Spotlight Founder: Dr. Richie Soong of Pascific, A Bridge to a Developed Technology in Medical Services in Asia

Health has been of importance more than ever. In recent years, advanced technology pushed more innovations in research and development to give more accessible, affordable, and reliable medical products and services.

TechShake conducted an insightful interview with Dr. Richie Soong, the managing director of Pascific group. Pacific is a multi-disciplinary group of physicians, scientists, informaticians, and business and marketing experts from the Asia Pacific region who have developed successful worldwide careers and returned home to enhance the lives of every individual around Asia. It aims to deliver the advantages of advanced diagnostics to the Asia Pacific, and expand healthcare access across Asia and the Pacific. Pascific enables clients and business partners to succeed by providing dependable services, market access, product training, and industry education. Let’s hear more about Pascific from our interview below.

Could you tell us more about yourself and your role in Pascific?

I was born and raised in Australia to Malaysian-Chinese parents. My father died of cancer at a relatively early age, instilling a strong desire to be devote my life to cancer research. I obtained my Ph.D. at The University of Western Australia, then moved to Tan Tok Seng Hospital in Singapore for 1 year and then moved Roche Diagnostics in Germany. At Roche, I was part of the team involved in the early development of real-time PCR – core technology for COVID19 testing. After Germany, I went to USA and became an academic faculty member, focusing on the field of pharmacogenetics. I then moved to Singapore in 2004 and became a tenured Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore. In 2018, I founded Pascific, for which I am the Managing Director.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur? Please share with us the journey that led you here.

What motivated me to pursue entrepreneurship is it was a good mechanism for sharing my knowledge with others. I have spent time in academics, industry and medical centres and entrepreneurship made sense for my goals. For example, Grab has significantly improved the way people move around in foreign countries – less searching for taxis, fumbling with cash, getting taken for a ride, language issues. It would have taken too long for regular taxis to get to this convenience – entrepreneurship made this happen. Even more, Grab is more in tune with Asia, and has shown we don’t necessarily have to rely on American/European companies to take care of ourselves.

Can you share with us how Pascific started and what inspires you to have Pascific as a testing and research company?

At NUS, we had a world-class lab and research facility running, and were receiving requests from the region – e.g. Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand – to provide many of our services. And it was difficult to do this with the priorities of NUS and Singapore. Hence, a group of us got together to bring these services and knowledge to the region. The P in Pascific stands for Philippines, A for Australia, S for Singapore and later it has been said the C is for China, I is for India. We started with Singapore, Philippines and India as they were the home countries of my colleagues and we could trust we would get a good entry to those countries.

Question: Can you share with us the key services of Pascific, and can you share with us your business model and how your revenue is?

In Philippines, we provide laboratory services, specialising in molecular diagnostics, such as BRCA testing for breast cancer risk assessment, tumour sequencing for understanding best treatment options for cancer patients. In India, we run a polyclinic in Kolkata, specialising in oncology day-care services – an unmet demand given one only could go to an unspecialised general practitioner or a crowded tertiary hospital for cancer care before we started. Singapore is the headquarters of Pascific, and we perform contract research and innovation there.

To perform precision healthcare, one needs diagnostics, therapeutics and clinics all working together at the same level, not just a lab alone or a big instrument – that’s not sufficient for ensuring the right treatment gets to the right patient. At the same time, different countries had different needs. Hence, our business model is a bespoke model, comprising numerous phases and customised to each territory’s needs. For the first step, our goal was to establish in different countries in the region and start accumulating revenue, samples and data – which meant clinical service. Philippines needed advanced molecular diagnostics services so we built a service there. The North-East of India needed a day-care oncology specialty clinic, so we built that. These are expected to grow in their own right to profitability and beyond. Having established those centres, we are now into the second phase where we have the business arms and resources for contract research and innovation. So we are essentially doubling up on the initial value of the first phase, and getting 3 dimes from 2 dimes and so forth. Ultimately our goal is to attain the combination of diagnostics, therapeutics and clinic essential for bringing effective precision healthcare to the region.

Question: In relation to and despite our pandemic situation, what advice can you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Fundamentally, I would say that having something unique to exploit is critical. In our case, it’s a higher level of process knowledge in our domain. Money is essential too - but alone is not enough, as there is just some knowledge that money can’t buy and you’ll only go so far with general knowledge. The second thing is to establish networks and relationships, which means you'll need to be really pleasant to everyone, something I’m still learning.

Question: What is next for Pascific for next year and beyond? Do you plan to raise funds, find an investor, or something that special for the next year and beyond?

Yes, as I previously said, we are now seeking further financing for our next growth phase. In Philippines for example; we want to expand our laboratory. Currently, we have a skeleton lab, but there is a need for expansion to cater to the demand for more services and capacity we have grown. If all goes to plan, we should have a precision healthcare network that caters to the fine-tuned needs of each population, and generates world-class innovations for Asia Pacific from Asia Pacific.

To know more about Pascific, visit https://www.pascific.com/.