INTERVIEW:WHILE RICHARD Cooke may be best known as the man who succeeded Denis O'Brien as chief executive of Esat, it is his latest venture that is making waves.

Lincor Solutions, a provider of technological solutions to the healthcare sector, has just won the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Award, having achieved an aggregate growth rate in revenues of 3,145 per cent over the last five years.

The average growth rate of firms who entered the annual competition for Irish technology companies was 460 per cent.

Founded in 2003 by three former Apple employees, Lincor's main product is Medivista, a digital solution that provides a range of entertainment and communication services for hospital patients such as TV, radio, movies-on-demand, internet, e-mail, games and telephone.

These services are accessed by the patient from their bed using a touchscreen PC, and the same technology is used to allow medical professionals to store patient information such as electronic records, X-rays and medication management.

Cooke joined the firm in 2005, just as it was moving from a "pre-revenue" stage to beefing up its sales function.

Prior to that, he had spent three years as a consultant, director and investor with a number of Irish and international technology companies, having given up his job as chief executive of Esat in 2002. He had first joined the firm as managing director of its internet service provider, EsatNet in 1997, but following the sale of Esat to British Telecom (BT) in 2000, he assumed Denis O'Brien's role as group chief executive.

While he maintains that his time with Esat was "very good", he ultimately decided to leave due to the changes introduced by its owner, BT.

"They wanted to do things differently and not in the way that I felt was the best way the company should develop," he says.

Lincor's proposition appealed to him because of its exposure to the healthcare sector, which he believes isn't as technologically developed as it could be. "Going into a hospital is like going back to the 1980s," he says.

Although Lincor had sold its first version of Medivista in 2003, it got its big break in 2005 when it won a contract to supply the software for Premier TeleSolutions, which had been awarded a licence to deploy and operate patient entertainment solutions in UK national health service hospitals.

Since then, the company has grown its UK business, and provides services to seven of the leading London private hospitals. However, it is primarily public hospitals that have bought Lincor's product, and this has seen the firm experience significant growth across Europe, in countries such as Malta, the Netherlands and particularly France. It has won contracts to supply over 10,000 hospital beds in over 45 hospitals around the world.

Moreover, Cooke sees significant potential in the Canadian market, and Lincor has recently won a contract to service a hospital in Toronto.

Although based in Dublin and Cork with 20 employees, over 95 per cent of the company's revenues are export-based, and Irish patients hoping to be able to access the internet or play solitaire from their hospital bed will have to wait: to date, the firm has signed up only a few Irish customers, including Santry Sports Clinic, a 40-bed sports injury facility in Dublin.

Lincor works through a channel model, and according to Cooke, seeks telecommunications partners with "expertise, financial standing and credibility in the hospital market". To date, it has worked with a host of major names including British Telecom, France Telecom, and Orange. In the case of Santry, it partnered with General Electric and was awarded the contract ahead of the number one player in the market, Siemens.

Overall, hospital entertainment remains a very small market, and Cooke estimates that market penetration from service providers such as Lincor and Siemens in hospitals worldwide is only about 1 per cent. "We are really only scratching the surface at the moment," he says.

Despite enormous growth opportunities, Cooke says that while Lincor has a good degree of geographical diversification, its focus on one product leads to increased risks if hospitals decide they don't want the service.

"It is still very early days for a very immature market," he asserts, adding: "If it closed down for any reason, we would have a problem."

This is why he welcomes competition from major players such as Siemens and Philips, who have the resources to sell the concept to hospitals worldwide.

Once the market is more familiar with the concept, Cooke then sees an opportunity for Lincor to swoop in and sell its service on the basis that it offers a better product than the major players.

Another issue faced by the firm is funding. The company has been funded to date by its management, Enterprise Ireland, and private investors. Last year, Lincor raised €1.5 million through the Business Expansion Scheme. However, although Cooke maintains that the "best form of funding is called a customer", he acknowledges that a lack of funding may be holding the company back.

For example, Lincor recently won a relatively small contract in a very large hospital in Saudi Arabia, but Cooke says that "we're probably too underfunded to open an office in the UAE, which is what we should do".

As such, he says the firm is considering whether or not it should raise more money to grow, and it may look to partners which would give it access to further funding beyond the revenue it is generating from customers.

Likewise, Cooke acknowledges that the Medivista technology could be applied in sectors outside of healthcare, but he says such an expansion would be a "question of resources and focus".

"Our strategy is that it's better to be in the top two, as we can identify very clearly who our customers are. We need to continue doing what we do, as it's better to be an expert at something than trying to cover multiple sectors," he says.

In the long term, Cooke is loath to comment on whether the firm might seek a buyer or a flotation, instead saying that he will continue to "focus on growing the company, getting sales and getting orders".

ON THE RECORD:

Name:Richard Cooke.

Position:Chief executive, Lincor Solutions.

Age:43.

Why he is in the news:Lincor is Ireland's fastest growing high-tech firm.

Background:He studied engineering in UCD and started as a sales manager in 1987 for tech firm Lucas CEL. In 1997, he became EsatNet's managing director and was appointed CEO of Esat Group in 2000. He joined Lincor in 2005.

Something you might expect:He spends more time than he'd like travelling for business.

Something you might not expect:He is a technophobe and has only just ordered a Blackberry.