From Sick Care to Healthcare
Tony Cheng, Managing Director of Merck Healthcare Hong Kong & Macau, is transforming the company from a traditional pharma firm into an innovation platform. Utilizing his “SIT” (Sales, Innovation, Talent) framework, Cheng repositions Hong Kong as a strategic regional bridge market while advocating for preventive healthcare over profit.
As Hong Kong recalibrates its role in a rapidly evolving regional healthcare landscape, Tony Cheng, Managing Director and General Manager of Merck Healthcare Hong Kong & Macau, is redefining what success looks like in pharma, and explaining why prevention, not profit alone, may be the real measure of impact.
Hong Kong’s pharmaceutical sector is navigating one of its most complex transitions in decades. Regional competition is intensifying, patient flows are shifting, technology is reshaping research and operations and talent shortages are forcing companies to rethink how they build teams.
For Cheng, the answer is not defensive retrenchment but fundamental reinvention.
Since taking the helm at Merck, he has sought to reposition the company and, in many ways the industry, around a broader mission. The goal is no longer simply to sell medicine, but to build an ecosystem and to rethink what growth should actually mean.
At the centre of that strategy are three letters: SIT.
Changin The Game
“Right now we are transforming Merck from a traditional pharma into an innovation platform,” Cheng explains. That transformation rests on the SIT framework he introduced.
He breaks it down simply. “S stands for sales, I stands for innovation and T… many people will think T stands for technology… but actually it’s talent.”
Sales remains essential, he says, calling it “the foundation, the bread and butter”. Innovation, in his view, must extend far beyond the product pipeline and into the business model itself. Talent, especially in today’s environment, is “the most important”.
Cheng wants Merck to be seen differently — not just as a drug manufacturer, but as a science and technology organisation embedded in a wider healthcare ecosystem.
“I really want everybody to remember that Merck is not just another pharma, but truly a science and technology company.”
That same reframing shapes how he sees Hong Kong’s position in the region.
“I never shy away from reality,” he says. “Everybody knows that Hong Kong’s appeal has diminished when compared to the past.”
But he pushes back against a simple decline narrative.
“It’s not that we are doing bad. It’s because other areas are doing better, especially China.”
Where some see shrinking opportunities, Cheng sees strategic repositioning.
“Hong Kong still carries a very unique value, which is that it is a bridge market.”
For him, the city’s importance lies less in raw sales than in what it enables.
“Don’t measure Hong Kong by its sales revenue. We should measure it by what Hong Kong enables.”
He also challenges the industry’s basic mindset. In his view, healthcare is too often still focused on treating illness after it appears, rather than preventing it in the first place.
“We are in the healthcare industry. But actually what we’re doing, we’re selling medicine. Our target customers are the patients. They are sick. So we are providing sick care, not healthcare.”
That distinction matters to him. “I think what the industry needs to do more is around prevention.”
He sees prevention as a true “triple win” with better patient outcomes, less strain on healthcare systems and earlier intervention.
Shaping Tomorrow
While the strategy is clear for Cheng, he says execution depends on people. In recent years, he notes that Hong Kong has faced a serious talent crunch. Migration trends and regional competition have made hiring more difficult across the healthcare industry. His response has been to widen the search.
“I decided to hire from beyond Hong Kong… from China, from Taiwan, from Malaysia.”
He also broadened the company’s internal mix of expertise. “Not just from traditional science backgrounds but right now also from finance, from communication, also entrepreneurs.”
The goal was not simply to fill vacancies, but to bring in new ways of thinking. “I really want to bring some new and fresh ideas to the company.”
To make that work, he places a strong emphasis on culture. At Merck, overcommunication is encouraged because misunderstandings often create more friction than genuine disagreement. He also wants employees to stay open to experimentation.
“There’s no stupid idea. All great ideas come from those small ideas.”
Cheng describes himself as “a failure person because I keep trying lots of new initiatives”. It is a candid admission, but one that reflects his leadership style. For him, success depends on trying, learning and trying again. “If I don’t try new initiatives there’s always no success.”
Rather than forcing people to change, he prefers to create the conditions that make change feel natural.
“Sometimes we don’t tell people to change. We create a new environment [so] that people want to change.”
That philosophy also underpins Merck’s approach to artificial intelligence. Cheng does not view AI as a technical upgrade alone, but as a cultural shift.
“AI transformation is not just an IT project. This is really a culture change.”
While training has been widespread, adoption remains uneven. “100% of the participants join the training,” he notes, yet “less than one-third” are fully integrating AI into daily work.
Still, the direction is clear. “In the past we all relied on our experience, sometimes gut feeling, but right now with AI it is all about the data.”
He believes healthcare is moving towards more precise, personalised and predictive models, where data will guide decisions more than instinct alone.
When speaking to younger professionals, though, Cheng returns to purpose rather than technology.
“Find something bigger than yourself,” he says. “What you’re doing is impacting human life. We are not just looking for a job, looking for a paycheck.”
For him, purpose is not abstract idealism. It is a source of resilience.
Lessons That Last
Over more than two decades in the pharmaceutical industry, Cheng has lived through repeated crises, including the Sars epidemic, financial turmoil and the Covid pandemic.
“Every time I heard many things, and that ‘this time we are dead’. But every time, when we look back at what we went through, we survived.”
That experience has shaped how he leads. During good times, he believes, companies should prepare for the bad. During tough times, leaders should help teams stay steady and keep sight of a credible future.
But some of the most important lessons have come from his personal life.
Reflecting on his wife’s health issues shortly after he joined Merck, he says: “That was the most challenging time I faced. Right now my wife still requires dialysis every day.”
Balancing executive responsibility, academic study and caregiving gave him a different perspective on achievement, endurance and meaning.
“Thinking back to some of the most challenging times, wow, I learned a lot during those tough times.”
His definition of success has clearly evolved. In the past, he measured it through sales targets and market share. Now, he sees it differently. What matters is whether patients receive the right treatment early enough to prevent their condition from worsening.
And when he thinks about legacy, Cheng returns to belief rather than balance sheets.
“SIT is not just a framework. This is a belief system,” he says. “I hope everyone at Merck will remember we are not just a pharma company.”
He hopes his work for the company makes a real difference in people’s lives.
“If anyone can say ‘my family is living healthier because of Tony Cheng’, that will be the legacy that I hope I can leave behind.”
His final reflection is simple.
“Health is really the most important… If you are ultra-rich but you don’t have good health, what’s the point?”
For Cheng, that question defines the future of healthcare and is, he believes, the real measure of a game changer.