This year MediSapiens is celebrating its 10th anniversary since the company’s founding in 2009. Sami Kilpinen, the CEO of MediSapiens and one of the founding members of the company is excited to start the year: “Wow. Ten years. It’s been an incredible ride, yet I still feel excited, both from what is behind and what is coming. I am really happy to see MediSapiens reach the 10-year landmark, we have gone a long way and learned so much on the way.”
Kilpinen, with his background in applied bioinformatics in cancer research at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Helsinki, realized during his PhD work that the state of biomedical research was far from optimal throughout the field: “Research work was really fragmented, the research projects aimed to publish new articles that did not build up and further the science – and that was something I wanted to change. I did not want to do new experiments but rather bring the small existing pieces together to enable people to build further research on that basis. This notion took me away from the lab work towards bioinformatics and led to building a database that was the foundation of MediSapiens.“
One fundamental that has been carried along to MediSapiens from the PhD work of Kilpinen is the position where the company works as the connection point and translator between the research field and technical groups – making both parties understand each other. “The deep substance knowledge we have internally in MediSapiens helps in this task, we really know what we are doing and we passionately dig deeply into our projects.” Kilpinen sums up.
During the past 10 years, MediSapiens has definitely developed and grown but there are certain aspects that have remained the same, as Kilpinen comments: “We maintain to be honest. In a company founded by scientists, internal and external openness is a fundamental value that has stayed with us since the beginning. Another mentality that has been implemented since the early days is the fact that nobody can solve all problems alone – we are a team and the first priority is to work together to solve our challenges.”
And of course there have been challenges in the first 10 years of MediSapiens as Kilpinen explains: “There have been so many – and in so many dimensions. But after all, I have positive feelings, we have managed to face, learn from and adapt to all the challenges thrown our way. It has shown that we have an infinite supply of persistence that is also called the Finnish sisu.”
“One important lesson learned from our experience is that the world is full of opinions, but finding those which are actually based on facts or even doable fuzzy statistics instead of one style of “I think the world goes like this because I experienced this”, is really challenging. It is actually shocking to learn what is the amount of information and facts behind decisions in general.” Kilpinen points out.
“The company was founded in a time when we were the only ones to really think about bioinformatics and Bio-IT, there weren’t other companies like this. The bioinformatics field was developing and we really were the pioneers in the field. Given the fact that we were really early in this industry, it was challenging to make the case that bioinformatics and Bio-IT is needed – but we were able to do it. From the beginning the company has been working globally as rather soon after its foundation we were exporting our technologies from Finland to global markets. It has been a great accomplishment to be a global company in a new field from the very start.” Kilpinen comments. “We are really proud of the fact that MediSapiens has grown to be one of the biggest and most novel Bio-IT companies in Northern Europe. Maintaining certain flexibility and ability to learn and adapt has been a key to our success in this field that has been changing so profoundly and rapidly.”
“One of the greatest moments from MediSapiens’ history was the moment when we hired our first employee, who is still working with us in MediSapiens. Also the first funding rounds, the early days of the board, first office space and the first customer successes are still vivid in my mind.” Kilpinen summarizes the memorable moments. “One shocking moment from the early years was from a telco with our customer who announced that they will not continue our software license anymore but instead want us to build a comprehensive and thorough system for them – it was a phone call that changed so much for the future of MediSapiens!”
When talking about the future, the CEO of MediSapiens hopes for a solid growth with the strong technology the company has developed: “We will keep up with our values, honesty and science but also bring commercialized thinking even more to the mix. Our team will be using all the experience and knowledge we have gained to strengthen our position and grow globally. We have seen how the field has evolved and we can use that experience as an asset as we set out to be a brand of technologies that really deliver in the field of biomedical sciences. A decade is a long time, but we promise that in the decade ahead, MediSapiens will continue to deliver more and better work.”
To our clients, he said: “I’m so appreciative and honored to work with our clients. I would like to thank our clients for their continuous belief in us and our abilities to help them achieve their goals and visions for success, while always challenging us to be better!
Many thanks also to the incredible team of MediSapiens and the community that has been so supportive from the start. I am so grateful for the opportunity to work every day with a group of talented, passionate and caring people. Thank you for these special 10 years and I’m excited to start the next successful chapter together!”
Writer:
Soila Suhonen, Marketing Manager
