In 1993, while working for a large pharmaceutical company in Australia, Mr. Nguyen was sent to Vietnam for a year to develop the pharmaceutical market. After a year of hard work, he successfully collaborated with the Preventive Medicine Institutions in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi to develop the community’s understanding of hepatitis and prevention.

This success allowed him to become the General Director in Vietnam of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world in 1995. At the end of his tenure, he gained valuable experience and knowledge on the inevitable development trend of the Vietnamese Medicine sector associated with the growth in both the quality and quantity of the pharmaceutical sector. He realized that the Vietnamese Medicine and Pharmacy sector was still in a developing stage, so it was very necessary for long-term investment, updating information, product technology from advanced countries in the world.
Therefore, in 2000, he decided to establish Bridge Healthcare Pty Ltd in Australia. As the founder and operator of the Company, his motto was “In line with business goals, another important and important goal is Bridge Healthcare, which is the “medical bridge between Vietnam and Australia”. Bridge Healthcare's products are manufactured in Australia in GMP and TGA-certified factories. Bridge Healthcare's important and strategic market is Vietnam. Therefore, he has selected international-quality strategic products to serve the “current” curative needs in Vietnam, which are products for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis and joint diseases.

Investment in and training a physically and mentally healthy and young generation

Over nearly 10 years of operation, Bridge Healthcare has achieved certain successes in Vietnam. Being asked about his experiences to have these successes, Mr. Nguyen said that there wasn’t another special secret than the motto: The company co-exists and develops with the existence and development of the market, ie building a bilateral relationship, cooperation, and mutual support. Therefore, the Company has built the “Bridge Healthcare Education Foundation” with significant financial resources extracted from the Company profit. Over the years, the Foundation has spent about 1.1 million AUD for supporting scientific associations of the Vietnamese Medicine sector to organize scientific seminars, send Australian medical experts to Vietnam to update scientific information and exchange experiences, sponsor Vietnamese professors and doctors to attend major scientific conferences in Australia, USA ... Especially, from 2006 to present, the Bridge Healthcare Education Foundation has focused on sending young doctors who have talents and want to improve their skills to be trained abroad. These are short-term courses in cardiology annually held in Australia and long-term courses for young cardiologists in Singapore and Malaysia. He said that when Vietnamese medical experts were updated with professional knowledge and information on a par with advanced countries in the world, the domestic pharmaceutical market will develop with the world trend. An open, advanced market will be an opportunity for foreign enterprises like Bridge Healthcare to have a better chance of success.

His business strategy for the next 10 years is to continue to accompany the development of the Vietnamese medicine and pharmacy sector, to invest and develop strategic products to improve the health and mentality of Vietnamese children. He said: “We are going to develop a line of high-end pediatric products, made in Australia to supply to the Vietnamese market, we are in line with the Vietnamese Government's strategic goal: Investment in and training a physically and mentally healthy and young generation”. 

Publicize and attract other entrepreneurs to invest in Vietnam
 
Sharing his experience in business, he said that when doing business in his country, he has had many advantages thanks to the support of Vietnamese partners, especially Vietnamese medical experts. The leading professors, officials in this sector all understand the difficulties of a foreign enterprise, so they have spent a lot of love and support on his daily work.
The biggest difficulty is that the working capacity and professionalism of Vietnamese employees are still low compared to that of the Asian region. He said that Vietnamese employees needed to change their perception in order to catch up with the general trend of an independent and competitive market. Besides, the reform and innovation in administrative agencies such as taxation, customs ... in recent times have also relieved many difficulties for enterprises, but he still hopes this reform can be more thorough, and indeed these agencies may do their right functions and support enterprises.


In meetings for information exchanges between entrepreneurs, he regularly shares his knowledge with new colleagues to help them orient their business goals. According to his opinion, the fact that overseas Vietnamese businessmen are running their companies successfully in Vietnam also contributes to publicize and attract other entrepreneurs to invest in Vietnam. He said: “For a decade of investment in Vietnam and certain achievements, I can share my experience with entrepreneurs who intend to invest or have just invested in Vietnam for them to understand that the real situation is better and that Vietnam has changed and strongly developed in the past 20 years. In fact, before investing in Vietnam, overseas Vietnamese businessmen all consult the business situation of preceding enterprises and their success contributes to their confidence. So, the success of a small & medium business like Bridge Healthcare Pty. Ltd. in Vietnam is a typical example of the existence and development of an enterprise associated with the stability of Vietnamese society”.