Medbase guides doctors to avoid unsuitable medicines - in the future, even closer to the customer

Everything was good at Medbase. The company had spent fifteen years building significant databases for the support of prescribing medicines. They had become almost the industry standard among the Finnish medical profession, and the databases had been adapted and sold to many European countries.

“The work done also bore fruit financially. But could Medbase be something much more? What would it take?”

Medbase founders Kari Laine and Tuomas Korhonen, as well as Vaaka’s partner Ville Koskenvuo, sat down to consider these questions in August 2021. Vaaka's nets had caught Medbase after the company had reviewed potential Finnish growth companies. Common ground was found, and the meetings continued. The enthusiasm grew. Opportunities started to appear here and there.

A number of obstacles had been identified in the market that would require the company to move closer to its customers. Medbase works through distributors, but a more direct link to the systems used by hospitals and pharmacies in the emerging international market would solve many problems.

It would just require a completely different team. Medbase consisted of medical professionals who were experienced in interpreting studies on medical treatment and developing guidelines for action based on them, but now the company would need people who can communicate with IT professionals or the authorities that control medical devices. And someone who can market them internationally. As well as someone who focuses on financial figures.

And also, someone that would run everything because the CEO Kari Laine wanted to focus on the scientific aspects. Before Medbase, he was a Professor of Medicine at the University of Turku. The scientific roots were strong, both for Laine and for Medbase as a whole.

At the turn of February-March 2022, Vaaka invested in Medbase. Once the strategy had been jointly drawn up, its implementation began. "We made a 100-day work plan," says Ville Koskenvuo from Vaaka.

The most important item on the to-do list was recruiting six carefully defined new individuals. It was done. In three months, the number of staff more than doubled from four to ten. All the company’s employees became shareholders. Along the way, the premises were changed, furniture was bought, agreements were updated...

This is just the beginning. The next leap is likely to take place towards the end of the year when Medbase will start to emerge higher up the international value chain.

If a doctor is prescribing a medicine that is not compatible with the patient's other medication, the Medbase database, integrated into the patient information system, gives the doctor an automatic alert. The database also advises the doctor on the selection of the most appropriate choice of medication.

Or if the person serving the customer in the pharmacy notices that the customer is pregnant, they can easily see whether the medicine is suitable for the customer or whether they need to be recommended something more suitable. The database is like a quick-access medical consultation.

Easily accessible, up-to-date information is an important tool for health professionals. That's why doctors and pharmacy employees want to have access to it, and their employers provide it for them.

Medbase has been producing and maintaining databases since the first decade of the 2000s, but various information system providers, such as Duodecim in Finland, have handled distribution. This means that Medbase's data is part of a wider service entity.

With Vaaka's support, Medbase will become a software company whose database can be directly linked to the client community's information system.

When the information collected by Medbase is inserted further into, for example, a hospital's patient information system or a pharmacy's customer system, the user experience is improved. In addition, Medbase's new international distributors will save a lot in costs by not having to integrate Medbase's database into their own service, which in turn will be integrated into the customer's system.

When Medbase's database communicates directly with the customer's information system, new types of partners, such as large system suppliers, can be better collaborated with.

The health sector is highly regulated because human lives are at stake. With its new position, Medbase will be covered by the European Union's Medical Device Regulation (MDR). Of course, regulation creates more work, but it also offers opportunities. When the Medbase database is within the scope of regulation, the company distributing it does not have to be. It opens doors to different partnerships and sales channels across the European Union.

Creating a database is a major task, but once it's done, keeping the data up to date can be done with reasonable effort by a top team using sophisticated processes and tools, despite new drugs and new research constantly emerging.

The system on drug interactions is a model example of a data repository that not everyone should collect themselves; instead, they should purchase access to it. However, for historical or organisational reasons, many countries have their own national systems - either publicly or commercially maintained. This is not a problem for Medbase because although, for example, in Sweden and Norway, some databases are publicly maintained, Medbase sells complementary databases to both countries.

Each country has its own national practices and regulations, and medicines have their own trade names, so exporting the database to a new market requires not only an initial investment, but also ongoing translation work and database "mapping" to the local pharmaceutical registry. Agile process management has been honed over the years, as Medbase has sold its databases not only to Finland, Sweden and Norway but also to many European countries. In fact, the whole company was established as a joint Finnish-Swedish project, so internationalism is in Medbase's DNA.

The new operating model aims to find new markets, and the distributors in current markets will be better supported in attracting new customers.

Although Vaaka's involvement has led Medbase to move rapidly towards new possibilities, the company's core business is reliable databases that facilitate users' work as much as possible. Two of the employees hired during the 100-day programme will be on the scientific side, developing the content of the databases and building entirely new databases.