Advertorialfor physicians to practice, symposia, and the
signature Alcon Experience Centers to showcase how
its machines work. These initiatives help build
capabilities within a country or region and develop a
legacy for the future.
For example, Alcon has had an educational
commitment, called the Phaco Development Program,
since 2008. Through this program, it has trained over
2,500 surgeons across Asia and Russia. As a direct
result of this program, more than 2.4 million
procedures have been completed.
“That’s a lot of eyes that have been fixed and lives
that have been improved,” says Raj. “We are now
partnering this program with the Aier group to bring
a level of consistency within their surgical operations
as they expand their practice offering in China,” he
adds. “This is a great example of business-to-business
collaboration that will ultimately help many more
people with cataracts to see better.”
More than 70 years of innovation, customer focus
and passion
Alcon has a very long heritage in eye care, having
started in Texas 70 years ago. The company was
formed with three founding principles: Innovation,
Customer Focus and Passionate People. Today, it is
proud to be the leading global med-tech company
dedicated to eye care, and continues to live and
breathe these principles. Its innovative products
provide clinicians with solutions to many of the
common eye care problems in the world today. For
example, its refractive vision machines help people
who want to fix myopia (short-sightedness) and
reduce their need to wear glasses. Alcon has a range
of machines that help with cataract procedures as
well as the latest in intra-ocular lens technologies. It
offers a number of effective eye drops to treat the
symptoms of dry eye, a very common condition in
Asia where people are in air-conditioned buildings or
looking at computer screens for much of their time. It
also offers a range of innovative contact lenses, lens
solutions and cosmetic lenses, coloured lenses to
enhance the beauty of the eyes.
“It is also important that we have an eye on the
future,” Raj continues. “As an organisation, we spent
around US$500 million on R&D last year and have
nearly 1,000 talented people working on the next
innovations. In fact, within my region, I’m really
proud of the team who have secured over 40
regulatory approvals in just the first half of 2018.
“But it’s not only about the innovation. It’s also
about delivering these technologies to patients; in
other words, about market access. At Alcon, we are
working very hard to make sure that patients, no
matter how remote their location, can access the best
possible vision care. But like many things in life and
business, we can’t achieve this goal on our own.
That’s why working with groups like Aier, that are
actively seeking to improve people’s access to eye
care across China and beyond, is so important to us.
Working with comprehensively trained surgeons and
staff is critical to our business model. To underscore
the point, this is why we believe medical education is
so important.”A shared vision
As a leader, how does Raj get his people to share his
vision? “That’s the easy part,” he says. “When your
company is helping people to see better, you have a
very powerful reason to go that extra mile. That said, I
also believe in the need to keep things simple. I work
with over 2,000 talented associates across Asia, who
speak different languages and come from varied
backgrounds and experiences. They each have a job
to do and I work every day to make those jobs as
impactful as possible. For sure, we are working
towards an exciting future at Alcon, but it’s just as
important to make every day count.”