Operation diagnostics

Just two days before the COVID-19 pandemic closed the international borders in Singapore, Thomas Halusa began his new role as Head of International Business Development at Pathology Asia.

While originally tasked with developing the business further and expanding it across South-East Asia, Halusa was immediately forced to change track as demand for the leading provider of diagnostic testing services escalated.

“Rather than business development, I suddenly became a procurement officer and assisted the set-up of COVID-19 lab facilities. It really was a trial by fire,” he tells The CEO Magazine.

“Opportunities for business transformation are very rare, and I saw the pandemic as an opportunity to drive engagement with government and vendors, and in a matter of six months committed to building a COVID-19 laboratory from scratch to run 20,000-plus samples a day.”

Looking ahead

Halusa is no stranger to the healthcare industry, having come to Pathology Asia with seven years of commercial and operational experience with Indonesia’s largest hospital group, Siloam Hospital Group.

Having proven himself amid the chaos of the pandemic, Halusa was later transferred to Innoquest Diagnostics to take on the role of Chief Transformation Officer and then, just six months later, rose to the position of CEO.

As the pandemic began to subside, he says the focus shifted toward improving the diagnostics company’s growth plans and ensuring exceptional, reliable service to its stakeholders.

“I saw there were opportunities for improvement, growth and optimization at the company to get better outcomes for all stakeholders, whether that be for our doctors, our employees or our investors,” he explains.

Looking ahead, Halusa says the company will achieve this with a focus on continuing to develop its digitization strategies to improve efficiency and prioritize sustainability.

“Digitization and sustainability go hand-in-hand and over the next few years, our focus will be on digitizing our business, especially pre and post-analytics, to deliver better outcomes in terms of improved customer service delivery and our environmental stewardship,” he reveals.

Halusa says the diagnostics company is also focused on customer growth and wider geographical expansion. “It’s about delivering better volume growth, which can come from a new customer converting over to us, and this is really why we’re looking at digitization efforts to improve service outcomes,” he explains.

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“Working with Innoquest Diagnostics has been a remarkable experience. Its commitment to innovation and excellence aligns perfectly with our values at BD. Together, we are advancing healthcare solutions that make a real difference in people’s lives.” – Leslie Yap, Business Director for Life Sciences – South-East Asia, BD

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“As an organization, we intend to build out our product pipeline capacity with new technologies and new partnerships with global players, to add more value and bring newer tests to market. One of the technologies we’ll be working on is nuclear magnetic resonance testing, which is a new type of technology and useful for population health screening initiatives.”

Halusa says a longer-term view for Innoquest Diagnostics is the personalization of diagnostic insights for both patients and clinicians.

“We want to give patients a better insight into the meaning and impact of their results; to provide basic clinical information on what their results are and what they mean,” he insists.

“Clinicians are very busy people who see a lot of patients, so by providing patients with more information, we’d add value for clinicians as they’d be able to focus less on explanation and more on treating the patient.”

Vision and execution

With its strong future-focus on delivering an even more reliable diagnostics service, Halusa says Innoquest Diagnostics must be diligent when it comes to selecting their suppliers.

“We work with our partners to ensure they are well versed in our vision and know exactly what our customers need from us,” he says. “What’s always key is making sure we keep our vision front-of-mind and leveraging on the partner’s knowledge, expertise and competitive strengths to achieve it.”

When it comes to leadership, he believes it’s essential that all stakeholders have a clear understanding of the company’s vision.

“A great leader is someone who knows the direction they want the organization to go in and, most importantly, is able to articulate this in a simple, clear and concise manner with employees, partners and patients,” he says.

In addition to ensuring a clear vision is communicated, Halusa says making regular incremental changes is essential to achieving long-term success.

“If you add a one percent improvement per day to the business, it’s not a lot, but if you look at that over the course of the year, you can make a significant impact across the organization,” he reflects.

“Ultimately, what also makes a great leader is the ability to – and experience and knowledge of – how to execute a vision. You can have all the clarity of vision in the world but ultimately, if you don’t know how to get it done and are not able to keep it on track with incremental improvements and changes, it won’t come to fruition.”