Emerging Trends in the Healthcare Industry

In an interview, Katarina Zivojinovic, marketing director of Aqualab Laboratorije, discusses her view on the present trends in the healthcare industry.

What are some of the major challenges and trends impacting the Healthcare Industry lately?

2020 was a turning point for the healthcare industry. Covid 19 has changed the game. What is evident is that human consciousness has changed. Especially when we talk about Balkan countries, someone might say that they have always been health aware, but that was not so evident for most of the people in our region. I think that all of us were willing to pay for tire replacement, technical inspection, beauty products etc., but when it comes to ourselves and our inner condition, we got to that old sentence, nothing is hurting me, for sure; I am just fine. Therefore, Covid was a game changer, and awareness has increased significantly. I believe this is not the case in Serbia or Balkan; I think this point of view has changed globally.

On the other hand, Covid sowed fear, so we forgot about any other diseases, cancers, autoimmune diseases... So, on one hand, you had rows of people waiting for testing. On the other hand, they all forgot about pat histology, genetics. In 2023, I think we will be paying the remaining dues

Challenges again globally.

In this part of Europe, particularly in Serbia, the main challenge is reconciliation between public and private health. As a country not in the EU, we do not have a sufficiently organized system. From the point of view of some individuals trying to make a breakthrough, it is difficult. We use an old communist-socialist model where the default is that health and education must be free. Insurance is not working very well, and I am not talking about insurance companies; I am talking about the fact that if you are, for example, paying for private health insurance, you cannot use it in public institutions and vice versa.

Trends besides awareness and prosperity of the health industry for sure genetics will have, and it has a big development curve. Thoughts are that the field will make important changes for humanity. Right now, in our laboratory, you can discover a lot about a baby that was not born yet; while it is still in the womb, you can find out whether you have inherited a gene mutation which can cause you cancer(so you can prevent it) etc. We can screen newborn

babies on babies from one drop of blood for different diseases. The sky is the limit for discovering new and different records in our genes. Geneticists all around the world every month enter hundreds of thousands of new mutations of genes, finding out new patterns, new diseases...

What keeps you up at night regarding some of the major predicaments in the Healthcare Industry?

Well, what keeps me up at night? We are open 00-24h every day so that usually keeps me up.

As a CEO of one big chain of healthcare institutions in a country whose system is not regulated, I can give you good examples from other countries, like Poland, Israel, and England. I follow events in highly developed countries, hope, and wait for the moment when we will also apply good practices and regulations. Let me explain to you what is on my mind. Poland: I went to visit them, and their country supports individuals willing to contribute to the development of health. Almost all of the pathophysiological materials are sent to private laboratories. Alternatively, in Israel, you have two insurance companies that you can choose from. It does not matter what you choose, you can go public or private, and there are no waiting lists. 

Not to be enough, when it comes to prices, in Serbia prices are much lower than in other countries from the EU. So, I am following events all around Europe and trying to do something good for my country and people; I am waiting for a breakthrough. You can hear people saying what happened. They were healthy, and suddenly they are gone? We can change that! My family, who owns this business, and I are working hard to accomplish that. That became my passion! What keeps me awake at night is the idea that we can do SOMETHING GREAT, improve quality of people’s lives, prevent various diseases, and help our nation be healthier.

Can you tell us about the latest project you have been working on and what technological and process elements you leveraged to make the project successful?

From my first day in the private health industry, I have been working on multiple projects simultaneously, and on this day, that still is the case. I am trying to predict the global economic situation, to do the budgets, not to invest too little or too much, to control all sectors in the company and to be present everywhere. But one project that could be interesting is new software for every sector in our chain. So, the idea was to make one software that will include all parts laboratories where you have more than 4.000 analyses, polyclinics surgeries where you have many kinds of different examinations, marketing, HR, finances, accounting, administration, sales, monitoring, call centre, technical department, IT... In addition, that was not easy. We worked on that solution since 2021, and I can proudly say that we made it! We made a solution that is tailored to our needs. So right now, we are implementing it step by step. You can imagine the amount of data which needs to be stored and used in the proper way. We had around 4.000.000 patients in 2021(Covid has increased the numbers a bit), and in 2022 we had around 3.200.000 patients. While management was included in different parts and gave suggestions and guidelines, I believe that was not easy for the company which made that software. The requirements of the medical profession had to be met, but also the needs of other sectors and ways of reporting. Then there is, for example, a pre-analytical system, different kinds of biochemical, microbiological, genetic devices, ultrasounds, etc. So, from the most miniature private practice laboratory to central laboratories and polyclinics, everything had to be covered. I am really happy about this innovation.

What are some of the technological trends which excite you for the future of the Healthcare Industry?

Technological trends excite me on the one hand, but on another can be worrisome because of the human roles in all that.

In our laboratory in Belgrade, we have a pre-analytical system which can do around 33.000 samples per day. That žrobot can perform the process by himself with little employee engagement. You put a blood sample on it, and it does preparation, triage, and analyses, even if it has an option to send results directly to the patient (because of quality, we are not letting the pre-analytic system do that step). So as you can assume: The whole process is really faster, and you do not need all those steps that you needed earlier, so automatically, you need less stuff for the laboratory.

Let me explain and give you one more example: I saw a robot for pathophysiology on which tests have been performed. Scientists told me that robot has to do two-digit thousands of pathophysiology material and conclude the same as pathophysiologic. When the robot has done a sufficient number of examples and the results are the same as the results of a path histologist, the robot will be able to read samples without any human and give you a diagnosis.

In one way, that is amazing. Can you imagine how fast that will be? Even for developing countries, for those who would wait for months because medical staff is missing in the whole private healthcare industry, that is a big step. In another way, does this mean we will have fewer and fewer pathophysiologists?