Daniela Seixas, Dávid Borsós, Christophe de Kalbermatten & Andrew Barnes

Daniela Seixas is a medical doctor by training. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience collaborating with the University of Oxford. She has practiced medicine 16 years of her life as a neuroradiologist, before enrolling at IE Business School for an Executive MBA. Together with classmates Christophe de Kalbermatten, Dávid Borsós and Andrew Barnes (and almost by accident!), she co-founded Tonic App and joined the company as CEO. Tonic App is a digital health company building a professional ecosystem for medical doctors and their patients.

Daniela’s main characteristics has a leader are her resilience, focus and transparency. Fostering a culture of opportunity and fairness, Tonic App, as a tech company, is proud to have 60% female employees.

Christophe’s first degree is from HEC Lausanne. Since then he has pursued a career at Credit Suisse in Geneva. He rapidly progressed to take responsibility as Head of Foreign Exchange Advisory & Sales.

Dávid, a Bsc in Computer Programming & Mathematics and an MSc in Banking and Investment, works at the European Investment Fund. He is former Head of Business Intelligence at JobToday. Previously he worked for mature corporations, such as Goodyear and Samsung and led projects in building management reporting systems and financial planning and analysis.

Andrew, former Senior Director at Electronic Arts, was responsible for the successful release of thousands of mobile products. He is now a full-time entrepreneur, acting as CEO of Coho Collective, a community in support of food entrepreneurs.

How did IE help you get to where you are today?

When the European debt crisis came, as a medical doctor Daniela wanted to better understand what was happening and the impact on healthcare. There were significant cuts in the public healthcare systems of most countries at that time.

So, she enrolled at IE for an Executive MBA, where the last six months of the program were to be dedicated to healthcare management. But there weren’t enough students and she ended up choosing an alternative: entrepreneurship.

Tonic App’s project was born in 2015 at IE out of those six months, co-founded by Christophe de Kalbermatten, Dávid Borsós, Andrew Barnes, and herself.

The company was incorporated in April 2016 in Portugal, after they made sure they were really on to something amazing: making healthcare more efficient, after the failed promise of the digital so far in the industry.

Since then, Tonic App has raised 4.1M€ in venture capital, expanded to Spain, France and Italy, and has some of the largest healthcare companies in the world as partners or clients, including Medtronic, Novartis, Randstad or IQVIA, among several others.

How did you come up with the idea for your company?

Inefficiencies in healthcare are responsible for lost lives and wasted time and resources. Poor communication and care coordination, as well as the massive dispersion of the digital resources medical doctors need to diagnose and treat their patients can be addressed using today’s technology.

Tonic App’s idea, to connect doctors and give them access to the best professional resources in a single mobile platform, was born out of Daniela’s own professional need and of many other of her colleagues. With Tonic App doctors save time and can focus on what is really important: their patients.

What is the key to the success of your company?

The secret of Tonic App’s success has three ingredients: knowing that we contributing to make healthcare more efficient, the team’s collaborative culture and focusing on a single goal at each time.