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Interviews

Transforming public hospital labs

We talk to Dr Danielle Govaerts, lab director, Hôpital Civil Marie Curie in Charleroi, Belgium about how the hospital transformed its lab, how it is moving further into outpatient care and about competition with the private sector.

Getting computers to read medical records

Extracting meaningful data from clinician records is not easy – all too often they are a jumble of idiosyncratic narratives. But a £10m project has managed to do just that. Researchers at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and Kings College London have analysed 270,000 cases in mental health, creating what Prof Matthew Hotopf, director of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) at the Maudsley, claims is the world’s largest clinical dataset for mental illness. The Maudsley team are now looking for industry partners.

Bupa smiles despite write offs

What looks at first sight like dismal results from Bupa, the international insurer and healthcare operator, with a fall in pre-tax profits of 39% to £374m on sales of £9.8bn is actually much brighter than they first appear. Exclude most write offs and currency fluctuations, and pre-tax profits fell 2%, exclude all write offs and they rose 7% on sales up 6% in constant currencies. That is despite a 5% drop in sales at Bupa Global, the international insurance arm as Bupa dropped unprofitable business. We talk to CEO Stuart Fletcher about how apps and ehealth are helping sales, new insurance offers and acquisitions.

Dr Agarwal bets on Africa

Of all types of Indian healthcare operators none have been as successful in Africa as Dr Agarwal, India’s second largest eye care chain. In just five years, it has grown its African business from nothing to 30-35% of sales. So far, it has 15 clinics in Mozambique, Nigeria, Madagascar, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, the Seychelles and Mauritius, but it plans to open six this year and to have 40 by 2020. We talk to Dr Agarwal’s CEO S. Rajagopalan.

Indian online healthcare platform Practo to go into homecare and telehealth

Indian start-up Practo, which offers online appointment and practice management tools to patients and doctors, is to launch new platforms targeting homecare and telehealth. Practo bought several of its competitors after raising $120m in 2015 and is now active in 15 countries across South East Asia. We spoke to its managing director and co-founder, Shashank ND.

Interview: Professor Grigory Roytberg, Founder and CEO of Medicina

Within 25 years Medicina has grown to become to Russia’s only JCI accredited hospital. That gives Professor Roytberg something of a unique perspective when it comes to quality. We talk JCI, rouble depreciation and grey sector.

Interview: Dr André Schmidt, CEO, Median

Merging Median and RHM has created Germany’s largest rehabilitation network with sales of €700m in 2015. André talks about his vision of creating optimised clinicial pathways which span acute care through to inpatient rehab and on to outpatient care and ehealth wearables. Andre is speaking at the Healthcare Business International 2016 conference on April 26-27 in London – click here to see the agenda.

Interview: Ekaterina Timofeeva, Principal, The Boston Consulting Group, Russia

In last month’s Russian feature, we investigated what looked to be a stunted and troubled market. Just as private healthcare was getting its act together the faltering economy has depleted disposable incomes and driven supply costs sky-high. Of course, the reality is more complex and conceals a number of opportunities. Ekaterina Timofeeva, for one, is optimistic. Margins of 40% or more are gone for now, but don’t give up on Russia just yet. She points to a new international medical cluster outside Moscow that is expected to attract 80bn roubles (€900m) of investment.

South Africa’s Motsoaledi throws private insurers a bone

A fascinating interview with the South African Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, by Business Day has shed more light on the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) policy to provide mandatory insurance for all South Africans, rather than the mere 16% covered today. Oddly, Motsoaledi criticised his ministry’s own December 2015 white paper which envisaged private insurers evolving into little more than complementary payors. Instead, he expressly confirmed that this will not happen. The interview also reveals further details of the timetable, funding and plans for low-cost medical schemes.

Better hopes for lab outsourcing

We talked to Charles Woler, who turned around French reference lab Biomnis and is now the CEO of bioDS - Biomnis holding company, part of Eurofins. He sees signs that governments are starting to think the unthinkable and that public sector outsourcing of lab tests could grow. Woler is also a panelist at our annual conference, Breaking Barriers 2016 conference.

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