PROCESS REINVENTION
DATAMED
A LOCAL SUCCESS STORY THANKS TO A VISIONARY MEDIC
As the old adage goes, everything starts with a vision. This is certainly true of DATAMED. Back in the early 1980s, Jean-René Haag, a medical doctor with a tremendous fascination for IT, saw that there would be great potential from merging his two professional passions. Fast forward 40 years… and DATAMED, the company he founded, is an out-and-out success. Today, it is the Swiss market leader in laboratory information systems thanks to its modular software solution, DGLab. Launched in 1988 and continually improved since then, DGLab manages every single process carried out in a medical analysis laboratory. As Stephan Thommen, Managing Director of DATAMED, explains: “It allows laboratory instruments to communicate with hospital administrative solutions.” Thommen attributes the success of the company, which is based in Villars-sur-Glâne, to “its ability to anticipate and integrate technological developments”.
The fourth generation of DGLab is entirely cloud-based, a first for the sector. As for the data, they are stored in total security on the Swiss servers of OFAC (the Professional Association of Swiss Pharmacists). “This means that our customers no longer have to buy servers or licenses. All they have to do is pay us a monthly fee.” Thanks to this paradigm shift, access to the software is no longer limited to large laboratories. For DATAMED, this is an opportunity to scout for new segments and markets, with the agrofood and environmental sectors at the top of its list. “We are in talks with distributors with a view to internationalization”, adds the MD. The Internet of Things is another avenue which the company’s developers are currently exploring. As Thommen explains: “Via the cloud, we are now able to connect our software to all laboratory analysis devices and various other instruments like labelling machines. This is a real innovation that simplifies the use of our application considerably.”