Polish Enterprise Fund to invest in medical information
Warsaw, 20 February 2001 — Polish Enterprise Fund IV, the private equity fund managed by Enterprise Investors, has invested $1 million in a start-up research company, Instytut Badań i Informacji Szpitalnych (Institute of Medical Research and Information). The institute will operate in the medical market, offering market research and information to hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and suppliers. Its products will include hospital benchmarking, drug consumption monitoring, surveys of the state of the Polish healthcare market and a prognosis of future trends, as well as healthcare guidelines for patients. One of the aims of the company is to help stabilize the Polish healthcare market.
EI is the only private equity/venture capital investor that plans to take advantage of the privatization of healthcare in Poland. EI’s investment strategy assumes allocating up to $50 million over the next three to four years to investments in healthcare companies in Poland. This strategy is based on the assumption that the healthcare reforms implemented in 1999 introduced a competitive market for healthcare services in the country.
“Enterprise Investors believes that market research within the medical sector will be of growing importance as the sector develops and becomes increasingly commercialized. We treat our investment as an important contribution to the Polish healthcare reform,” said Adam Kruszewski, investment director at Enterprise Investors, who is directly responsible for this investment.
Enterprise Investors has been active in Poland and the CEE region since 1990. The four funds managed by Enterprise Investors – Polish Enterprise Fund IV, the Polish Enterprise Fund, Polish Private Equity Funds I & II and the Polish–American Enterprise Fund – have invested almost $600 million in 80 companies across all economic sectors in Poland and in Romania, including $21 million in three major projects in the Polish medical services market. The funds have exited 37 investments and returned over $400 million to investors. EI funds plan to invest a further $300 million within the next four years.