Kamil Doležel on driving transformation in diagnostics across Central and Eastern Europe

From building high-performing teams across diverse markets to shaping systems that support superior decision-making, earlier interventions, and stronger healthcare outcomes, Kamil Doležel, General Manager Unilabs’ Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), shares his perspective on what it takes to be a leader in diagnostics.

What attracts you to Unilabs?

I joined Unilabs in 2017 following its acquisition of AeskuLabs, where I was CEO. Today, as General Manager, Unilabs CEE, I am responsible for the overall direction, performance, and development of our diagnostic services in the market. What drives me most is the tangible impact of our work, particularly the growing opportunity for Unilabs in the space of preventative healthcare. I believe diagnostics has the potential to shift healthcare from reacting to disease to proactively managing health.

How do you describe the purpose of your role today?

My role is to ensure that Unilabs CEE functions as a cohesive, reliable, and sustainable system, both internally and externally. This allows us to build long-term value for our customers, patients, and the healthcare eco-system, through timely, reliable, and high‑quality diagnostics. For this to happen, we must connect medical expertise, technology, and operations. Leadership in this context is not about isolated decisions, but about maintaining a system that works—and continuously improving it. I am surrounded by very strong leaders and colleagues who are helping me to run the strategy across the company.

What is your leadership philosophy?

I follow a simple principle: the journey is an aim. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have ambition or clear goals. It means that real value is created in how we work, how we decide, and how we move forward. Leadership, therefore, is not about one-off results, but about creating long-term direction, maintaining momentum, and continuously seeking better ways of doing things.

At the same time, I strongly believe that success is built on people. A good leader must be able to listen, understand their environment, and bring out the best in their team members. This leadership philosophy extends to how we show up in the wider healthcare system too. To have a strong voice, we must be able to partner successfully with health authorities and create the future laboratory diagnostic environment alongside them. I believe Unilabs is evolving to become a critical link in a connected healthcare system — the organisations that will define the next decade of healthcare are those that take insights and turn them into meaningful, timely actions.

Which experiences, professional or personal, have most shaped this philosophy? 

Early on, I learned that strategy alone doesn't deliver results, but people do. People perform at their best not when they are told what to do, but rather when they deeply understand what their role is. That's why I've always invested heavily in making sure every person in my team understands and owns a shared set of competencies: listening, respect, communication, delegation, teamwork, and delivering on commitments. These aren't values on a wall, but they're behaviours I model myself, and hold my team accountable to every day.

Having had the pleasure of leading across very different cultures, Czech and Slovak, I have discovered a shared competency framework becomes an enormous asset in a cross-cultural environment. When everyone understands that we communicate openly, delegate with trust, respect each other's expertise and time, and act as one team, we suddenly have a common language that cuts through cultural noise.  

Where do you believe the greatest untapped opportunity lies today for healthcare organisations like Unilabs?

Prevention, but not in the traditional sense of screenings and check-ups. Diagnostics is no longer simply about confirming a disease, it’s about supporting decision-making, prevention, and personalised care. We already have remarkable capabilities. With advancements in the industry, it‘s becoming possible to detect diseases, such as Alzheimer's, earlier than before. Genetic testing can identify cancer predispositions before a single symptom appears. Pathology and advanced diagnostics are saving lives that would have been lost a decade ago.

What do you believe sets Unilabs apart in the diagnostics industry?

There are three things I believe set us apart in the diagnostics industry:

Firstly, our quality and scientific credibility. Our laboratories are fully accredited, operating to the highest international standards. Beyond accreditation, we have something more valuable: people. In our ranks, we have specialists who are internationally recognised; experts who contribute to shaping diagnostic standards across Europe, and sometimes the world. 

Secondly, we are part of a network that gives us early visibility into where diagnostics is heading, whether that is advances in genetic testing, new biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, or AI-assisted pathology. We translate that knowledge into real clinical practice across CEE.

Thirdly, we are genuinely accessible. Not just geographically—with a presence across regions that many providers simply do not reach—but accessible in a human sense too. A physician who has a question about a complex result can pick up the phone and speak directly with one of our specialists. They can walk through the findings together, discuss the clinical implications, and make better decisions for their patient. 

What excites you most about the future of Unilabs?

We are investing in the next generation of diagnostic talent. We open our doors to students, welcome them for internships, and give them a chance to see first-hand what modern laboratory diagnostics looks like. Many of them arrive expecting a traditional lab environment and leave understanding that this is one of the most dynamic, intellectually demanding fields in healthcare today. That brings me to what I find particularly exciting right now: AI. Not AI as a buzzword, but AI where it genuinely makes sense in laboratory diagnostics, in image analysis, in pattern recognition across large datasets, in supporting pathologists to work with greater speed and precision. We are embracing these tools thoughtfully, where they add real clinical value, and making sure our people are equipped to work alongside them, not be replaced by them.

When I consider the future of Unilabs, I see an organisation where world-class expertise meets continuous learning, where young talent is nurtured from the very beginning of their career, and where technology amplifies human judgement, rather than substituting it.