Sometimes crises
are cited as a great way
to bring the best out of people
This week we get an exclusive inside look, as we get Up-Close with Doctolib's multi-faceted Executive, Philippe Vimard: From CTO to COO to Board Member, and now Advisor, this innovator shares his vision for the future of HealthTech. Discover how he navigated the shifting priorities of the industry through the pandemic, and how he continues to drive change today.
What is your career highlight to date? How has this influenced you as a leader?
The journey we went through recently with the pandemic was an interesting and intense one for Doctolib as we found ourselves at the epicentre, playing a vital role as a leader in the healthtech sector. We played a crucial role when the pandemic broke out (especially in France and in Germany) as we quickly launched a product that allowed doctors to continue their activities remotely. At the time, we could all go home and work remotely, but we asked ourselves “What about our GP users? How are they going to be able to continue providing their services that are so desperately needed at this time?”. We are immensely proud of our achievements - we deployed 40,000 people on our digital platform within a matter of one month and in the 12 months that followed, we enabled c1 million video consultations. So overnight, as a society we went from a place where this service did not exist at all, to it becoming vital to both patients and doctors during the most challenging medical period of our recent history.
Almost as importantly for me, we stepped up to play a wider role in society. During lockdown, we were retained to organise the appointments of the nationwide Covid vaccination campaign roll-out in France and in parts of Germany. It was extremely challenging as we had literally days to adapt the platform not only to introduce new functionalities (i.e. specific dose management), but also to prepare for an enormous surge in traffic – for context, by July 2021 we were booking c20,000 vaccination appointments per minute in France alone. Overall, we covered roughly 90 million vaccination doses during the lockdown period.
This experience showed the enormous impact that can be made by a truly committed team with a strong sense of purpose during a high-pressure time when there is no room for error. Sometimes crises are cited as a great way to bring the best out of people, and that is precisely what we saw at Doctolib.
“This experience showed the enormous impact that can be made by a truly committed team with a strong sense of purpose during a high-pressure time when there is no room for error.”
In your opinion, what are the top attributes of a great digital GM / operational leader?
I would say that the one key attribute that you often find in a great operational leader is the ability to synthesise information by extracting the essential, combining it with your own ideas, and then being able to communicate the result to people in a clear way. As operational leaders, we are bombarded with information. Firstly, you have to sort out the facts from the opinions and then you have to be able to take those complex concepts and arguments and transform them into something clear and directional for your team. I believe that this is an important quality and one that I am trying to nurture and develop within myself all the time.
Additionally, I think the ability to remain open and flexible – especially in the digital ecosystem – is a crucial attribute for a leader. One might feel over time that one has seen it all, but at the end of the day, situations are always slightly different and there is a danger in becoming complacent and missing out on something new. So a flexible approach in what we do, especially as we get more experienced, is important to keep top of mind.
In your opinion, do you need different GM skillsets for different stage of company growth (i.e. start-up, scale-up, listed, etc)?
A lot of people think that when hiring executives, the level of hands-on skill required diminishes as a company gets larger. To some extent that might be true, but I personally believe that the ability to maintain that hands-on capability of going down into the trenches and leading by example is very important. One significant change when moving from being a start-up to a listed company is the need for operational leaders to develop skills in influencing stakeholders to get things done. As the company grows, you need to be able to articulate a vision and influence peers that you might not necessarily have line control of, so the ability to have an impact and influence beyond the boundaries of your day-to-day role becomes very important.
The War-Time operational GM – How has the current economic and market context impacted your strategy?
In the case of Doctolib, we operate in the healthcare sector which was relatively protected from the market cycle, and we have therefore just kept pushing forward with our growth strategy. Having said that, in the last twelve months we have taken the current economic situation as an opportunity to pay more attention to our cost base and ask “how profitable is our growth trajectory?”.
For companies that sit outside of our industry, I would advise them to act as quicky as possible to adjust their cost base and buy as much financial runway as possible for future flexibility. I have been through these cycles myself in the past (in 2001 and 2008) and whilst we know that this downturn will improve eventually, until then the focus should be on making sure you are still there to participate when that happens. You do not want to find yourself in a position where you are forced into a bad decision because you cannot control the constraint you find yourself in. In 2008, a trusted mentor of mine told me that “you never want to miss the opportunity of a crisis; it is usually a good time to get things in order”.
What would be your advice for GMs leading through economic challenges for the first time?
You have to learn to shift your mindset so you remain agile and responsive. When all you and your peers have been focussed on is “growth-growth-growth” for so long, your thinking can become hardwired and rigid, so you need to be mindful of the need to adapt in different situations with differing priorities. We do not currently know how deep this market condition will go, nor how long it will last, so the focus needs to be on increasing your own flexibility and buying yourself time. It is better to be more prudent at the beginning of a downturn and then readjust upwards than it is the other way around. Therefore, accept that there will be things that you cannot plan for and keep malleability and pragmatism on your side. Use any downtime to tidy loose ends and clean up areas that were previously neglected when they were less of a priority. If you act quickly, you have the opportunity to come out of a difficult period stronger than ever.
“It is better to be more prudent at the beginning of a downturn and then readjust upwards than it is the other way around.”
“The ability to remain open and flexible – especially in the digital ecosystem – is a crucial attribute for a leader.”
What trends have you seen develop in HealthTech in the last 12-24 months?
Unquestionably, the major trend has been an increase in telehealth and telemedicine. This has completely changed the way we interact with healthcare professionals and has been quickly accepted as the “new normal”, which is a drastic development over a short period of time.
Another trend that has emerged over the last two to three years is the growth of the wearables market and, as a result, a fundamental shift in the way people manage their own health through collecting data. More and more, you see people wearing some sort of a device – whether it be an Apple Watch or FitBit – that tracks their activity levels, sleeping patterns, blood oxygen levels, glucose monitoring etc. This is a trend that is already quite widespread, but I see that proliferating even further as technology improves to enable the collection – and actioning – of increasing amounts of data, and as usage shifts from healthcare to preventative self-care and/or self-regulation.
The final trend that I find quite interesting is the increased usage of AI in treatment and preventative technologies. One example of this is Microsoft Project NRI: a radio therapy technology that speeds up the process of detecting and treating cancer. This would have seemed like science fiction to us only a few years ago and now it is being applied in numerous areas. Technologies like these, and the uses we have for them, give us a good perspective on what we can expect the future to look like.
I think that innovation is driven mostly by constraints, and most of the healthcare systems around the world are under increased pressure in part because of the aging population and in part because of the huge cost it represents for every country. With that in mind, we will see more technologies developing that support people in self-managing their health and thus helping them to avoid actually entering the expensive part of the healthcare system. As prevention costs society less than treating health issues, we will see an even greater emphasis on preventative health.
I also think we will see technology development in patient monitoring post-treatment, so that doctors can keep an eye on and stay close to their patients even after they have left the hospital. This will also extend to geriatric healthcare. I believe we will keep finding ways to keep elderly people at home for longer with a better quality of life, and use technology to do this safely. Lastly, every single tool that will help drive healthcare productivity improvements will be vital because each one will reduce costs and pressure on the strained national health system.
What does the future of HealthTech look like in 2025 and beyond?
“I think it is less of a focus on ‘stage’ and more on the actual company ‘type’ that determines where you are going to have to put your resources, and where that fine line lies.”
How do you keep up to date in your sector? Any suggestions of great books / podcasts / content that you listen to to keep up to date? Or any books or content that have influenced your career or leadership style that you would recommend?
My answer may sound simple, but it is very important: simply being in contact with your users is a great way to identify emerging trends and needs. When you talk to doctors in our space, they have a pretty good view of what is needed; they either just do not have the time to make it happen or, in some cases, the capability to make it happen if it is outside of their realm of expertise, so talking to your users is super important and we can never do it enough. Doctolib has been built on the idea of co-creating the product with its users and that has been incredibly powerful.
The other thing I enjoy is keeping abreast of the flow of business deals being made by key players in the industry. By looking at which early-stage company a key investor or larger business is interested in, you get a good sense of the type of capabilities that are emerging in the industry. Innovation comes from small players, but these small players will usually only succeed if they get interest from a business that has market reach, so deal flow is a good source of information of what is evolving in the sector.
As for podcasts and books, I must say that I am a bit “old school” in that I read a lot and do not really enjoy sites where they compress a book into five minutes summary. As a general manager and operational leader, there are two books that I often recommend: “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni (I find this book interesting because it brings you back to the basics of what makes a great team and in what we do, we are only as good as the team we assemble. You can read this book twenty times and every time apply new learnings). The other book that I like very much is called “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott which provides valuable insights on the imperative to provide clear, direct and constructive feedback for teams as organisations grow and become more complex. So, I would say: you can never read enough nor get enough ideas from others – the key is to mix them with your own and enlarge your perspectives.
