NewIcon Strengthens Its Foothold in the Nordic Countries: New Distribution Agreement with Swedish Medirum

NewIcon and the Swedish Medirum AB have made a distribution agreement for the sale of pharmacy automation systems developed by NewIcon to Swedish hospitals.

Medirum is going to carry the Mega-Fixu automated dispensing system, the eMED ICON automated dispensing cabinets and the IV ICON Twins compounding system, which prepares intravenous antibiotics for use. The Medirum product range includes a comprehensive selection of medical technology devices for the health care industry.

Our connection with the Swedish partner was established in the spring of 2018 when students from the International Business and Sales Management programme at the University of Eastern Finland surveyed Europe and Asia for new potential distributing partners for NewIcon as part of their studies. As a result, two very good contacts were found, one of which was Medirum.

Per Gullbransson, Business Director of Medical IT & Pharmaceutical distribution at Medirum, says that Medirum is very happy and excited to work together with the Finnish NewIcon. Co-operation has already started with gaining in-depth knowledge of the NewIcon robots and services.

What are your feelings about starting the co-operation with the Finnish NewIcon company?

We are both happy and very excited for our partnership with NewIcon. Going from a “due diligence and learning to know each other” phase to implementing NewIcon products and services in our daily business is something we have been looking forward to for a long time.

What are your expectations towards starting business in Sweden with NewIcon products?

We are very positive – we can already see that the Swedish market is starting to discuss both automation and robotics within the field of medication in a more intensive way compared to a year ago. Being able to use all the knowledge that NewIcon has accumulated from both the Finnish market as well as international markets will help us a lot in the starting phase. We can use the best practices and expertise from an organisation that has been running for more than 10 years. This will give both us and all hospitals an added value in our discussions about how to benefit from automation and robotics. Taking all this into consideration, we have high expectations despite the journey ahead, where we will need to show the market our expertise and the benefits of NewIcon’s product portfolio.

NewIcon automation products are already quite widely used in Finland. Do you think this will enable a fast start in Sweden?

Having a partner that is the market leader and has years of success under its belt is always helpful. However, the Swedish market is still a few years behind in terms of working with automation and robotics in the medication part of the health care sector. So for us it’s very much about being out there, educating, discussing and showing all the benefits with pharmacy automation systems. Benefits like patient safety, economics, sustainability, traceability and maybe the most important – creating a good as possible work environment for all staff in every Swedish hospital. We are sure that if that is achieved, the Swedish market will follow Finland and really see all the benefits with NewIcon’s automated products.