For the second year in a row, CheckWare has been named a Gazelle company by Dagens Næringsliv. - It is incredibly important to have leading stars in the digitization of the health sector. CheckWare is an inspiration for the rest of the industry, says CEO Arild Kristensen of the Norwegian Smart Care Cluster (NSCC).
- We make large investments all the time and have focused on balancing income and expenses, says Heidi Blengsli Aabel, CEO of CheckWare.
- One thing is to grow, another is to double the turnover and make money year after year, especially in health technology. It is great to be named a Gazelle company once again, she says.
General manager Arild Kristensen of NSCC does not hide how strong this performance is:
- Not everyone can make it in this area, partly because the decision-making processes are so long. We are happy that businesses with stamina win. I have led this cluster for eight years, and it is extra gratifying to experience that there are some who succeed along the way. Seeing that lighthouse companies are being built in digital health that can also scale internationally is incredibly important for Norwegian business, he believes.
- For us, Norway Health Tech, Norwegian Smart Care Cluster and Innovation Norway are invaluable partners. This applies both when it comes to networking and advice, but also to give us important input and confidence to enter new markets internationally, says Heidi Blengsli Aabel.
Formula: Committed employees and satisfied customers lead to responsible growth
Significant cost growth, large investments in product and market development and a pandemic have neither slowed down the rate of growth nor reduced CheckWare's ability to turn a profit. The increase during the pandemic was significant. During the summer of 2021, the solution was in use in mental health and substance abuse in all Norwegian health regions.
- We work tirelessly to be consistent and systematic within the criteria we have established for the company's employees. For us, it is important to have satisfied colleagues and satisfied customers who facilitate responsible and continuous growth in our economy, says Aabel and adds:
- CheckWare is now being used in a number of areas within somatic health. The number of Norwegian municipalities using CheckWare is growing, and we are getting started in Sweden and England. The goal has always been to contribute to good health for everyone. We are sure that digital health services will be able to provide that, also internationally.
Arild Kristensen believes that the international focus will be able to ensure further growth for the company.
- I come from the IT world and know how successes can be scaled, without too much tailoring. You find the same health needs all over the world, and the research-based questions were not invented in Trondheim. No matter where you are, you will definitely find a universal trend in giving the patient ownership of their own health through control over their own data. I strongly believe that CheckWare's business model can escalate internationally. It just has to be rigged properly, which includes that sales and support work regardless of which market they enter, says the head of the cluster NSCC.
Not an easy entrance
Since 2003, Dagens Næringsliv has named the country's most successful companies through the "Gazelle Company of the Year".
The finance paper selects winners from gazelle companies in five regions (South, East, West, Middle and North), where one of them eventually ends up as the national winner. An important criterion is that the company must have had turnover growth in all of the last four years. The turnover must be more than doubled in the same four-year period and the overall operating result must be positive.
For CheckWare, the steady growth in the use of the solution is the temperature gauge of the economic progress. The number of patients who have used the digital self-report has doubled in less than three years. Today, over half a million patients have used CheckWare.
At the same time, the number of digital measures is growing at lightning speed: One million new measures in the course of eight months (from February to October 2022) mean that the seven million mark has been passed.
Commercial project manager for the Gazelle award in Dagens Næringsliv, Ulf Mørck, states that "Gaselle 2022" has 3,795 gazelle companies on this year's list.
- This amounts to around two per cent of all limited companies in Norway. Norway is very dependent on growth companies to bring about the necessary changes and create new jobs. The Gazelle companies account for almost 50 per cent of all new jobs in Norway and contribute to significant growth in the regions they are located in. Congratulations to CheckWare and all the others on this year's list!