The newspaper Segre, in its Pimec Jóvenes section, has interviewed our CEO Rafa Ramírez. Below is the transcript of the interview that you can also read by clicking here:
Rafa Ramírez is CEO of Neosalus and Cardionlive, an innovative company with an international vocation in the cardioprotection and technology sector. They are currently present in Catalonia and looking abroad.
We start with an obligatory question, how did you decide to start?
In my case the decision to undertake was not voluntary, overnight due to an illness I found myself outside my professional environment and I had to reinvent myself. First I am going to analyze what my knowledge was and what added value I could give in the market.
And what was your beginning?
My beginnings were related to the health sector and defibrillators. Since I come from the world for emergencies, I thought how I could continue saving lives outside of my sector. I decided that dedicating myself to the installation and training of defibrillators I could continue practicing my profession. My beginnings were very humble, I started with a second-hand laptop and a mannequin to be able to do first aid training and little by little I evolved and installed defibrillators until I created the Neosalus company.
What is Neosalus currently?
Neosalus is, today, one of the companies with the largest presence in the defibrillator sector, a leader in Catalonia with the management of more than 800 defibrillators throughout the State and a team of 12 people, with a very clear vision of becoming a leader in public access to defibrillation, that is, defibrillators on public roads.
You have recently created Cardionlive, a new company in the technology and health sector.
As Neosalus is in a service business model where it grows based on people, we could not settle for marketing defibrillators and training for their use, but we wanted to create and change the way they are managed. Thanks to a business acceleration program called Start up Catalonia de la Generalidad, we coincide with another company from Lleida, USE IT, with a very important know-how in the technology sector. The first impression was key and we perceived a very good feeling. Both teams had an excellent relationship from the first moment and that multiplied the potential of the project even more.
What does Cardionlive offer?
On the one hand, we offer an electronic solution to control the status of the defibrillators in real time and generate calls and automatic notices for any incident (temperature, theft, use of the defibrillator …). On the other hand, we offer a web software related to cardioprotection that allows you to manage defibrillators, track their maintenance, consumable expiration dates and the training of students. The monitoring and control is total thanks to the notices, both to customers and distributors of the devices.
How did the idea for Cardionlive come about?
In Europe we lose more than 300,000 people due to sudden death. The survival rate is less than 10%. Applying a defibrillator within 5 minutes increases survival by more than 65%. The main problem is that there is little culture of defibrillators on the street. There are more than 500,000 defibrillators and almost 25% have no maintenance, and there are few on the street. They must be made available to the people so that they can be used by anyone 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Tour has, without a doubt. Now that you have the software and hardware developed, what are the next steps to go to market?
We currently control 50 defibrillators in Catalonia, mainly in our province, and in we manage more than 900 throughout the State through the platform. Our strategy is to reach agreements with national manufacturers and distributors, among which, Germany, the United Kingdom and France, since they are the main countries in the number of defibrillators, and for the future, the intention is to make more products or exploit to the maximum Cardionlive? We will exploit Cardionlive to the fullest, obviously, but we are already thinking of a mobile solution for citizens and that is included within the SmartCity strategy by reusing the technology we have created.
Would you give any advice to other entrepreneurs?
There is often the perception that if you do it yourself, everything will go better and you will be more controlled. Our motto is that we prefer to have 1% of a great innovative project that is a reference, than to have 100% of a local project and without the possibility of growth. We encourage you to follow the philosophy that together we can create much more powerful, scalable and interesting projects.