POSITIVE diagnosis

DETERMINED TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE AND CONTAIN ITS ESCALATING COSTS, PATHOLOGY ASIA GROUP CEO AND FOUNDER DR CHRISTOPHER TING IS BRINGING A NEW VISION OF PATHOLOGY SERVICES TO SOUTH-EAST ASIA.

- OLIVER FEATHERSTON

Christopher Ting believes one of the biggest problems facing health care today is its growing cost around the world. Though healthcare delivery has undeniably improved over the past century across the world, it’s proving increasingly expensive. Most OECD nations, Christopher points out, spend roughly nine per cent of GDP on health care. The world’s richest nation, the United States, spends 18 per cent of its GDP even while some 35 million people lack coverage.

In South-East Asia, where Christopher operates as Group CEO and Founder of medical diagnostics network Pathology Asia, healthcare costs account closer to some five per cent of GDP. Nevertheless, costs are rising everywhere, says Christopher, and it was for this reason that he established Pathology Asia, with the support of investment group TPG Asia. The company began life as an amalgamation of five existing pathology businesses Christopher had either founded or managed previously across Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. They trade under the names of Innovative Diagnostics and Quest Laboratories in Singapore and Gribbles Pathology and Quantum Diagnostics in Malaysia. Quest Laboratories also operates in Vietnam.

“It was a partnership to achieve the vision of building a platform to consolidate a very fragmented industry across South-East Asia and drive economies of scale and scope,” he explains. “The key inspiration to work with TPG was that we both saw this massive opportunity to scale pathology across these fragmented sub-scale markets. In many of these places, pathology is very nascent and both inaccessible and unaffordable for much of the population.