About Me
My name is Johanna Wollert Melin. I am an entrepreneur in both heart and soul. I developed a love for business as a child with my earliest and fondest memories sitting around our kitchen table listening and chiming in on conversations involving our family’s business.
Growing older, I wanted to pursue something different than my parents. I earned a Masters Degree in Business Administration at Stockholm University to pursue a career at a Fortune 500 company. Upon graduating, I was one of the select few hired by Ernst & Young Management Consulting. During my eight years as a Management Consultant, I learned the fundamentals and advanced skills in business. This included: critical thinking, business analysis, business development, and problem-solving tools as well as creating effective presentations and key management methods to run a successful business. Most importantly, I learned how to work with people and customers.
I was ecstatic my first few years as a Management Consultant. I had incredible assignments at large global companies and the privilege to work with some of the most influential and successful people in Sweden. After seven years, I felt empty. I had an unfulfilled dream to build my own company but at this time in my life raising three small kids I couldn’t fathom that it was possible.
Around this time, Metronome, a large Media company in Sweden offered me a great opportunity to come on board and my responsibility was to improve and create new businesses. It is here where I learned how much I enjoyed being part of the entire process, the idea to implementation.
After two years at Metronome, I was fired and that opened the door to do something else with my life. After many conversations with my brother, dad, husband, cousin and business partner Åsa and other established entrepreneurs that inspired me to dare. Trice Imaging was born in late 2007. The first years it was me and Martin Westin our systems Tricefy’s father that worked full time to build and sell our mobile platform. Åsa Nordgren was my mentor, big sister, cousin and Trice Imaging chairman during this first years.
Trice Imaging began as a platform helping companies deliver communication in the mobile channel for all types of customers including newspapers, dating sites and a big fitness chain in Sweden. During an inspiring workshop with Sweden’s biggest OB clinic, we got an inspiring idea from their marketing director Åsa Wahlström. She asked if it was possible to share ultrasound images on a phone. We thought the idea was brilliant. If you have an existing printing behavior today it’s going to go digital. So we decided let’s try to build it.
In 9 months we sourced all of our resources to create the first prototype of Trice. While building, we didn’t know anything about DICOM, HL7, Query and Retrieve, Dicom, Worklist, FDA approvals, security protocols and without a legacy, we came up with a very simple and elegant solution to share images directly from the imaging device.
We launched the first version of Trice in May 2009 with a $150 marketing budget. From one simple press release, we received attention from all around the world and were invited to attend the Wireless Influencers Conference in San Diego, California. Here we met Dr, Eric Topol one of the most well-known Cardiologists in the United States who today is considered the “Father of Digital Health.”
We shared with Dr. Topol what our technology could do and he replied, “I’m leaving in 1 hour to do a TED speech about digital health. If you can give me two slides on your technology, I will show it to the world.” During his TED Talk Eric Topol and Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, introduced their new portable ultrasound device called the VSCAN. This was not connected and could not send digital images. He then showed the slides of Trice and told Immelt during his TED speech, “If you combine these two capabilities, you have a game-changing product.”
Today Trice Imaging is launched in 40 countries around the world and we have global partnerships with GE, Philips, Samsung, Sonosite, Athena Health, Allscripts etc. Since the launch of our first version, Tricefy, our dream has been to have the same brand cache in our space as “Intel Inside®.” In other words, we want Tricefy to be embedded in every imaging device in the world. Today Tricefy is embedded in every new ultrasound device on the market from GE
Trice is a company to count on in our Industry and we continue to face new challenges. How do we scale and keep operational excellence when it comes to product quality, customer service, onboarding, compliance and launching our service in new countries? How do we adapt and stay innovative and unique? How do we create a seamless customer journey with happy customers and at the same time lower customer acquisition, customer support and installation costs? Not easy tasks but a great challenge. In this blog, I will share with you my learnings of growing and scaling companies.
Current positions
Trice Imaging
Trice Imaging mobilizes medical images by sending them from any imaging modality to any mobile device. Physicians receive remote access to images and reports, cost-efficient storage and the ability to collaborate with other physicians. Patients receive high-quality medical images that they can print, store, publish and send to family and friends or to doctors for a second opinion. Trice Imaging’s patented technology is a value added service to any medical imaging system or diagnostic software and our service is awarded two Global Mobile Awards for “Best Mobile Innovation for Health” 2012 and 2015. Trice has customers in 40 geographic markets. Trice is headquartered in San Diego, California, and has offices in Stockholm, Sweden, and Munich, Germany
During the Trice Imaging’s journey, Johanna has served in different roles. Right now Johanna is the CEO of Trice Imagings European entity.
Founder and CEO Trice Imaging Europe 2017 Founder and Chief Strategy Officer – CSO -Trice Imaging, Inc 2016
Founder and Chief Operation Officer – COO -Trice Imaging Inc 2011
Founder and Chief Executive Officer – CEO – Trice Imaging Inc 2007 (Great Connection)
Founder and Board Member Trice Imaging 2007-
Advisory Board Member – STING – Stockholm Innovation & Growth
A forum to develop Stockholm’s startup ecosystem, where I work together with Pär Hedberg CEO of Sting Innovation and other amazing entrepreneurs on strategic issues to develop Stings business. Sting Innovation is ranked 1st in Sweden and 4th in the world in the 2013 Global benchmark for university incubators. http://www.stockholminnovation.com/en/
Board Member in the family holding company – Helga Invest AB
My dad is the founder of Brands at Work Sweden’s largest retail chain for workwear and former owner and founder of Best of Brands. Best of Brands is a clothing chain with the focus on luxury brands for men and women. The founders wanted to build a copy of the US clothing chain Nordstrom for the Swedish market.
http://www.g-ess.se/ and http://bestofbrands.com/
Speaker and Panelist
Love to share my journey and lessons as an entrepreneur building a great company
Digital Health Days 2015 – Stockholm
Keynote – Sting Day 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOMlG2Lxy68
Mission History:
Bootstrap project to build Trice Imaging. Consulting work at Sweden’s largest Insurance company AMF (2008-2011)
Project leader
Project leader to establishing a new way to work process-oriented at AMF. AMF is Sweden’s largest insurance company. This project took Trice Imaging Inc through the bootstraps years and supported the entire team. AMF is a great company and I and the Trice team will forever be extremely grateful for this project. https://www.amf.se/
Media Provider (Aug 2003 – June 2010)
Chairman
My mission together with the founder and CEO Patrik Mellin and his Co-founder Pontus Brohult was to digitize Mediaprovider print editions. During my 8 years as Chairman the team created 5 digital editions, we bought a Danish publishing house and the event Mobilgalan was born. The Swedish Mobile Awards gives out awards in the following categories every year = Company of the year, Developer of the year, Startup of the year, Innovation of the year, Internet of Things enterprise of the year, M-health of the year and a couple of more awards. Trice Imaging won the M-health of the year 2015. Media Providers print editions where Mobil, Kamera & Bild, Gear, Stardust, Android, Zoom, ComOn there Digital editions where mobile.se, prylportalen.se, kamerabild.se, mobilebusiness.se and stardustmagazine.se, jobeasy.dk, fotoguiden.se, netstationen.dk, mediamac.dk
http://mobilgalan.se/ http://www.mobil.se/ http://www.kamerabild.se/
Metronome (October 2005 – Jan 2007)
Vice President of Drama at Metronome Film & Television
Johanna’s mission was to streamline the business Dramas processes, develop new business models and turnaround the business unit Drama. Johanna’s work resulted in cost savings of 50 million SEK. Establishment of a new financial model for film production together with Erik Penser Investment Bank https://www.penser.se/Johanna created an investment fund for drama productions. Johanna also established a new TV drama group with the task to sell TV-drama shows to the Swedish TV channels. The TV-drama group sold a large Drama series for about 50 million SEK to TV4 in Sweden. Drama “Oskyldigt dömd”
Ernst & Young (Sept 1997 – October 2005 )
During my eight years as a Management Consultant, I had incredible assignments to develop and improve strategies and processes at large global companies and the privilege to work with some of the smartest people in Sweden. I learned the fundamentals and advanced skills in business. This included: critical thinking, business analysis, business development, and problem-solving tools as well as creating effective presentations and key management methods to run a successful business. Most importantly, I learned how to work with people and customers. I had the pleasure to have assignments with the following companies: Skandia, Telia, Nordea, Ragnsells, Ericsson, Vin&Sprit, Länsförsäkringar, Vattenfall, Handelsbanken, Jernhusen, Esab, and Sydostpress.
