“How can we define ourselves? We are in a certain sense the driveway of the health system”. Talk like this Fausto Manzana, president and chief executive officer of gpi, the group that since its inception 30 years ago has been committed to combining the most advanced technology and management techniques to put them at the service of the healthcare world. A complex and delicate but also underground task, because it is not easy to bring out the good performance of services that are only apparently simple but are only talked about when they don't work. This is true, for example, for the activity of specialized call centers which in the field of healthcare must be entrusted to competent personnel, or for the booking services for visits which, when managed in an optimal way, make it possible to cancel downtime between a patient and the other, reducing queues with great time savings for the benefit of the public and healthcare personnel.
These activities (and much more) are dealt with by Gpi, a pocket-sized multinational, listed on the electronic market of Piazza Affari since the end of 2018 (after a two-year run-in at Aim), which has more than 40 offices in Italy and an international network in continuous expansion, "also because this allows us to diversify the risk - comments Manzana - Suffice it to say that the average collection time is 15 days in Europe against 180 in Italy". But cross-border growth, as in Italy, is also the confirmation of scientific and technological excellence, which develops along several lines, from pharmaceutical logistics automation systems to the management of transfusion centers and blood banks.
Il warehouse management system developed by Gpi, also adopted by the AKH pharmacy, the General Hospital of Vienna (the fifth largest in Europe with 10 employees and 2.200 beds), works with cutting-edge technology: a clamp travels 5 meters per second driven wirelessly with a picking extremely accurate. To date there are more than 200 pharmacy installations as well as 20 hospital warehouse installations in Israel, Switzerland, Austria, Russia, Poland, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, China as well as, of course, Italy where Gpi holds another record: from 1.147 employees from 2015 to today's 5.850, thanks also to the entry of new collaborators following the start-up of the Lazio Region contract (ASA Care responsibility). A small, constantly expanding army made up of software specialists but also of nurses and other health sector workers because the mission of Gpi, active throughout the peninsula from north to south, consists in translating the advantages of technology into the everyday language of health care, such as noted a report by Akros: "The Gpi model - we read - is unique, both in Italy and abroad, due to the size of the range of products and services, from IT to healthcare support programmes".
Financially the group, which recorded an increase in revenues to 110,5 million euros in the first six months (+18%, linked exclusively to organic growth, achieved with 1 employees), aims to achieve a round of business of 900 million euros with an ebitda margin of 2019%, thus confirming, even in a year of transition ("given the times of healthcare, our projects take years to translate into results: the average times for the assignment of a contract is three years"), a leader on the domestic market which, underlined President Manzana, "must be defended because it is among the best in the world". And if he says so, present abroad with seven direct branches, it is to be believed.
