Mr. Janne Kostamo (Executive MBA, M.Sc. in Industrial Eng. and B.Sc. in Mech. Eng.) was appointed as new CEO of Innokas Medical. He started to work at Innokas in the beginning of this year. Kostamo came to Innokas from Pharmia Oy, where he was holding CEO’s position since 2018. He says that the strategy work to be launched at Innokas during the year aims at securing the continuity of Innokas’ internationalization and growth.
“I’ve enjoyed working at Innokas very much! My first few months here have gone quickly and the days have been very interesting and diversified. The very talented team that works at Innokas as well as Innokas’ strong commitment with quality and regulatory matters have made an impression to me from the very first day here”, Kostamo tells.
Kostamo brings 18 years of experience in entrepreneurship, manufacturing, engineering and digital hospital platforms/solutions from his time in various leadership roles at Miraltel Oy (2000 – 2011). After Ascom acquisition of Miratel from 2011 to 2018 he worked as CEO for Finland and Baltics and in Group business development role. In his latest position he worked as CEO for Pharmia Oy, a Finnish pharmaceutical company. Kostamo feels his previous strong experience in leadership and management in B2B environment, as well as his engineering, manufacturing and digital hospital solutions background will help him with his new challenges at Innokas.
“The healthcare technology industry is evolving with various global trends - like digitalization, which is revolutionizing the future of patient care. In addition to the new innovations utilizing the latest technologies, the number of medical devices including software and data-driven features is growing at an accelerating pace creating competitive edge for businesses and products. With new solutions, significant cost savings can be achieved through, e.g., preventive patient care. Additionally, the support to make better health related decision-making can be offered”, Kostamo ponders and continues:
“I see data analytics, machine learning and AI built-in connected devices will have a huge impact on how diseases are prevented, and how patients are treated in the future. When one further adds the burdensome and complicated regulation governing health technology, one has a very complex but interesting equation to solve - in which we at Innokas Medical definitely want to be involved in.”
Keeping up with the global competition requires continuous development and investments from companies. Keeping this in mind, Innokas Medical’s Design Studio has continuously reinforced its in-house know-how in regulated software and digital healthcare solutions.
“In addition to electrical and mechanical engineering, UX and SW designers, QA&RA specialists and project managers, we have very talented data scientists in our competence pool. The existing trends and customers’ needs are being taken into account in both development work and recruitments. This development work will naturally continue in the future as well”, Kostamo tells.
In addition to the design and development services and digital healthcare solutions business, Innokas’ manufacturing business has undergone a major facelift over the years alongside Innokas business growth. Nowadays Innokas serves both Nordic and global MedTech players already in three locations to bring their medical and IVD devices to international markets.
“There are extremely motivated, committed and talented experts working in our manufacturing sites, who have implemented several development projects to improve our manufacturing operations even further during the years”, Kostamo tells and continues:
“As an example, bringing Lean principles as part of our manufacturing operations have brought overall efficiency, more agile ways of operation and higher quality.”
Even if the major part of Innokas Medical’s annual revenues are generated from manufacturing side, both design and development as well as quality and regulatory services are still equally important parts of company’s business as a whole.
“Our uniqueness lies in our comprehensive service offering, which, in addition to Manufacturing Operations and Life Cycle Management service offering, includes versatile Design and Development services, as well as strong experience in quality and regulatory affairs. The concept is superior for companies that need long-term co-creation partnerships for the product's whole lifecycle”, Kostamo says.
Innokas Medical has been offering professional medical technology services since 1994 and has experienced significant growth over the years.
“Today over 120 people work in various production positions, and the Design Studio unit has expanded to include about 50 people. The main reason for the continuous growth is that, thanks to our long-term, customer-oriented operation, Innokas has gained the whole-hearted approval of healthcare technology community”, Kostamo ponders.
“Even if the COVID-19 situation brought its own challenges for Innokas’ business as well, we succeeded to increase our turnover in 2020 to all-time-high of 33M€, which indicates about 6 % growth from the previous year. Nowadays our Scandinavian customers from Sweden, Denmark and Norway make about 29% of our revenues - showing our internationalization strategy bearing fruits”, he continues.
To achieve the new targets and goals, the renewal process of the Innokas' strategy will be implemented during the year. Kostamo strongly believes in that by focusing on the creation and implementation of the long-term strategy and on the continuous development of Innokas operations will help the company to achieve its goals. The industry itself also creates a great starting point for the company's target setting.
“To reach our targets, we will invest in renewing our strategy and developing our organization and processes even further. Additionally, we will strengthen our quality and regulatory know-how in future with the aim to reach the industry leader position in Scandinavia”, Kostamo tells and continues:
“The healthcare technology is growing steadily, and it has a deeper purpose and effect on all the mankind: our mission is to improve people´s lives by crafting healthtech ideas to reality. Every day when we come to work, we can feel that we’re doing really important and meaningful work. This is something that motivates us towards our goals, every day.”