eHealth business cases: Laastari Clinics

Laastari Lähiklinikka (FIN), Minutkliniken (SWE) A chain of drop-in retail clinics for acute common illnesses and vaccinations. Established: 2010 Finland Operates in: Sweden and Finland Number of employees: 15 (2015) www-site: Interview of Dr. Ron Liebkind, Laastari Lähiklinikka co- founder, and member of the GET Advisory Board. 2 FACTS

eHealth business cases: Laastari Clinics. 1. Can you describe your solution and what it does? We have established small healthcare clinics for giving vaccinations and treating a selection of common minor illnesses. The clinics are nurse driven and the nurses have a variety of diagnostic clinical tools, and direct access to doctor consultations. Our niche in ehealth is to combine a clinical nurse appointment with doctors consultations. It enables the doctor to share their clinical knowledge with many smaller clinics, and creates convenience to the patient, since the access to treatment becomes much better. The nurses use the ehealth-consulting system for fast accurate data sharing and communication with doctors. 2. Tell us how your business got started. We started off with a vision of building retail clinics that would treat minor illnesses in a fast and convenient way. By building the clinics and operating them in Finland and Sweden, we learned from our environment and from our customers. We asked every customer a set of feedback questions, so that we would be able to improve our service, and show other interest groups the value and effect of what we were doing. We also followed closely what our customers needed and developed those areas further to improve our services. Collected customer feedback information was used for developing new services for the retail clinics and marketing these services to customers. Furthermore, a thorough understanding of customer needs helps when launching new services and communicating with the regulation authorities. Well-documented customer feedback supports also discussions and negotiation with public sector health service decision makers in the municipalities. When you start a business that combines new styles of services in healthcare, it’s never easy and it takes several years and lots of analysis, to see what you have built. 3

eHealth business cases: Laastari Clinics. 3. Can you describe your business model? Our clinics found a customer base pretty fast, it was usually families with kids that started using our clinics and then recommending the service to their friends and family. Our high customer satisfaction helped us build a customer base. We have valuable experience from both Finland and Sweden. When you operate in different environments and countries you learn the market. We have adapted just in the same way as everybody else has. A regulated market gives you only the possibilities that are given to you by the authorities, therefore you have to adapt to the regulations and try to develop your service as well as possible within the limits. 4. What were the most important decisions or pivots while developing your current business model? The most important is to be honest to the market you are operating in and focus on the paying customer. In the Nordic countries, the healthcare is controlled politically and the customer is usually connected to a system that pays their healthcare, that’s why you have to adapt to the challenges involved. By focusing on the customer, instead of trying to implement a model that you think is great, you create a business model that can grow. One sector, where we in the beginning very much had to proceed via trial and error methodology, was selecting the right location for the retail clinics. Basically, it is relatively simple to define which areas have higher need for basic health care services. Nevertheless, determining how potential user base turns into real customers is not easy. One of the critical factors is how positive or negative approach customers at the target market have towards new type of health care services. Selecting the right partners is also very important with our business model. We have moved along on a positive learning curve on this and currently collaborate very successfully with a pharmacy chain in Sweden. We also like to see municipalities as our potential customers. The mind-set or attitude of municipality health care decision makers has proven to be a critical factor when developing collaboration models with a public health care providers. 4

eHealth business cases: Laastari Clinics. 5. Can you use the same business model in other countries and/or in international market? Or did you do some changes adapting to the market in each country? Each country has their environment and market needs, therefore you have to adapt to each country separately. The service itself however can usually be conveniently applied to the needs of the healthcare system and the patients. 7. Do you see some new opportunities or threats to your business model in the near future? I see a lot of opportunities in our business for the future. The healthcare in Europe needs good solutions for its ageing population. The old public system needs changes, private and insurance medicine is developing, healthcare is more connected, new treatments have emerged, and a lot of people are getting engaged in the development of our future healthcare. The threat is that politicians would not understand or feel incentivised to support the need for new service models Can you tell some lessons learned during the business development process? Of course you would do some decisions differently. But the most important learning is that in the end you are able to change your processes on the way. All new ideas and service models change on the way, if they don’t, they stop existing. I guess several actions should have been done differently but you can’t go back in time and change things that have already been done. The important fact is that you try to do everything as well as you can on a daily business and that you focus to change the things that don’t work.

About the project The GET project delivers four high-impact services to eHealth SMEs and entrepreneurs in order to boost their growth and move them to the next level of competitiveness. Each service has been designed to provide cross-border value to a different target group of companies. It will do by offering training, mentoring, market intelligence, support and, above all, quality contacts. These services are: Get on track Targets early-stage companies, start-ups and entrepreneurs. It supports them to optimize their business model and commercialization strategy. Get funded Designed for SMEs looking for a second round of funding. It provides training, resources and networking opportunities with investors at European level. Get global Helps mature SMEs to access international markets by putting them in contact with foreign commercialization partners and potential customers. Get inspired Identifies and disseminates unmet needs in eHealth that can become business opportunities for entrepreneurs and SMEs. If you want to know what GET can do for you, suggest resources or insight Contact us! Follow us on This document is a deliverable of the European Project GET, funded by the European Commission with Grant Agreement number