This is the first in a series of Q&A interviews with the people of PatientSky. In this interview, Kristian Ikast, CEO of PatientSky, shares his thoughts on the future of eHealth and PatientSky with us. During the year we will have several Q&A's with people in our organisation, so stay tuned for more. Enjoy!
What are your thoughts on 2021?
It’s been a year with many changes. It hasn’t always been smooth, but I am confident it’s left us in a position where we can develop our international and Norwegian business simultaneously.
We have brought a lot of great new colleagues on board to our journey, so I'm confident with the great team we already that we can continue the journey we have set out on.
I would like to thank everyone in the organisation for their significant effort and great spirit in 2021. Despite of Covid, a lot of changes, and new developments, I really appreciate the great PatientSky spirit I have meet in Oslo, Bergen, Kongsberg, Helsinki, Odense and Copenhagen. Thanks for the warm welcome.
What’s the biggest challenge in eHealth right now?
The whole market has a big challenge in terms of raising the bar with the practicians, from doctors to physiotherapist on how to improve their administrative time consumption.
On a more international scale the challenge is to fill the big hole in the market when it comes to support and scalability of new development, and innovation. I truly believe our platform will be a key factor in developing new and more efficient solutions and thereby changing lives for more people.
What’s the outlook for PatientSky in 2022 – and beyond?
We are investing and working hard on changing the dynamics in our industry, where our platform creates opportunities for innovation and development, while breaking down the silos. Both our PaaS and VAS teams are doing great progress of getting us in that lead position.
Our Norwegian business has the foundation to continue their impressive development. We are more focused with a great offering, where we for the full year will have a fully integrated Infodoc team and one leadership team in Norway. I am 100% confident we will continue the positive commercial trend like in the end of 2021 and that we are creating a fantastic company with great possibilities to develop.
From a group perspective, we go into 2022 with a full leadership team and a clear strategy. I am happy to see the new business unit structure is functioning and that we are bringing some great people on board to our fantastic team.
We are scaling up in terms of employees, what do you think this will mean for the organisation?
Our scaling builds on a strong foundation, which makes me very confident in our journey.Over the next years, we have resources to do initiatives we could only dream of before. We also create the possibility to take things to the next level. We can now can offer our colleagues and talent a life journey in PatientSky, working in different countries, different areas etc.
We often talk about “from start-up to scale-up”. What is it in your own words?
It’s really that we now create a company where we can develop and perform on many tracks at the same time. We need to be super structured and must have a very sharply prioritized direction. Then we create the possibilities for more structure autonomy where we, based on the business case, can take many directions. However, we must never forget the dynamics of a start-up mindset, we need to keep taking the steps no one expects.
What do you think will be the defining factor that will secure an international breakthrough for PatientSky?
Our key defining factor will be to have the right people with us on the journey and creating a structure enabling focus, so we keep our key existing business on track, while other colleagues only focus on new countries and verticals.
What can you expect as a new employee at PatientSky?
You will join a company with fantastic, dedicated, skilled colleagues. We want to be a company where we create frameworks for innovation and for challenging the market. It’s done by creating working conditions and an environment where people can meet to develop together. We open new state-of-the-art offices and bring onboard competencies that can facilitate the development of groups and individual colleagues.
What are you looking most forward to in 2022 for PatientSky?
I really look forward to seeing us as an organisation taking the next step on our journey, to see the company become truly international, while seeing Norway working as one company to utilize our different product offering and to developing even further.
I also expect to see some of the initiatives we have initiated succeeding and improving us as a company. Hopefully, the Covid situation will be better in 2022, so we all can meet and interact more – and have more great experiences together.
What do you think the outlook is for investors and partners in 2022?
We will keep our focus on being transparent, we are on a super exciting journey which we will keep communicating.
PatientSky has a clear focus to bring on more long-term investors who understand the combination of PaaS, VAS, SaaS and APP in our organisation and the heavy investing in our international business while appreciating our well-performing Norwegian business.
We need a clear focus on developing a strong healthy company for the future. That’s how we take best care of PatientSky and the investors’ money.
