in hospitals. It causes 250,000 deaths in the U.S. and about 1,500 in Switzerland. So I went to hospitals to find out why this happens.

 

Most doctors need real-time communication, because they have to take decisions quickly. However hospitals use many outdated means of communications, from pagers to faxes to switchboards. A doctor may use four to eight different devices during the day, each one unconnected to the other. I saw that many doctors use Whatsapp to communicate about patients, as they didn't have any other solution. Doctors just want to treat their patients – what system they use is an issue for the compliance and IT departments.

Current hospital communication methods are inefficient. It takes doctors too long to get information, find the colleagues with particular responsibility or get the resources their patients need. And they're interrupted ten times an hour, when 80 percent of the time it isn't urgent and a message would suffice. Spreading communication across so many tools makes tracking and compliance impossible too. We're bringing all parties involved in patient care to one table -- in one chatroom -- basically.

 

You’re part the Swiss National Startup Team heading to MWC Barcelona next month. What do you expect?

 

I know Venture Leaders will have very good exposure to potential investors. We want to connect with European investors in preparation for our next round, in the second-half of 2020, when we plan to raise about 10 million.

 

What do you want to achieve during the event?

 

The event will be a starting point, because it always takes time to build the relationship afterwards.

 

Komend Health raised venture capital. What goals do you have with investors and how have you executed?

 

We raised 500,000 francs one-and-half years ago, and before Christmas another 350,000. We'll unlock a total of 2 million, as we hit our operational milestones. We're using the funds to develop our technology and implement it in hospitals. We need to add more sales and customer success roles to our team.

 

What are Komed’s goals for 2019 and beyond?

 

I'm in discussion with a lot of hospitals in Germany. We plan one or two projects there this year, then next year we'll internationalize aggressively.

 

Is leading your startup different to working for a big company?

 

Yes, because you never know what's going to happen [laughs]! You always live a rollercoaster experience, it's the reality of being an entrepreneur. For example, in the morning you've nailed a very important meeting and you think the world is yours, and by the evening something happens on the product or the customer side and you're thinking 'Oh my god, we're going to hell – we're never going to make it.'

 

It's very exciting for me. You have a lot of unknowns that you need to deal with. It's a lot of passion and excitement. You always have to find simple solutions to complex problems. That's the job of an entrepreneur. With a small team, you need to find a solution fast.

 

How do you deal with that?

 

I do sport, fitbox in the gym, meet my friends, and drink good coffee. But meditation never worked for me. Do you know the secret?

 

What should MWC Barcelona delegates ask you?

 

They should ask how we were able to get into hospitals – they're extremely complex institutions to get into and we've already been successful gaining traction with customers. Our first money came from senior doctors, who paid for the pilot studies. We knew a few who were interested in our solution and with whom we developed our software, so we had a backdoor to the Inselspital, which we could then use to gain the hospital management's attention.

 

The Salesforce approach...?

 

Yes. At the moment we offer an enterprise software, that has to be enabled for each hospital. This year we're planning to make it available for all doctors to download on their smartphone, to use as a secure Whatsapp. We'll engage users with a freemium model, to convince bigger hositals faster. It's a way to accelerate penetration.

 

What was your best day as an entrepreneur?

 

I have two. One, when I found my co-founder, after I pitched at a StartupWeekend project in Zurich. The other was when we got feedback from our pilot at Inselspital: about 70 percent of the people said they'd feel bad if we took away the product. At the time it wasn't integrated and only in one department! That was a fantastic message of trust in what we were developing.

 

The Swiss National Startup Team's roadshow to MWC Barcelona is organized by Venturelab in cooperation with Switzerland Global Enterprise, VISCHER, Swisscom and Presence Switzerland.