The future of vaccine development in Indonesia with Bio Farma

You are listening to That Digital Show APAC, a business podcast presented by Google Cloud to help organizations innovate and transform in the Asia Pacific region. Episode 30, the future of vaccine development in Indonesia with Biopharma. In this episode, we chat with Biopharma, one of APAC's largest biotechnology companies on how they innovated COVID-19 vaccine distribution across Indonesia. Hi, everyone.

My name is Paris Tran. I'm a sales representative here at Google Cloud. Thank you so much for tuning in. And hi, everyone.

I'm Theo Davis, regional enablement leader at Google Cloud, JPEC. And we have Pak Sole Ayubi, chief transformation and digital officer from BioPharma with us today, Paris. That is fantastic. Theo, I cannot stop being jealous of you so many times, one time after another, because one of the topics that the world cannot stop talking about for a very long time now is actually vaccine.

And I know you are going to have a great conversation today about vaccine itself. And more than that, how technology is helping the development of vaccine. Absolutely. And it's all happening here in Southeast Asia with a little bit of AI and ML thrown into the mix, Paris.

What could go wrong? Let's get into it today with Pak Soleil. Welcome, Pak Ayou, Chief Transformation Digital Officer for BioPharma. Pak, would you like to introduce yourself to the audience and perhaps include your last digital download as is traditional for the show?

Cool. Hello, everyone. So, how are you here? The Chief of Transformation and Digital Officer at Biopharma.

I've been with the company for a couple of years. And prior to the time, I spent my professional life in the U.S. working for several healthcare companies.

The traditional questions, you know, it's like about the download. The last download that I did this morning was the apps that we are building. It's called Medifers. And it's very soon it's going to be released into the App Store and Google Play.

Lovely. I'll look forward to that as well. So obviously, Indonesia seems to be on the sort of tail end of COVID. I was there just last week and still having to wear a mask.

But tell us a bit about BioPharma's journey, because it sounds quite inspirational through the pandemic. Probably, you know, some of you heard about BioPharma, but I think some of you haven't heard about it. So BioPharma is the state-owned enterprise or SOE for holding healthcare companies overseeing about 16 subsidiaries from the ones on R&D, manufacture, distribution, retail or pharmacy chain, and clinic chain. Just to give you perspective, overall, our product touches more than 700 million people globally every year.

And our outlets, clinics and pharmacies, serve more than 42 million visits every year. So we are a company with significantly big size of customer. There are a few statistics that I wanted to share to you today, especially related to our contribution in dealing with COVID-19 pandemics. At the beginning of the pandemics, early and mid 2020, the government of Indonesia gave a mandate to Biopharma Group as the one and only company responsible for the acquisition and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines across Indonesia.

Quite a responsibility. Or as Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility, right? Indeed, indeed. Very, very challenging work due to so many factors, such as very limited items.

In this case, it's vaccine and therapeutics, right? All countries were competing to get the vaccine and therapeutics. Once we have the vaccines in possession, we also have other inherent challenges in distributing vaccine in Indonesia, you know, with 514 districts, 7,000 islands, you know, with different level of infrastructure readiness, of course, you know. And there's the whole issue of refrigeration, transportation over, keeping it at the right temperature, right?

Absolutely. And then, you know, infrastructure in some remote areas is something that not many people have seen it, you know, it's like even me, that the first time I heard about that area in Indonesia It a very big country yeah So it very challenging work We thought and found out that the key to execute that work very well is strong collaboration At the beginning, we decided to work closely with international partners, including Sinovac as a vaccine supplier, which was then followed by collaboration with all other vaccine manufacturers.

Then once we have the vaccines in Indonesia and was ready to distribute across Indonesia, our distribution subsidiaries were collaborating closely with seven other private distribution companies to distribute the vaccines across Indonesia. So long story short, as of today, we have delivered more than 495 million COVID-19 vaccines and other vaccines too in the past 20 months. Of that 495 million doses, 300 million doses alone was delivered in 2021. In addition to delivering the vaccine efficiently, we are able to guarantee the authenticity, the traceability, and also are able to guarantee the quality of the vaccines while being stored and while being distributed.

This number itself, you know, 495 million doses of vaccine being distributed, is a historical breakthrough for our country. Before this COVID-19 pandemic, before this number, The highest number of vaccines that we distributed was around 120 million doses in 12 months. That's when we had a diphtheria outbreak in 2013 and 2014. So given the number as well as the challenges that we have been facing, people and international organizations appreciate what we have been doing.

I think we did it well. Sounds like a monumental task. And that's counting each vaccine shot, right? So including the boosters, total 495.

Absolutely. Yes. And roughly that equates to roughly how many people when you kind of average it all out, doses per person, all this stuff. So 270 million people.

That's incredible. Totally incredible. So the big question, when are we going to get masks off in Jakarta? Because I was there last week and it would be nice not to have to wear it.

Well, some people have been looking forward into it, but we are still very carefully review the patterns of the pandemics, the patterns of the spread of the COVID-19, the new variant of the virus, you know. You're going to see it very soon. I think it's so incredible as well because Indonesia, obviously, you know, people think of Singapore where you could actually scale efficiently and no problem. It's a small island, 5 million people.

You're talking about 20 or 30 times scale. And obviously infrastructure in Indonesia is very much developing. So was there any particular workarounds or things obviously you had to overcome in order to do that? Key collaboration, you know, is very, very ways of working to overcome that kind of challenges.

You know, biopharma alone will not be able to complete that task. You know, we have been working closely with the central government as well as the district, the province. We are working closely with the Ministry of Health, with police, with military, you know, to make sure that the vaccine is distributed correctly. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I just read in a book just last week that collaboration is the mother of innovation, which is quite cool. I think the previous one I knew was that necessity is the mother of invention. But I should say nowadays, right, collaboration and innovation are actually underpinned by technologization, if that's a word I believe it is in the dictionary.

So tell us, how did tech obviously play a role in this in your mind? Well, speaking about digital or information technology, it has a very important role. When speaking about digital and IET, we are currently focusing our effort on many things. But I would say that number one priority is utilizing that kind of technology to speed up our product development.

And then also to make sure that production process is more efficient. and then eventually, you know, to make overall company operation more transparent and efficient. We are deploying some new technologies to every area on our company massively. For example, the new vaccines development platforms, you know, mRNA platform, is very close to digital.

It's very close to bioinformatics. That's, you know, something that we are inherently engaged with. And should IoT play a part I mean something as small as a vaccine Would you have an RFID chip in the future do you think Or how do you see that unfolding over the next few years Absolutely In every file of vaccine that we are producing we have barcode. It's a GS1 barcode, right?

That's something that we have been implementing since the beginning. But one layer on top of that barcode is we deploy IoT, Internet of Things, the sensor of temperature, of course, the sensor of GPS, global positioning system. With that kind of IOTs, we are able to track every file vaccine that we are producing, every vaccine. Every corner in Indonesia, we know exactly how many vaccines they have because of that technology.

And of course, you know, while being distributed, we know exactly the truck that we have. You know, we know exactly the driver. We know exactly the position. We know exactly the temperature of that truck.

So every five minutes, we know exactly the movement of our vaccines across Indonesia. That's incredible. Yeah, I wonder if equally, would it make sense to have it on the blockchain as well in the future? Or is it interchangeable in your mind?

It doesn't add anything extra if you already have that, right? Absolutely. We haven't thought about it. You know, it's like I know this blockchain has very promising technology, but we have to approach it very carefully because, you know, blockchain is not for everyone.

Blockchain is not for every problem. And it's very expensive in terms of resources that we need to deploy. So we want to make sure that whatever technology that we deploy is something that gives business value to the company. Yeah, absolutely.

I was actually just talking with a very good friend of mine who's just taken a CSO role in a startup. So they basically help when the ships come to port. They help them get all of the cash together so that they can pay all of the people that have been on board for a month in cash, right? So you need to track that cash from the time it leaves the bank onto the truck, who's handling it, just like you with your tracking your each of your vaccines one by one.

Right. They have to track every single dollar note, the serial number on the note. Right. Wow.

Because cash can just disappear. But I asked him the same question. He actually told me the same answer as you. Like it's actually probably too expensive at the moment and maybe too slow on the blockchain as well.

Right. Just to get those solving solutions happening in a simple way. Just looking forward then, obviously, we talked a little bit about your pandemic journey and some of the cool stuff you're doing. But what are the other exciting things on your plate right now that you'd be willing to share with us?

Oh, absolutely. Speaking about two projects that I want to share with you, this is very, very interesting projects and we are very excited about. The first one is implementing AI and machine learning to determine the optimal harvesting time for viruses and bacteria. As you know, we are in the business of farming viruses and bacteria, right?

It sounds funny when you say that, but you're right. It is. As of today, we have been working closely with our scientists to implement AI and machine learning in the productions. It has been implemented.

It has been working really well on polio vaccine and tetanus vaccines and COVID-19 vaccines. and with the help of our AI and machine learning engine that we built, we can harvest the viruses and bacteria when it's on the highest yield. And eventually, of course, it gives us the best quality of vaccine with the highest yield. That's the first project.

The second project that we are very excited is, again, about AI and machine learning for demand forecasting. As many people know that one of the biggest challenges for a manufacturing company is producing the item, the right item, the right amount, not too much, not too little, at the right time. Something that's not easy because the market flew towards very fast and keep changing. And even Apple's struggling with the iPhone 14s knowing what to do.

They can't reduce it because of the strikes, right? Absolutely. So based on our own historical data combined with external data, we are building AI machine learning to help us to predict more precisely demand from our market. I love that.

Now, we don't have to be scared of the AI cultivating their own diseases and then sending it out, right? We don't have to be worried. You've got it under control. No, not yet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Looking into the future, maybe a bit further out then, where does your vision go with those things in mind and maybe some of the other things longer term? Where are we heading vision-wise?

We never thought that we could have done such achievement on COVID distribution right It brought up a really good momentum for us to do many things that we haven thought before we haven done before So we will push the boundaries and do things that we never thought or we never done before. One of them is establishing the first end-to-end healthcare ecosystem in which majority of the elements are already under our ecosystem. This integrated end-to-end healthcare ecosystem will consist of A, consolidated R&D centers, consolidated manufacturing companies, consolidated distribution company, consolidated retail, consolidated clinics, hospital, and medical insurance.

If we succeed in doing this consolidation, this will be the first and the only one end-to-end healthcare ecosystem under one company. Like no other in the world, this one is going to be the first and the only one in the world. Two main goals for this consolidation. First, every consolidated company will be lesser focused on their area, being excellent on their area, on what they must do.

And the second one, the holding company will guarantee that everybody does their job and then making sure that the synergic value is created within this ecosystem. One thing for sure in this ecosystem is it will be powered by technology. It will be very strong digitalization. And at the end, we call this thing as end-to-end digitally powered healthcare ecosystem.

This consolidation process will not be easy. It's going to be like super difficult. But we already started building the puzzle. We already have some of the elements ready.

And I think we are on the right track. Plus, you know, we will accelerate the process. If we believe that we are on the right track, we're going to see our vision become reality very soon. I love that, Park.

Thanks for sharing. There you go. Farming excellence in Indonesia and globally soon with collaboration as its core. Fantastic work.

Thanks for sharing with us this journey and some of the things you're looking at. And indeed, with that verticalization of really bringing in end-to-end the entire health process, I think look out Gojek and Tokopedia. There's going to be a new unicorn coming to town. Make space in the club, right?

So thanks for coming along, Pai. Really, really appreciate sharing and look forward to the future together. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much, Theo.

And congratulations for another great conversation. This once again proved to me that I am really proud to be a part of Google Cloud doing what we do. Absolutely, Paris. I have to say I was always suspicious of vaccines, but now that the world has changed, we've all gone through COVID, But it's like, what else can we do in terms of especially technology, really raising our health care to the forefront and helping people get better?

And as my mother always said, preparation, I think it's an ounce of preparation is better than a pound of cure. So there we go. Yeah, this is fantastic. And we are really hopeful for a new future, especially now we are in 2023.

Amen to that. Yeah, and I am glad that you mentioned your mom because I actually have a joke, like a bad joke is really bad. But as a tradition in our show, we're gonna end the podcast today with a bad joke. So are you ready?

As long as you're not making fun of my own mother, Paris. All right, what is it? I'll keep that in mind. All right.

So what do you call it when you have your mom's mom on speed dial? mom's mom on speed dial oh i don't know tell me the answer is instagram oh wow that is uh one for the one for the modern generation parents brilliant i thought you were leading us the wrong way there but right it's not too bad it's not too bad if you have a bad joke a quote any feedback for the show ideas and whatever we'd love to hear from you get in touch with us via social and keep tuning in to That Digital Show each week as we talk more things in the cloud with our favorite customers.

Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye for now.