Nobody is twisting my arm
First of all, Topicus is not the only technology company in the Netherlands. I tell myself that I have the choice to work closer to home, if I want to. Therefore nobody is forcing me to work at Topicus. The present company culture of pizzas and beer is not sacred to me and it is not a conscious attempt to make my life too difficult. No, I don’t sit on the train for fun, while my social circle are doing exciting things at home. I don’t think so. It would be my preference if Topicus was based in Utrecht.
Have real impact
For me the special thing about Topicus is the way we stand with each other in society. How we really make an impact and sincerely want the world to be more beautiful. I know that many organisations try to achieve the same thing. There are plenty of examples of this including in the healthcare sector. Unfortunately, you can usually see right through it and it turns out to be nothing more than empty marketing. When push comes to shove, these companies will most likely stop their good innovations because they are afraid it is threatening their business. They refuse to link up and unlock data or ask astronomical amounts for it.
Helping each other with a sustainable relationship
Luckily we do this differently at Topicus. We sincerely work to improve healthcare. Of course my colleagues and I also want to bring home the bacon at the end of the day. We do not want to achieve this by pushing the brakes at every development, protecting data and demanding money. At Topicus we believe if we help healthcare providers, patients and healthcare institutions well enough, they will naturally want to stay with us. Together we work out how we can enter into a lasting relationship and how we can help each other.
Example: Medical centre and ambulance service centre
An example is the referral link that allows a Medical centre to digitally forward the outcome of the triage to the ambulance service centre. A crucial development whereby the patient no longer has to repeat his/her story and which improves the cooperation between the GP and the ambulance service. My colleagues and I have been working hard on this development over the recent years: setting up message content, agreeing on standards, making functional designs, designing architecture and developing software to name but a few. Hundreds of hours have gone into this without us having ever asked for an extra euro. After all, we believe that we really improve the healthcare system. And if we succeed, if we have this impact and healthcare providers are happy, then our bacon will be brought home automatically.
Working together on social impact
This way of working, the space to really advance healthcare in collaboration with health care providers, this is why I travel to Deventer every day. Do you recognise this? Would you also like to work together on social impact in this way?