Fullerton Health is growing exponentially in the Asia-Pacific region thanks to a patient-focused healthcare model and opportunities within the region’s healthcare system. Fullerton Health Cofounder, Group President and Deputy Chairman David Sin describes how the company has grown since its inception and whom it serves.
Read the transcript below.
DAVID SIN: The Asian healthcare opportunity is tremendous. For example, Asia-Pacific healthcare is expected to account for 45% of global total healthcare spend in about 10 years time. That in itself presents a tremendous challenge and opportunity for us at Fullerton Health.
Our mission is to deliver affordable and accessible care. Now, that’s not an easy challenge. First and foremost, we started in 2011 as a primary care provider in Singapore. We had only six clinics and six facilities in Singapore. We were looking after approximately 30,000 lives at that point in time. And that in itself was the start of Fullerton Health in 2011.
We’ve since grown over the last seven years into eight geographies across Asia-Pacific. And we’re now approximately 550 facilities of our own across these eight countries. We also have a not-so-small task of managing care for about 10 million patients across the region.
With that growth has come great challenges for us as the founding management team. As all growth companies emerging out of their early initial phases, we have all sorts of challenges—challenges in managing the growth of the headcount, challenges in establishing the culture of the company, challenges in ensuring that the multiple geographies play as a team.
In addition, the challenges of growing in eight different markets in Asia are plenty—to start with, licensing and regulatory challenges. We have to deal with eight different sets of regulators and authorities in the markets that we operate in. And that in itself is complex.
Also, we have to deal with a plethora of different stakeholders in the markets that we operate in. And we have a great number of stakeholders in our ecosystem, ranging from partner doctors, partner hospitals, employees, patients, as well as our clients.
I think for Fullerton Health, what keeps us grounded is really keeping the patient at the center of what we do. We aim and we try to put the patient at the center of what we do every day, ranging from how we deliver the service to them, to how we think about preventative medicine for them, to how we think about the people who are dependent on them for health care, as well as the overall well-being of our patients.
There are 3 billion people on this side of the world. And the 3 billion people in Asia-Pacific will be aging faster and, unfortunately, will be facing the onset of chronic disease, as well as all sorts of other acuities at a much faster pace than the rest of the world has experienced in the past. The opportunity of providing care for these people in Asia is a huge responsibility, but a huge privilege for us as well.
