Kasper Schweitz
President, HemoCue
Text current as of 2026
For me, leading with purpose across borders is about responsibility. Disease does not recognize borders, and neither should our commitment to helping people in need.
And yet, for me, it always begins locally.
It begins by staying so close to the customer that you understand their real needs. Not only what they say their needs are, or what we assume, but instead what truly matters in their everyday reality. Customer problems cannot be understood from a distance.
That is why we go to Gemba. We observe, we listen, and we learn from the people closest to the challenges. And we rely on strong local partnerships, because the people on the ground bring context and insight.
A sentence I learned many years ago still guides me whenever I go Gemba: “Get into my world!” To truly understand your customers’ needs, you must step into their world and, for a time, see life through their eyes.
I remember visiting a neighborhood in Johannesburg about a year and a half ago. I had always believed it would be better for everyone to be tested at home rather than in a clinic, if at all possible. But being there taught me something very different.
Because of the stigma around HIV, a knock on the door from someone carrying a diagnostic instrument can signal to neighbors that something is wrong, even if it is only for screening. In that neighborhood, people did not want to be tested at home.
From a distance, I would never have understood that. But when you are there, listening and learning, seeing it first-hand it becomes clear. That is the power of proximity and the value of “going Gemba”.
Staying close to what matters most
When I think about global reach, I want people to feel the scale of what we do.
Today, our solutions help around 140 million people every year. That is four people every second, all year round. Actually, just more than 100,000 people since I jumped out of bed this morning. Behind those numbers is a person, a family, positively impacted by us.
That scale also makes us stronger locally, because what we learn in one market can be shared, adapted, and applied in another to the benefit of millions of patients, wherever they are.
And still, important barriers remain to help even more people. Two in particular stand out to me: Reach and Awareness.
We can only serve the patients we are able to reach. And in many parts of the world, awareness of conditions such as anemia, diabetes, and infectious diseases is still very limited. In some places, these conditions are not yet fully understood or given the priority they deserve.
That is why partnerships matter so much. By working with NGOs and other partners, we can extend our reach, increase understanding, and bring testing and education to more people around the world. That is how real and lasting change begins.
