Read the Conversation
EF: What mission did you set for yourself when you took over as general manager of Central Eastern Europe and Israel?
BK: When I assumed my role was to consolidate three independent teams on the ground. My most important goal was gathering people and building a unified team. Once I unified these teams, I aimed to magnify our presence across the cluster. Our mission is to equalize access to Baxter products and business wherever possible. This will give patients, healthcare professionals, and our employees a chance to develop.
EF: Could you elaborate on Baxter's commitment to the Polish healthcare system?
BK: Baxter Poland was established 31 years ago, in 1992. In the beginning, Baxter was a company that delivered simple solutions for patients. Baxter transformed from a traditional pharma company to a MedTech company. It went from a handful of employees in Poland to more than 500 employees. It went from a company that only had a commercial team to one that currently has an organizational structure that supports patients in Poland and provides a shared service for the entire EMEA region. Most of these changes happened in 2021.
Our shared services operation in Poland was set up in 2021, and it currently employs more than 350 people across the finance, procurement, HR, and IT departments. In 2021, Baxter also acquired Hillrom. The Hillrom portfolio is our strategic focus, and we are investing in it to address access issues for HCPs and patients in Poland. Healthcare professionals and patients will benefit from a wider range of solutions. We shift the conversation from drugs to solutions that aid early diagnosis and treatment.
The Hillroom portfolio contains products such as vital sign monitors that measure blood pressure and other vital signs of a patient. These monitors can be connected to the mobile devices of healthcare professionals. The data from those monitors can be easily transmitted to the hospital's IT systems and combined with data from other hospitals, pharmacies, and laboratories to help healthcare professionals make early diagnoses.
We also have full hospital equipment, including an entire range of operating theatre equipment. The IT systems are connected to all these pieces and give healthcare professionals a view of the patient's progress. Compared to the simple solutions we offered when we started, we have come a long way through innovation. Developing Hillrom's portfolio is one of our long-term projects, and these are capital investments. Poland is currently waiting for funds from the European Union to build, rebuild, or modernize the hospitals. Baxter is ready and willing to help.
Poland is a country blessed with amazing talent, and this is why we decided to build the shared services hub here in Poland. Our team is growing significantly, and we are gearing up for a huge expansion.
EF: How do you see the trends for care evolving in Poland?
BK: We are seeing a lot of digitalization across the sector. COVID-19 helped us embrace digital solutions. For example, ECG tests can now be done remotely. Consumers can now use a Holter machine in the comfort of their own homes. All the data is then transmitted to a doctor sitting somewhere else. The doctor can then describe what he saw and send the results to your preferred GP. You can then connect with the GP remotely or in person to ask for the diagnosis and the final treatment. We are proud to assist and participate in this type of patient diagnosis.
When discussing outpatient clinics, many things can be done completely differently than they were a couple of years ago. We also use digital solutions for neurotreatment and dialysis that can be done at home. Connected outpatient care is something we want to focus on, as it helps to address the challenges that hospitals and healthcare professionals face, such as the increasing costs and number of patients. We strongly believe that outpatient care will be the future.
Everyone can be patient at any time; normally, we prefer to stay at home whenever it is possible not to be in the hospital. Connected care is helping us make it possible for everyone. In other parts of our cluster, they are thinking about remote hospitals where patients stay home and are equipped with vital sign monitors and hospital beds. The monitors send messages to healthcare professionals who are sitting in the hospital. There is also a nurse who visits the patients and interacts with them. This is the future of healthcare. Whenever possible, let us keep patients at home and diagnose them at home. Patients will be happier, and it will be cheaper. Connected outpatient care might be more effective than inpatient care because healing processes are sometimes faster when patients surround a patient.
EF: Baxter's latest financial results showed considerable growth in certain areas. How did this growth translate into the Polish region?
BK: All our business units are growing except for one, injectables of oncology products, where we faced generic competition. This is expected. In general, the market is not saturated in all the segments in which we operate. There are still patients who need treatment.
Apart from Hillrom, we have several different segments and portfolios. For example, we deliver food to patients' homes in the clinical nutrition segment. This segment is growing significantly in Poland. There are still patients who did not get this treatment and still should. Oncological patients and those who cannot normally eat and need this support are at the top of the list.
We also have advanced surgical products. These biological products help doctors stop bleeding during an operation or seal wounds on organs. Today, these products are best practices because they allow a safer environment for the doctor to operate. This is another part of our portfolio that is growing significantly. In Poland, the growth of advanced surgery products increased by more than 30% year over year.
We are shifting from old products to new ones in the anesthesia market. This shift is driving growth. Some patients still should be treated with more modern therapies but have not been treated due to economic factors. This is the fuel for our growth.
EF: There is a shift towards prevention via early diagnosis. How is Baxter helping with this conversation? What initiatives are you pursuing to drive awareness?
BK: An excellent example of an innovation that is a shift towards prevention via early diagnosis is the ICNET software. It is a solution whose primary task and goal is to support the management of a health care facility, but also units supervising the entire area of infections and infection prevention. At the level of an individual hospital, a group of hospitals, or other supervisory units. It is software whose main feature is interoperability. It can be integrated with various IT systems in the hospital, regardless of the provider of such software. It can network geographically within a province, region, or even country.
The software integrates data that comes from various types of system modules, such as a hospital pharmacy, laboratory, and data from medical devices, which are used to assess basic vital signs when a patient is admitted to the hospital, which can be a way to faster diagnostics, such as sepsis.
We have an advanced portfolio helping support the shift towards prevention. In 2018, we built the Baxter Educational Center in Poland, where we promote education and train doctors.
We have trained circa 18,000 people since our door opened. This includes the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and even some patients. Our center is a place of mutual inspiration. We invite experts, key opinion leaders, and top-class professors who train and share their knowledge with other healthcare professionals. The professionals talk to professionals, and we act as facilitators. We provide the space and stay in the background. Healthcare professionals appreciate this learning opportunity and the fact that we are not doing any kind of hard promotion of our products. Our room is purely educational and about shared skills in therapeutic areas such as anesthesiology, fluid therapy, acute kidney diseases, and nutrition.
The idea to support Ukrainian doctors came from our people. Ukraine is hit by rockets every day, and 200 hospitals have been destroyed fully, and more than 1500 hospitals and clinics have been damaged. We saw the conditions in which Ukrainian doctors must work daily, how many patients they have, and what challenges they face. We decided to help them from our stand, giving them mental support, training them, and letting them know they are not alone.
We have also embraced digital approaches in our portfolios. We have advanced surgery products, and our teams frequently work with doctors in operating theatres. We support other doctors by broadcasting from one operation theatre to many others. We observe the best and most experienced people to learn the best operating techniques. It is not about the promotion of our products; it is about the education of surgeons. We can reach hundreds of doctors, and they can question opinion leaders on the best techniques. They can see what the surgeon is doing and whether there are any mistakes.
Our mission and vision are to save and sustain life, and we live with that mission. It is about our customers, patients, and doctors. It is also about us, the employees. We have plenty of activities for employees to sustain our lives, like vaccinations, diagnostics, and meetings with dietitians and others. We get support for our physical and mental health. Whenever our employees feel they are doing it for themselves, they live our motto.
We have a lot of CSR activities that are driven from the bottom. We do not impose ideas on our staff, but people develop them. All opinions are welcome. I co-lead the onboarding program with the director of shared services. We meet with all the newcomers from IT, finance, and other fields. We share Baxter's history, philosophy, and vision with all our new employees. After the initial meetings, we received good feedback from the recruits that they were happy to join the MedTech industry. They felt they would be doing something important for people and working for a company bringing innovation.
EF: How do you foster a culture of a healthy work environment at Baxter?
BK: I have been in this position for two years. I have worked for more than five companies in my professional career and can make comparisons. The people at Baxter enjoy what they do. I saw it on the first day. They are nice people who have created a positive work culture.
Our team is made up of people from over 10 countries. We speak more than 10 languages at Baxter. Our onboarding process is never in Polish because there is always at least one person who does not speak Polish. This fosters an inclusive spirit. Everything starts with the recruitment process. We want to have a diverse team. People in top leadership positions understand that a diverse group leads to better outcomes.
Our gender ratio is almost 50/50; there are slightly more females than males. This is also seen in the leadership positions. I am a woman, and the director of shared services is also a woman. The signal comes from the top. We globally aim to have more than 40 percent of leadership positions occupied by women, while in Poland, we have already reached 50%. We do not want to seem to favor women. Competencies are still the most important attribute. We have many talented women, and that has led to a change in the company structure from being male-dominated.
At Baxter, development does not necessarily mean going up; it can also mean remaining at the same level but doing something different. That is necessary because you need experience in various fields to grab opportunities. If you come from finance and have never done anything but finance, you cannot reach positions at the C level. If you have experience in finance, HR, and marketing, you have three different possibilities to get the C level. This is why we have Baxter Academy and sponsor external courses with universities. We promote English lessons since that is the language of business. We do the right things, and we do it consistently.
Employees are encouraged to speak up so that we can hear what they need. We have a lot of freedom in our development, and our employees' ideas are appreciated. We know in which direction we want to develop, and our flexibility and openness differentiate us from other companies. We also have groups for women. We believe in sisterhood. We have mentoring programs. These are the things that, in my opinion, every company needs to have.
EF: When you celebrate a year, what would you want to celebrate?
BK: I would thank my team first. They are great, and words cannot describe my admiration for them and their work. When I started this role, I came in with ideas about what I wanted to change. I took the time to listen and understand before I made any changes. We tend to look at past experiences and think the same things will work here as they did there. Every situation and every company is different. I learned to give my team space and time to speak up and give their opinions before making any changes. I would celebrate my team and thank them for their input and patience.
