Nordic Medtest – new Compare company

Peter Furster, CEO Nordic Medtest

In just a few years, Nordic Medtest has gone from an exciting project to an established player in testing and quality assurance of healthcare IT systems and is now in place as a central part of the national development work in healthcare. The development work aims, among other things, to fulfill the government's vision that Sweden in 2025 should be the best in the world in using digitization and
the possibilities of e-health. 

Why do you join Compare?
Nordic Medtest arose out of and is the result of a Compare project. When we are now established as a company that operates in the ICT sector, it feels natural to join as a stakeholder.

We have a long-term business strategy based on cooperation with complementary actors. We do this in part to be able to handle economic fluctuations, but above all to be able to take on larger business that we may not be able to handle on our own and to constantly feed the business with new, fresh experience and competence.

We believe that Compare's cluster operations are a good opportunity to support this strategy.

How can you be involved and contribute to growth in the region?
We have built up a company with an ownership structure consisting of all the county councils and regions. In the very near future, we will also have the country's municipalities as co-owners.

Nordic Medtest already today has a central role in the national healthcare development and in the long term perhaps also in terms of the digitization of public society at large. Our focus area is independent quality assurance where we are the link between the healthcare provider and the innovator/supplier.

As we test, but do not provide, IT systems, we are in most cases not a competitor to other Compare stakeholders, but rather an enabler.

What challenges do you face?
Society in general and healthcare in particular are at the very beginning of what will in the future be seen as the digital revolution. There are multitudes of actors who contribute with different, and to a large extent cooperating, parts. Ensuring that not only the constituent parts but also the entire "ecosystem" of e-health has a sufficiently good quality without stifling the power of innovation or speed of development for the sake of it is a very big challenge.

What do you think is important for Värmland to grow?
My view is that we should take advantage of our relative smallness. We have demonstrated many times that we can quickly mobilize important decision-makers from private actors, universities, municipalities and county councils on various issues. This is far from the opportunities you have in larger regions and something we must take advantage of.

Then I also believe that we in the business world must cooperate and cooperate "for real". Then I mean that we must dare to let go of a business opportunity so that the whole will be better in the longer term. If we just drive by ourselves and guard our territories, I think unfortunately it will be difficult for most of us to survive in the long term.

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