Doing things right —
even when it’s not easy.
Viena Medical is a private company specialising, since 2017, in the preanalytical phase of laboratory diagnostics: blood-collection vacuum systems, reagents and safe consumables. We work with manufacturers directly, never silently swap them for «analogs», and systematically push for ISO 6710, ISO 11137 and Directive 98/79/EC to be applied in Belarus on substance, not on paper.
We don’t exist in order to agree.
Laboratories rarely know what alternatives exist to their usual supplier, and the supplier rarely has an interest in telling them. An entire industry has lived in that gap for decades — «closed» systems, standard tenders written for a single brand and preanalytical purchases at double the price.
We started in 2017 to do things differently. Not to win a single tender — but to slowly make preanalytics and laboratory diagnostics in Belarus more transparent, and the budget more efficient. It is slow, sometimes uncomfortable work: we argue with customers, we argue with the regulator, we lose deals. That is the fair price for being useful.
We openly write to the Ministry of Health, the antimonopoly authority, the State Control Committee and even to the State Security Committee — and we just as openly publish that work. Not because we enjoy conflict, but because no systemic change happens without an honest public conversation.
“The lab gets exactly what was specified — and we share responsibility for the result.”
Preanalytics — our focus from day one.
The preanalytical phase is the path of a sample from the patient’s vein to the analyser’s probe. It is the most fragile part of the laboratory workflow: international evidence consistently puts about 70 % of all laboratory errors right here. We built the company around this topic.
Our first public letter on preanalytics was a point-by-point review of Belmedtekhnika’s standard tender for vacuum systems (Outgoing No. 04/16, 27 May 2016). One year later — a letter to the Minister of Health on the concrete defects of the Chinese tubes that ended up in 90 % of Belarusian healthcare facilities (Outgoing No. 3, 15 February 2017). Those two letters set the approach the company has lived by ever since.
“Even the most expensive blood-collection system costs about 1–3 % of the total assay. Saving on it is a way to put the entire result at risk.”
That is why our reference set is the international standards: ISO 6710 for vacuum systems, ANSI/AAM/ISO 11137 for finishing gamma sterilisation, EU Directive 98/79/EC, the CLSI H01-A6 / H03-A6 / H04-A6 guidelines and the WHO phlebotomy guidance. Inside Belarus — Order No. 1123 of the Ministry of Health, which we treat as the minimum bar for the entire preanalytical phase.
8 years of dialogue —
in plain sight.
Since 2018 we have been sharing a systemic analysis of laboratory procurement with the Ministry of Health, the antimonopoly authority, the State Control Committee and the State Security Committee: where monopoly pricing forms, how «closed» systems exclude analogs, what could be done differently.
Some of our proposals have already made it into regulations — simplified registration of medical devices with FDA/CE clearance, exemption from on-site inspections, the first attempts to admit analogs. Some questions remain open — and we keep asking them. Not a single one of those letters is convenient for us as a company in the short term: every one of them widens the competition we ourselves participate in.
- 2016Standard tender reviewPreanalytics — the starting point.
- 2017Quality of Chinese tubesRequest for a CEIZ inspection.
- 2018“Action plan 1.0”Systemic letter to the State Security Committee.
- 2021Analogs for «closed» systems13 enquiries from Belarusian healthcare institutions.
- 2023“Action plan 2.0”Outsourcing, parallel imports.
- 2025Letter to the President of BelarusSwitching to procurement of medical investigations.
- 2026POCT regulationPoint-of-care as a separate device class.
- 2026MyLab licensingA case review for the Ministry of Health.
Just a person who
actually cares how a laboratory works.
Maksim founded Viena Medical in 2017. Before that — more than ten years in the field: service engineering, product lines, talking to customers from district laboratories to national reference centres. The principles the company lives by today grew out of that practice.
By the nature of the work he spends a lot of time inside the international laboratory community — that is the natural environment for anyone who wants to understand how laboratory diagnostics works beyond a single country.
European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. Attendee of the 2nd EFLM Strategic Conference, 2018.
ISO Technical Committee for clinical laboratory diagnostics — representative of the Republic of Belarus.
Together with Prof. Giuseppe Lippi (University of Verona) — analysis of the inner diameter of 21G blood collection needles by scanning electron microscopy. Differences of up to 35 % — a real factor in preanalytical quality.
Belarus and an international application: a wrist-worn device for scanning biospecimen barcodes with HL7 FHIR support.
A platform for «uberising» laboratory services — at-home sample collection integrated with stationary laboratories.
Signatory to an inter-state cooperation agreement on healthcare in the presence of the presidents of both countries.
These things are not the goal — they are a side effect of what Maksim is genuinely interested in: the preanalytical phase, new diagnostic formats, sane regulation. If the trade-off were fewer certificates and more time talking with heads of clinical labs, he would probably pick the second one.
If the way we think resonates with you — write to us.
We are always glad to talk to laboratory heads, engineers, journalists, regulators and just colleagues from the field. No pre-cooked scripts — just a conversation on substance.