qoom applications – Leveraging a Comprehensive and Easy-To-Use All-In-One Solution for Healthcare Companies and Organizations

"We, along with our partners, are here to help companies refocus on their business while managing their company in a legally compliant way."

qoom applications is a Munich-based regulatory technology (RegTech) company that offers practices and companies in the healthcare sector a comprehensive solution package that enables them to meet all regulatory obligations. The company leverages excellent services like documentation of quality management (QM), occupational health, hygiene, and data protection.

Dr. Walter Gmelin, CEO of qoom applications, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review on how his company makes quality management easy for medical practice and clinics.

Interview Highlights

Q. What inspired the creation of qoom applications? And where does it stand at the moment relative to other participants in the industry?

The idea for qoom came about when my wife opened her family practice in Germany because she was faced with a multitude of tasks: As an entrepreneur with several employees, she immediately had to ensure that the numerous laws and regulations on labor and data protection (DSGVO), and especially in the medical industry, for example, on hygiene and quality management, were complied with. The latter is a regulation that every practicing doctor and every clinic must comply with. For these immense challenges, we wanted to create a simple solution that reduces the effort for administration and documentation so that all employees benefit from it in their daily work.

The steadily growing number of customers from the healthcare sector who are switching to qoom shows how well we have obviously succeeded in this. It is a great pleasure to see that customers are grateful for our solution because it makes daily work much easier. For example, I remember an exchange with an older employee in a practice who was initially very skeptical about switching systems. I offered to show her everything in person the following day in an online meeting. But this meeting was over after five minutes - the employee told me that everything was so simple and self-explanatory that she didn't even need any help. Such encounters show me that our idea and the implementation are really practical and convincing.

Q. How does qoom empower organizations? And how does it drive digital transformation in quality management, workplace health and security, and data privacy?

We see qoom as a true ecosystem for QM, data protection, occupational safety, and hygiene. It allows applying organizations to document everything in one place. Our approach keeps all relevant documentation, policies, and work instructions in sync. This is true even if these documents are relevant to multiple topics, such as quality management, OSHA, or data security or privacy.

At the same time, we cover all relevant obligations of an employer. Via qoom, it is possible to offer mandatory employee training and training documents, track incidents, and maintain a digital-first aid logbook. All functions can be accessed with two clicks.

Q. What are your other focus areas?

Through feedback from some of our customers, we have found that the overlap of our solution with corporate compliance, GRC, and also ESG is great. With qoom, it becomes easy for any organization to stay compliant from the start, whether you are a small business or a global enterprise. Compliance doesn't start with a code of conduct but with the practical basics like annual health and safety or hygiene training or proper digital documentation of a first aid incident. Thanks to qoom, companies can do all of this "in passing," so to speak.

Q. Can you provide us with one or two success stories describing the challenges your clients faced and how your solutions helped them overcome those challenges?

The Problem: one of our customers had an ISO re-audit and at the same time had to switch from his previous digital solution to ours because his previous application was no longer maintained. Previously, his staff had been very reluctant to work with the tool that was available because it was slow and complex to use.

qoom to the rescue: When we introduced qoom to all employees together with the quality management representative, the acceptance was overwhelming. No employee, not even one of the older ones, wanted to undergo special training for it. The feedback was that qoom is so intuitive that no training is required. Our goal from the start was to make the tool as self-explanatory as possible. But when you hear from a customer, directly from practical experience, that the tool is perceived that way, that's really something.

By the way, our customer's re-audit was successful, and we also received positive feedback from ISO auditors for our tool. Above all, our team-oriented "workspace" view is not only a great benefit for employees but also for internal or external auditors.

Q. Given how frequently circumstances change, what plans for transformation are you pursuing to remain relevant now and in the future?

To stay relevant, you can't stop development. You have to shape it. As Andy Grove, the visionary CEO of Intel, said, "Only the paranoid survive." By the way, I consider his book with that title to be just about a must-read for all tech companies. Grove also invented the OKR method, which, after all, was adopted by Google and not invented. I consider the OKR method to be extremely suitable for implementing visions - and in an agile framework, which is absolutely necessary due to the rapid changes in the general conditions.

Q. What is your final message to The Silicon Review readers, your current and future clients, and partners?

As much as we can understand the need for regulatory requirements, especially for an area as sensitive as healthcare: We see in our daily work how much companies in the healthcare sector groan under the burden. Bureaucracy is perceived by many as a monster that eats up far too much time and energy. Time and energy are lacking elsewhere and cannot be spent on patients, for example - but for which people may have taken up their profession at some point. That hits motivation, and the declining enjoyment of the work, in turn, can become a quality or safety problem. We understand that.

That's why qoom, along with its partners, is here to help companies refocus on their business while managing their company in a legally compliant way.

Dr. Walter Gmelin | Founder and CEO

I am one of those nerds who started programming on a Sinclair ZX81 at the age of 12. At 16, I founded my own small IT consulting company and sold it successfully. After graduating from high school, I studied biochemistry in Munich and did my Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry. For the US-based chemical company Sigma Aldrich, I was, among other things, head of the European Marketing Team of the European Biotech Business Unit. For EQS Group, I worked as Head of Customer Experience and CRM. In 2020, I founded qoom.

"We see qoom as a true ecosystem for QM, data protection, occupational safety, and hygiene. It allows applying organizations to document everything in one place.”