Read the Conversation
Conversation highlights:
- Purpose-Driven Innovation. Dedalus collaborates with key stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem to design and deliver innovative health tech solutions, highlighting Command Center, EHR pathways, adaptive cloud-native imaging, and embedded AI with real clinical value.
- Spain as a Digital Leader. Iberia’s strong digital maturity enables Dedalus to innovate locally and export solutions like Dedalus Care internationally.
- Data as a Strategic Asset. Key challenges are data quality, normalization, and privacy; Dedalus supports regions in curating and unlocking the value of data and applying AI responsibly.
- People & Culture. The company attracts tech talent motivated by the impact on healthcare, nurturing collaboration, soft skills, and close work with customers.
- Achievements & Future Vision. Major wins include brand transformation, innovation leadership, and pharma partnerships, with strong growth tied to ongoing EU-funded digital transformation.
EF: What attracted you to Dedalus, and what mission did you set for yourself? Over the past five years, how has it evolved?
MF: When I began working in the healthcare industry, it made a positive impression on me because of the value it brings. I moved to Dedalus because I felt a strong connection to healthcare. Dedalus's mission to drive true transformation in the healthcare sector through innovation was essential to maintaining the quality of healthcare. This was a personal decision, driven by the value we would bring to healthcare.
EF: Could you give us an overview of your portfolio, including how it is balanced across the different business units and how it is adapted to the Spanish market?
MF: Dedalus has a solid portfolio of innovative solutions to unlock the power of data in the healthcare ecosystem. I will start highlighting our command center, which is a solution where the R&D is carried out in Spain, and we co-created with Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, in a collaboration with Madrid Healthcare Service (SERMAS), and the regional digitalization ministry. We are taking on this solution because the healthcare system has a strong need to improve its processes and achieve smoother patient flow. Dedalus Command Center allows hospitals to embrace real-time healthcare to move towards anticipative, proactive, and preventive care. This relates to our EMR Dedalus Care, with Dedalus Care pathways, which aim to improve patient flow, focus on execution, standardize clinical workflows within the healthcare organization, and facilitate transitions between primary care, hospitals, and social care settings. We recognize this as a challenge and offer solutions and technologies that support the continuum of care in the Spanish market.
We innovate with a purpose, so AI is integrated into every solution to add value in different aspects, such as automating processes, identifying risk populations, and assisting with prevention so that preventive measures can be taken, or identifying risk while you are in the hospital so that a treatment is administered in advance and the situation does not deteriorate. Our command center is equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) to assist customers in planning their surgeries, scheduling emergency personnel, and accurately planning their personnel. AI is now integrated into all voice components to eliminate the need for professionals to take notes, as AI handles it automatically. We are embedding this capability across our solutions.
Our DeepUnity PACSonWEB is another solution we are introducing to the market. Imaging is becoming a crucial component of diagnosis, and its collaborative use is key. To assist the customer with this challenge, we are deploying our solution to the cloud. I want to emphasize pathology and digital pathology when we discuss imaging. We have both an imaging system and a pathology laboratory system. There is a shortage of pathologists so that digital pathology will be key to cancer prevention and early detection, and we see this as a significant market opportunity that we are pursuing.
Regarding data valorization and our platform for clinical trials, Spain has a strong culture of conducting them among its healthcare providers. It also has a strong culture of collaborating with pharma and a solution that really helps put together high-quality data. To truly accelerate research and move into healthcare delivery and personalized care, it is necessary to shift from EMRs to real-world evidence and beyond clinical trials. We observe that our clinical trial and real-world evidence platforms have the potential to introduce this value to the market. In my opinion, these are the major market solutions we are addressing.
EF: Could you tell us why Iberia and Spain are important to the Dedalus group and how you attract resources to Spain?
MF: I'm proud to state that Spain is a leader in digital healthcare. I managed healthcare businesses outside of Spain in the past, and I can clearly see that it is leading in both care coordination and electronic medical records. People from Dedalus in other countries have visited the hospitals we are working with in Spain; the formalities for registering their information are more stringent than in other countries. As a result, our digital maturity supports the co-creation that we promote in Spain. Dedalus has several R&D excellence centers in Spain, part of our global R&D network, and we collaborate with our customers to innovate. This relates to innovation with a purpose because, when we innovate with our customers, we engage in dialogue with clinicians and IT teams. Still, we primarily focus on clinical value cases. Our contribution is in clinical and operational innovation.
The Command Center, Dedalus Care, and several innovations we implement in Dedalus Care or the clinical pathways have all been mentioned. We have worked with different customers to help us define the solutions. We bring technical and industry knowledge and innovation by leveraging leading cutting-edge technologies. Although we have clinical knowledge, we leverage our customers' digital and clinical knowledge to create value. Beyond the business contribution we make to the company, I believe that Iberia's strategic value lies in the innovation we do with our clients.
EF: How do you evaluate the present state of data management in the healthcare industry? Where are there greater opportunities to maximise the use of data?
MF: Since we have assisted many customers in curating their data, one of the main issues in the regions is the quality of the system’s data. As a result, numerous efforts have been made to improve quality significantly. In certain areas, you will find that the data catalogues from different hospitals differ. Therefore, it takes a lot of work to curate and normalize the data so that it makes sense when combined. Without normalization, the data cannot be considered or analysed collectively.
By creating their own AI, the regions are genuinely attempting to extract value from the data. Since privacy is core in Spain and Dedalus, we do not own any data. The information belongs to our customers. That is something we take extremely seriously. The GDPR training and product evaluations we provide are crucial to ensure that data access is secure and restricted to those who need it. We see and work with our customers to help them create, normalize, and extract value from data across a variety of use cases, from administrative tasks to helping them plan their operating rooms more effectively to maximize productivity. To better plan emergency services, perform as many surgeries as possible each day or week, and identify public health risks. This preparatory effort is crucial. Everyone in Spain believes privacy is vital, and all regions are implementing data transformation offices to manage data flows effectively, leverage data, and ensure data protection.
EF: What kind of individuals are you seeking to employ at Dedalus, and how do you craft that sense of culture in a digital world?
MF: We seek candidates with technical skills. More Spanish universities now offer healthcare technology training. These individuals already have a strong desire to work in healthcare. They are more than just tech enthusiasts; they have a career in technology with the intention of improving healthcare. For us, that is crucial, since incorporating these makes things easier. Since the client may be a healthcare organization, we strive to foster a culture that adds value to patients or customers. However, we consistently emphasize that the patient must come first. We must take this into account when we work with, communicate with, and innovate for our customers.
We are still trying to strike a balance with remote work, even if everything goes digital, since meeting in person builds connections with the people who matter. We are committed to fostering the development of soft skills, with an emphasis on inclusivity and strengthening collaboration and teamwork among all individuals. We always view the patient and health services consumer as an extension of our team, so what I refer to as collaboration is not just between us but includes the customer. For us, that is key.
EF: What is your vision for the next five years, and what would you consider to be your major accomplishments?
MF: Developing a market vision for Dedalus as a relevant brand that helps customers drive their transformation has been a major accomplishment for us. We have had company acquisitions and grown from being known for a few products to expanding our product offering. It has been a major achievement to transform the brand through communication and execution. In the command center and chronic care, we have truly been able to go beyond our traditional solutions. It has also been a huge accomplishment, in my opinion, to instill this culture in our workforce and unite different companies into one. Being acknowledged internally as one of Dedalus's leading innovators has been crucial to our ability to attract investment for the group in Spain.
Our solution, Dedalus Care, is a strategic initiative for Dedalus that we are helping bring to other regions from Spain. This is specific to Latin America. We have references in Bosnia and LATAM, and while I couldn't say that we are responsible for this in Iberia, we have significantly contributed to the product's global spread. Looking ahead, I see that Spain has made a significant investment this year through European funding. Because the transformation has only just begun, I hope this investment will continue.
EF: Do you have a final message you would like to share with the readers?
MF: We are beginning to focus on solutions that go beyond our clinical trials. We have various partnerships with life sciences companies because they are actively assisting providers not only with research and real-world evidence but also with patients who are undiagnosed, which is highly pertinent. Additionally, there is a more extensive partnership between health technology and life sciences to add more value. By leveraging our market solutions and the clinical expertise inherent in life sciences, we are positioned to deliver significant value to the industry.
For us, the collaboration with life sciences is expanding to assist both public and private healthcare providers. Value-based healthcare is one of the areas we have been working on for a few years. Increasing patient engagement, allowing patients to participate in their own care, and collecting data on patient outcomes and experiences are all areas that require improvement. To provide the patient with a comprehensive solution, we also include that section in our Electronic Medical Record. This part is important since the new personalized treatments are very expensive, and the countries' ability to pay for them and their success in the market will depend on new value-based payment structures.
Therefore, I would say that including the patient actively in the flow and establishing this connection to make these value-based payments possible will be key to the success of personalized medicine. This partnership with life sciences companies and healthcare providers is vital to generating the data required to enable value-based payment models.
