Peo­ple be­fore prof­it.

This is what Dr Wes­ley Greaves, the founder and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Nex­gen Pathol­o­gy, says is his busi­ness’ core val­ue and it is al­so what he be­lieves will make it suc­cess­ful.

“Our first core val­ue is ac­tu­al­ly peo­ple be­fore prof­it, and we con­sid­er our­selves a val­ue-dri­ven or­gan­i­sa­tion so our core val­ues are ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to us,” Greaves said.

Greaves, 44, said the peo­ple el­e­ment has two com­po­nents; staff and cus­tomers.

“Our in­ter­nal em­ploy­ees and staff are our first cus­tomer so we pri­ori­tise the well be­ing of our peo­ple be­fore and above prof­it,” he said.

“We be­lieve that that is what ul­ti­mate­ly dri­ves prof­it or prof­itabil­i­ty and then in ad­di­tion to that the sec­ond com­po­nent is our ac­tu­al clients and cus­tomers. So I think be­ing able to ride this COVID wave and all the chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with it I think re­al­ly en­forced that we are on the right track in terms of pri­ori­tis­ing our peo­ple be­fore prof­it and that is what has tak­en us through the hard times,” Greaves said.

How it all be­gan

Nex­gen Pathol­o­gy was found­ed in 2013 af­ter Greaves re­turned from study­ing over­seas.

“Our mis­sion is to make world-class med­ical lab di­ag­nos­tics ac­ces­si­ble to all,” Greaves said.

“The idea is that in Trinidad and To­ba­go health­care is eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble be­cause we have free pub­lic health­care how­ev­er one would be hard-pressed to call it world-class. While where I stud­ied in the US the qual­i­ty was the best in the world but it was not ac­ces­si­ble to the man on the street,” Greaves said.

Speak­ing to Greaves you can hear his pas­sion.

This he says comes from his life’s jour­ney.

“I grew up with­out pipe-borne wa­ter, I grew up tot­ing wa­ter from a spring every day. I didn’t know what it was to have run­ning wa­ter in a house, what it is to have a toi­let I grew up with a la­trine,” Greaves said.

Greaves at­tened St James Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary and Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege.

“Nei­ther of my par­ents went to sec­ondary school, my fa­ther was a maxi taxi dri­ver and my moth­er was a do­mes­tic work­er. I came from very hum­ble be­gin­nings but I was bright. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have the bless­ing of free ed­u­ca­tion so I was al­ways able to ex­cel in school and then I got a schol­ar­ship to do med­i­cine in Brazil 1996,” he said.

“That schol­ar­ship was a huge bless­ing but it was on­ly for tu­ition. I had to pay for liv­ing ex­pens­es, and books which I didn’t ac­tu­al­ly have the mon­ey for it was on­ly be­cause of my church, my com­mu­ni­ty, neigh­bours used to con­tribute mon­ey to my fam­i­ly so I am lit­er­al­ly a prod­uct of my com­mu­ni­ty,” Greaves said.

Greaves said he is the em­bod­i­ment of the adage “it takes a vil­lage to raise a child.”

“Every­thing I do I feel like I owe it to pay it for­ward and to come back and give back and that is the rea­son why I am here,” he said.

Af­ter com­plet­ing his med­ical de­gree at the Uni­ver­si­dade Gama Fil­ho in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Greaves com­plet­ed post-grad train­ing and Amer­i­ca Board cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Anatom­ic and Clin­i­cal Pathol­o­gy at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, Rhode Is­land in 2009, as well as in Hematopathol­o­gy and Mol­e­c­u­lar Ge­net­ics Pathol­o­gy at MD An­der­son Can­cer Cen­ter, Hous­ton Texas in 2011 and 2012 re­spec­tive­ly.

“I could have very well pur­sued a suc­cess­ful per­son­al ca­reer out there but I de­cid­ed to come back home to Trinidad,” Greaves said.

When he re­turned to T&T he was ap­point­ed the Head of the Pathol­o­gy De­part­ment at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty.

He held that post un­til 2018.

Greaves said he owes a lot to his men­tor Dr Neville Jankie.

“He was a very bril­liant but hum­ble man. He is the one who in­spired me to give back as well, he al­ways used to say make sure and come back to Trinidad make sure and come back,” Greaves said.

When Jankie passed away in 2012, his lab was hand­ed over to Greaves.

“He and his wife passed on his lab to me and that is how Nex­gen Pathol­o­gy was born. We start­ed humbly out of pock­et and to­day we are recog­nised as one of the top labs in Trinidad and To­ba­go for qual­i­ty which is no small feat,” Greaves said.

From noth­ing to some­thing

“Busi­ness-wise we are pret­ty sol­id, we are def­i­nite­ly one of the top three labs in T&T,” he said.

Greaves said Nex­gen went from start­ing at ze­ro dol­lars to now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ex­po­nen­tial growth in an­nu­al sales.

“The sta­tis­tics show that a high num­ber of small busi­ness­es fail with­in the first five years of ex­is­tence and so we have been able to weath­er sev­er­al storms and then COVID was a big storm for us as well,” he said.

Nex­gen Pathol­o­gy achieved full ac­cred­i­ta­tion with the Col­lege of Amer­i­can Pathol­o­gy in 2017.

It is the on­ly lab in T&T that is ful­ly ac­cred­it­ed.

“In T&T there is no reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, so in oth­er words, there are no laws reg­u­lat­ing the func­tion of med­ical labs in Trinidad so in oth­er words if you want­ed to go and open up a lab be­cause you saw a busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty right in your yard there and say ‘al­right I go­ing to start of­fer­ing COVID 19 test­ing or blood sug­ar test­ing,’ you can go and do it there is no­body to ver­i­fy that you are com­pe­tent, that you are qual­i­fied, that you are cer­ti­fied to do so,” Greaves said.

“The re­sults that you are pro­duc­ing who knows if they are right or wrong. There is no oblig­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go for any lab to be ac­cred­it­ed. We chose to be­come ac­cred­it­ed be­cause of our mis­sion and our goal which is to be on par with the best lab any­where in the world,” he said.

Greaves lament­ed the lack of reg­u­la­tion in the coun­try.

“It is a very sad thing be­cause pa­tients at the end of the day suf­fer and they don’t even know they are suf­fer­ing,” he said.

Greaves said the vast ma­jor­i­ty of med­ical de­ci­sions, around 70 to 80 per cent,  de­pend on a lab test to guide the doc­tor as to what to do.

“So imag­ine if that lab test is wrong then that ob­vi­ous­ly af­fects the man­age­ment of the pa­tient and I have seen many wrong lab re­sults. For ex­am­ple, things be­ing called can­cer and is not can­cer, pa­tients get­ting chemother­a­py and it is not can­cer in the first place I have seen cas­es where it was can­cer and an­oth­er lab called it be­nign and the pa­tient end­ed up dy­ing be­cause they did not get the cor­rect treat­ment. If they had got­ten the cor­rect treat­ment in a time­ly fash­ion they may not have died,” he said.

Greaves said his per­son­al mantra is that every pa­tient de­serves world-class health­care at an af­ford­able price.

“The dri­ving force is to im­pact the en­tire space. So the idea is not on­ly for us to of­fer high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts in terms of lab tests but al­so to raise the bar and al­so chal­lenge oth­er labs to raise the bar as well. At the end of the day the stan­dard in the en­tire coun­try would be el­e­vat­ed,” Greaves said.

“That is the jour­ney we are on right now, ob­vi­ous­ly it is very dif­fi­cult, it is chal­leng­ing and how do you make that in­to a vi­able busi­ness mod­el,” he said.

Greaves said he has not let his lack of a busi­ness back­ground stop him.

“I nev­er had any busi­ness back­ground I nev­er had any cap­i­tal in­vest­ments it was all out of pock­et so I just dived in­to self-ed­u­ca­tion. I prob­a­bly have two or three MBAs from the amount of read­ing and study­ing and stuff I have done on my own,” he said.

“It is an in­tense ex­pe­ri­ence build­ing a small busi­ness from scratch to where we are to­day. I am so pas­sion­ate about what I do that I study and need to learn how to do busi­ness “ Greaves said.

Team­work makes the dream work

Greaves ap­plaud­ed his team of 20 em­ploy­ees.

“My team has been amaz­ing, we have gone through a lot of tough ex­pe­ri­ences and COVID was the most re­cent one,” Greaves said.

“The dream is im­pos­si­ble with­out the team, I can­not do this by my­self and the way I in­tend to build this as well is that it has to be way big­ger than me as an in­di­vid­ual be­cause you know I could walk out the road and a car knocks me down but what hap­pens to the dream, to the mis­sion it should not die,” he said.

“So I would like to build this or­gan­i­sa­tion such that the im­pact is greater when I leave the scene than while I am on the scene that is my per­son­al goal,” Greaves said. 

Greaves said Nex­gen hopes to fo­cus on growth over the next few years.

“We be­lieve that we can be the Google, the Ap­ple, or the Mi­crosoft of lab med­i­cine so we want to ex­pand sig­nif­i­cant­ly through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go as well as the Caribbean re­gion,” Greaves said.

Nex­gen cur­rent­ly does busi­ness in Guyana, Grena­da, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

“Our idea to ex­pand our ser­vices through­out the en­tire Caribbean re­gion as well as per­haps be­yond,” he said.

“There were sev­er­al mo­ments when I felt I would not make it, there were ex­is­ten­tial mo­ments when I felt we were go­ing to crash and we were go­ing to die but I just feel tremen­dous­ly blessed, tremen­dous­ly grate­ful for still be­ing able to be around,” Greaves said.

Greaves said Nex­gen has a com­pre­hen­sive and di­verse test menu in­clud­ing from rou­tine blood tests to his­tol­ogy to mol­e­c­u­lar and ge­net­ic test­ing.

“We of­fer a wide range of lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing all un­der one roof,” he said.