Dr. Khaled Sary: Navigating the Cosmos of Healthcare Innovation with Integrity
n an era where the intersection of science and compassion defines the future of healthcare, the Middle East stands at the forefront of innovation and transformation.
In this exclusive interview, Khaled Sary, General Manager, West Gulf Cluster, Takeda Pharmaceuticals shares insights into his career evolution, successful business strategies, and Takeda’s proactive approach to integrating ethical considerations into decision-making processes.
Below are the highlights from the interview!
Can you share an overview of your background and journey in the pharmaceutical industry, leading to your current role as General Manager at Takeda Pharmaceuticals?
I am a physician by education and training and began my career in pharma as a medical representative, eventually leading me to relocate from Egypt to Saudi Arabia in 2001. Since then, I’ve been deeply immersed in the Saudi market, progressing through various roles including medical rep, sales and marketing manager, and business unit head. I’ve also had the opportunity to witness significant industry dynamics, including mergers such as that between Schering-Plough and MSD, before joining Takeda as a business unit manager.
My journey with Takeda has taken me through different roles across Saudi, the Gulf, the Middle East, and now back to Saudi, where I currently serve as the head of the region headquartered in Saudi, overseeing the West Gulf Cluster, which includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain.
What strategies have you employed to drive successful business development initiatives, particularly in the areas of Specialty Care, Oncology, Rare Diseases, and Immunology?
In Takeda, we put the patients at the centre of any of our strategies aiming to engage in fruitful dialogues with the leaders of the healthcare system.
Through these dialogues along with robust research, we conclude our understanding of the therapy areas’ top needs and identify the main elements driving disease burden and unmet medical needs.
Our strategies are mainly shaped to partner with healthcare leaders fulfilling all potential gaps in the patient journey through providing meaningful solutions and added value to the healthcare system and patients. We strive to keep delivering our commitments to the whole community on a long-term basis which requires continuous efforts and assurance that our presence matches our high standards.
Could you discuss some of your most successful market access projects and their impact on patient outcomes in the Gulf and Middle East regions?
Improving patients’ access to innovative products is becoming a tough shared objective to be achieved driven by the accelerating pace of new technologies and increasing patients’ needs over time.
To minimize access barriers, the pharma industry and health authorities need to work together on creative approaches for higher efficiency.
For one of our products, we went through a sequential collaboration with the authority, first to build all economic tools needed to align on the fair pricing to expand the access to all targeted populations in specific sectors and based on the result of this local economic evidence, we designed an innovative value-based agreement that was accepted to secure full access to this product for all targeted populations aligning with the accepted affordability measures for the healthcare sector and adding value to a wider scope of patients.
How do you balance innovation with practicality when overseeing R&D-driven initiatives at Takeda Pharmaceuticals?
Innovation and practicality are becoming more towards complementing each other rather than conflicting based on the increased understanding for the global community about the value of innovation.
In Takeda, our cumulative experience in specialized disease areas helped us to be selective for areas that bring the most added value to patients, aligning with healthcare systems priority.
What have been some of the biggest challenges you've faced in your role, and how did you overcome them?
We are operating in a very dynamic industry and keeping up with consistent changes has been always challenging yet, managed by ensuring continuous meaningful engagements as well as scenario planning.
Building up strong capabilities of the team and embracing a positive culture are cornerstones to anticipate and mitigate any kind of challenge.
Given Takeda's commitment to patient-focused values, can you discuss how you ensure ethical considerations are integrated into decision-making processes?
In Takeda, we have a global framework for the decision-making process called “PTRB” (Patient – Trust – Reputation and Business) in the same order.
In West Gulf Cluster, we strictly follow this framework by making sure that each and every decision drives the best value to all identified pillars and have very compelling measures to avoid risks in any one of them and this usually happens through shared decision-making between different integrated functions and continuously working on enhancing accountability for all employees.
In the Takeda West Gulf Cluster, we have zero tolerance for any action that may create doubt in our integrity and commitment to our patients and healthcare community.
Our global strategies are always inspiring for our main principles to operate in the West Gulf Cluster.
We appreciate the unique landscape in countries we operate by keeping up to date with all dynamics nevertheless, we are always keen to validate the appropriateness of our strategic pillars through compelling research and dialogues with healthcare professionals and policymakers.
We consistently work on aligning our capabilities to fit with the market needs meanwhile, work to leverage current incentives for creating true public-private partnerships in a win-win attitude.
What advice would you give to aspiring leaders in the pharmaceutical industry, especially those looking to advance to executive roles?
It is crucial to keep a balance between your performance and attitude within a continuously changing industry and environment, so you need to:
- Keep continuous learning.
- Be open to feedback.
- Have a deep understanding of the healthcare landscape updates.
- Always think strategically and capture the bigger picture.
- Embrace a positive culture.
How have you evolved as a leader throughout your 15+ years in leading positions?
I meant to enjoy every moment of my journey by always intending to add value to myself, my organization, and my community.
Being through challenging times, I have been always hopeful to get the best learnings out of them and that helped me as well to accept mistakes made by others.
Raising the bar by challenging the status quo will remain a key success factor that I am seeking to achieve.
I’d have never been successful without the great people that worked with so, I have been always seeking to empower them ensuring they get the best support.
I have always had a clear target for setting a strong culture and positive attitude throughout my team and my organization.
What emerging trends do you believe will significantly impact the pharmaceutical industry in the next 5-10 years, and how is Takeda preparing for them?
Like many other industries, technology, and digitalization are becoming more advanced and more impactful.
Speaking about this impact in healthcare, we can witness day-to-day great examples for how digitalization eases knowledge transfer, and we anticipate a great impact for AI in many future aspects including precision medicine.
Takeda is leveraging technology and digitalization enhancement in communication with the healthcare community or in the continuous R&D efforts and we are hopeful to result in materializing our vision for a brighter future for global health. Due to great advances in R&D globally, areas of unmet needs are massively evolving and to fit this Takeda is always very keen to keep looking for innovation towards specific areas of high unmet needs.
In conclusion, Takeda emphasizes a commitment to a brighter future for global health.
How does your role as General Manager align with this mission, particularly in terms of community engagement and corporate social responsibility?
I’d take this into three dimensions:
- The first dimension is to ensure localizing our global strategic pillars to best serve the West Gulf Cluster’s needs in achieving our corporate vision.
- The second dimension is to enhance our partnerships serving diverse shared objectives like evidence generation, access solutions, and prioritizing Saudi for innovative treatment registration.
- The third dimension is to embrace and grow local talents ensuring Saudi talents’ best exposure among the global community of Takeda.
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