Read the Conversation
EF: What attracted you to join Abbott after working in GSK for almost 19 years, especially after the big shift toward diagnostics?
ZS: Within GSK, I gained a wealth of experience. I worked in three different business roles, the consumer, pharma, and vaccine divisions. Healthcare is at the heart of everything I do. Everything we do has a purpose. Our purpose is to help people live healthier and better lives; it is about being patient-centric. We work to eradicate different diseases, introduce new products, increase preventative healthcare, and improve patients' lives through our products and services.
At GSK, I gained a wealth of experience covering different markets. I received much exposure through traveling to foreign countries and understanding the cultural nuances of other countries and people. It taught me how to work in a team, make decisions, become successful, and continuously evolve and change based on market dynamics. Change is inevitable; you can never change if you keep doing the same thing. At the beginning of every new year, we must consider the key points to change and challenge the status quo to move to the next level and raise the bar. Raising the bar is based on individual performance, how we market and position our products, cater to a larger population, and access a larger cohort of stakeholders to create awareness through education.
I learned a lot throughout my career commercially. I was a general manager in the Philippines, where I headed up the specialty portfolio and worked in business development, commercial excellence, sales marketing, and many different roles. I reached a stage in my 19 working years where I had a firm understanding of the pharmaceutical market experience.
I am very passionate about vaccines because we can double to quadruple the business model in different countries. It is all tied together with creating a preventive healthcare mindset, making people understand the value of vaccination, and creating awareness. Managing the business during COVID took work. There was no manual for leading in a completely unknown and changing environment where things could change instantaneously. We never knew what would happen next, and we had to become flexible in keeping people engaged, motivated, and clear of their tasks and the next step.
Diagnostics came when I was looking to add to my personal development. Diagnostics is a franchise where you are exposed to B2B and B2C business models. The channels and experience are different because I work with stakeholders, government officials, private and public hospitals, labs, and pharmacies while creating awareness at a patient level. With my extensive knowledge in the different areas of healthcare, I want to expand my knowledge in healthcare and move to the next level in my personal development.
One of our portfolios, the Panbio brand, and the covid self-test is about patient awareness, education, and building royalties toward a particular brand. That is what attracted me to Abbott. Another aspect that attracted me was how they bring healthcare closer to the patient. Diagnostics, especially rapid diagnostics, is easy to use. The patient can receive their results in 15 minutes. Most of our products are used by healthcare professionals. Our future pipeline is all about self-tests, knowing your condition, and seeing the appropriate specialist or physician based on the results.
We are currently working on moving from presumptive diagnostics to differential diagnostics. Presumptive diagnostics assume a patient's condition based on their symptoms. Traditionally, the physician prescribes a whole range of products based on the patient's symptoms in Asia. If the specified products do not work, the patient must return and get another prescription. We must change the mindset around presumptive diagnostics. With the differential diagnosis, a patient uses an affordable, easy-to-use test for diagnosis, and once diagnosed, they receive the most appropriate treatment. Differential diagnosis is targeted medication that results in speedy recovery. It makes the diagnosis process easier and faster. The advantage of differential diagnosis is the early diagnosis, which directly impacts the overall health economics of patients. The earlier treatment is administered, the more reduced the overall costs are. Many advanced therapies available can cure or treat diseases before they advance.
Within Abbott Diagnostics, we have products for over 30 diseases, some more popular than others. Our vision for Southeast Asia is to spread awareness of the different diagnostic solutions available, the ease of use, and the quickness of the diagnosis process. We want people to be aware of the various options available to them. When our products are available in the labs, we work on making them available in hospitals and primary physicians. We are working on providing a faster, cheaper, and more accessible diagnosis. Much work is needed from a market-shaping perspective, and we are already progressing. It is a whole new world for me, which makes it exhilarating because, in the past, my focus was on the treatment end of the spectrum. Vaccines are very relevant within the healthcare setting. The area we emphasize is the test-and-treat approach.
EF: How has Southeast Asia benefited from COVID investments, and how has it been translated based on the market?
ZS: For the last two years, the focus has been on COVID and maximizing the opportunities for COVID. Abbott has always been a market leader with quality, highly accurate, and easily available test products. We are known for producing different quality products from nutrition to devices. We became more prominent during the pandemic by launching our self-test products. We distributed millions of tests globally. We are raising awareness and empowering people to take control of their health. Covid came, and it will probably stay and transition into an endemic. However, it is about looking at the products beyond covid. We need to leverage other products. We are looking to launch a product that combines flu and covid vaccines. The test will determine whether a person has covid or other flu.
The self-test has become popular now because of covid self-tests. Before the pandemic, the pregnancy test was the most popular self-test, and no other self-test was available. Now people are more comfortable taking self-test. We must proliferate the self-test market. The idea is to have patients go to the pharmacy, buy a self-test, and based on the diagnosis, go to a physician and inform them of the diagnosis according to the self-test results.
We also have HIV self-tests that will completely change the dynamic. The future is very promising with our business's rapid growth. In the past two years, we realized we could bring new products faster than ever before. The pace at which we launched the COVID self-test is the pace we can launch other products. To increase the regulation pace, we need to work with regulators to help them approve diagnostic products swiftly.
EF: How do you rate the progress of democratization, decentralization, and digitalization within your region?
ZS: A lot of progress has been made in all three areas; however, much progress and effort are still needed. A mindset shift is essential. Many people seek the familiarity of normality. As a result, they backslide into the old way of doing things. We want to change that. During the pandemic, there was a boom in digitalization, but instead of continued growth, there has been a decrease in digital utilization. We learned a lot of lessons during this transition period. We can further explore and leverage these key trends without returning to the old ways from before the pandemic.
Democratization and decentralization differ from country to country. One of the biggest bottlenecks in many countries is regulatory clearances. Many regulatory authorities are used to evaluating products the old pre-pandemic way. During the pandemic, governments allowed accelerated reviews of products. However, these permissions are slowly being revoked. Our challenge is ensuring they continue leveraging everything they learned during the pandemic rather than returning to the old working methods. We talk to government officials and healthcare professionals to ensure they continue using and progressing. We are moving in the right direction and leveraging everything we learned.
With inflation and economic pressure, people's priorities are changing, and we need to change with them. People are now a lot more digitally aware. More and more patients are researching their diagnoses. People are becoming more curious, and patients are going to physicians with more questions because of digitalization. We need to invest in educating people and creating awareness among patients for thoughtful decision-making, taking control of health, and taking personal accountability for their well-being. It is a trend we need to persistently dwell on. Everything is practical, pragmatic, fast-paced, and controlled by decision-makers.
Through digitalization, we can connect with anyone globally. My team works virtually without constrictions on where they work, as long as they deliver on their work. From my team's perspective, we are accessible to each other through multiple channels. Our communication has drastically improved through digitalization. Everyone is reachable, and responses are faster.
EF: How do you see collaboration evolving in Singapore?
ZS: One of the biggest things produced by the pandemic was self-sufficiency. Governments are becoming more self-sufficient and less dependent on others. Singapore is a developed market with resources, so affordability is fine. However, they are looking for ways to become more sustainable. Their vision is to attract investors to invest in vaccination plants within Singapore and distribute products to the rest of Asia.
Localization is becoming a trend. More and more countries are looking to attract investors to invest and produce locally. This leads to technological transfers. In the process, nations become more self-sufficient and open-minded to collaborating and collaborating with different key stakeholders and organizations in the future. The world benefited from collaborations during the pandemic. With higher demand and a supply shortage, partnerships rapidly increased. To meet the demand, many manufacturers and organizations worked in sync to make products available to end users. Localization will continue; however, it is dependent on the business model. In some areas, we need to be self-sufficient; in others, we need to collaborate. Whenever there is an opportunity to grow and shape the market, we will take it to create more opportunities for everyone.
EF: Fast forward a year from now; what do you want to celebrate at the end of the year?
ZS: I want to celebrate being able to establish and introduce new products. We have many products in our pipeline. It is exciting to make new products accessible to everyone. Accessibility is the key. We want to gain access to more people in the region for better access across the globe. We want all patients to be able to access our products. We look forward to shaping the market, increasing awareness of a care business's overall rapid diagnostics point, and building the test and treatment concept. It is a meaningful job for me.
