Leading with Heart and Hustle: Dr. Mary Hames on Turning Pharma Challenges into Triumphs | Ep. 194

0:05Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Founder Story. Today, we have Dr. Mary Haynes. and Dr. Mary Hames, we were just chatting a little bit about what you're working on and even my experiences with people in my family. So I'm very curious and technology advancing in the pharma space, I think is probably one of the most exciting topics. I can't wait to learn more about that. But you are the founder and CEO of Biologic Pharma Solutions, a medical affairs consultancy helping pharma and biotech companies launch products faster. So before we go into the most exciting thing is how is AI and technology helping?

0:44Before we talk about that, I'd like to understand why did you start this company and why this industry? Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Daniel. I'm excited to be here. So why I got started with this, you know, I've been in pharma for a number of years and launched a lot of really neat products and had a great time with that. I love that building phase. But, you know, as we were talking, there's a lot of volatility in pharma. It's hard for the pharma companies because they don't always know if the product's going to get approved. They don't know what's going to happen with it. And so there's a lot of turnover.

1:22There's a lot of companies that have to let whole teams go. And then, you know, it's hard on the company and hard on the people. So what we're doing is we're offering a flexible, scalable team that can come in during these periods of volatility and support a company through that flux. So it's very, very adaptable, very scalable, very low risk. And then for the folks in the consultancy here at Biologic, we get to enjoy several projects in parallel, which gives us more diverse work to do. And we have a bit more stability because we're prepared for that turmoil. We're happy to be in that turmoil.

2:04And when we see it coming, it's easier because we always have additional projects lined up. I see that you specialize in things like rare diseases, neurology. Why did you choose these specialties? And how are you seeing the impact from when you're working with a bio company in these specific industries? Yeah, so niche factions of pharma are always a little harder. So we have a lot of experience in particularly rare neurology. So rare disease is a whole other beast because there's so few patients and there could be gaps in the diagnostic testing markets. So it's harder. And personally, how I got into neurology is just my mother had epilepsy.

2:53My sister had epilepsy. And so from a young age, it's scary. And so I was always a little bit interested in neurology because of that. And then when I got into parma, I was naturally drawn to it. and then you keep doing it and that becomes kind of your background. So we do have a lot in rare neuro and it's just particularly compelling. We're working on a project with kids with neurodevelopmental disorders. And when you can help those kids and families, it's really impactful. It feels really good. And so, you know, we've done a lot of that. We've done a lot of radiopharma as well. And again, you know, it's just kind of nichey.

3:34And so when you're in one of those areas, it's helpful to have that unique expertise if you want to enter this market. Yeah, it sounds exciting. I mean, talk about some incredible breakthroughs that could significantly positively impact the entire world. I mean, who doesn't want to be an industry where you have this massive impact? I am very excited about how AI could possibly, from what I hear, speed up, come up. We had another guest who was talking about leveraging AI to come up with possibilities for solving some of these things. So how are you seeing or leveraging AI and other emerging technologies?

4:16Yeah, great question. It's so prevalent now. Everybody has access to AI. And I think what sets us apart is how we're using it and how we're implementing it into workflows. So I'll give you a couple of examples. So, you know, large language models are really good at writing and interpreting language. And so we're using a couple of different things with large language models, but one of them is in drafting a lot of medical communications. So, you know, we do a lot of writing. And when we're doing that writing, we can feed parameters into an AI system, you know, such as what are the stages of a clinical child?

4:57What information can we give and what information do we not want to provide or we can't provide because it's not publicly available? And then we can have a large language model draft, say, an abstract for a publication with data. We can have AI draft for us responses to medical information queries. So when patients or families or physicians inquire, we have a system where emails come in, they're anonymized, filtered through a system, and then draft responses are automatically populated into our drafts folder in Outlook. So then we just review the question, review the answers, and send it out. So it saves us a tremendous amount of time.

5:37We're also using AI in our data summaries when we attend meetings. So, you know, one of the core competencies of medical affairs is collecting information as it's breaking. You know, there's a ton of information that's new. Scientists are out there every day, thankfully, developing therapies and new technologies. So we'll attend these meetings and then we'll use AI to summarize that content for us in addition to, you know, our knowledge. So, you know, we still attend the meetings. We still take notes. But when you can have a system draft that summary for you, it just gives us such a leg up. We like to think that we're super powered by AI.

6:19So, you know, it's not like it's not yet replacing people on the team, but it really enhances our speed and our efficiency and sometimes gives us better language than we might have had without it. So, you know, those are some of the great things about AI. there are some definite risks and challenges. You know, AI is notorious for making things up. So, you know, if you're trying to rely on AI to do, say, a literature search or, you know, answer questions, it's really important to continue to have competent people, actual people, So reviewing and auditing and making sure that the information given to you, fed to you by AI is accurate.

7:06I can imagine. Yeah. I mean, if I'm writing a story and AI hallucinates, it's not that big of a deal versus when it's doing something medical. I imagine it could be detrimental. How are you seeing these companies like pharma companies? Are they open to when you come in leveraging and using technology alongside? Yeah, I think, again, it is variable. I think everybody has their own level of comfort. I think people do understand that AI is now ubiquitous. It's there. It's staying. So it's really more of how can we use this compliantly? What can we do with this that's going to be safe, that's within our comfort levels?

7:51So, you know, none of the companies that we're working with would be comfortable with AI sending out responses without anybody looking at them. You know, I wouldn't recommend it either. You know, I think that that's somewhere that we could envision trying to go, but we're pretty far from it. We've also seen, we've had some experiences with tools in, you know, in Zoom summarizing, and we've seen that go wrong. a couple of times. So, you know, if data is summarized and are transcribed and then emailed out and it's inaccurate, that can be a big problem for a pharma company because that's, you know, that's been in their database of emails that have sent, you know, that this was the summary.

8:38So it's really, really critically important that all those things are accurate. At the same time, everybody wants that edge. Everybody wants to be as efficient and as on top of things as they can. So if there's a tool that they can use in a low risk way, that's going to speed their progress, they want to know about it. Well, I'm very interested in this fractional model where it's fractional medical team. I know there's fractional CEO, fractional CMO. We've had different guests that fit into those buckets. I've never seen or heard of the fractional medical team, but it makes total sense. So how do you create success around this?

9:25And are you one of the few doing it? Did you, you know, did you really create this sort of, you know, part of the industry? I think we did. We were working on a patent. So we're patent pending on fractional medical. It looks like we're the only ones doing this. But basically what fractional medical is, is, you know, you mentioned that it is in other industries. But, you know, what we've seen over and over is pharma companies will either a new pharma company launching their first product, or you'll have a company that's got something new and different. They're in a difficult place. They'll bring in a VP of medical affairs that's got 10 or 20 years of strategic experience, has led teams and launched tons of products, and then they can't immediately hire a full team.

10:16And so that VP of medical affairs ends up with their 20 years of strategy, sending emails and booking flights and booking hotel reservations. And it's terribly inefficient. So one of the things that we'll do is offer when somebody's at that stage where they have a medical need, but maybe they're not ready to build out a full team. Or like I said, they're in flux, or maybe they're not sure their product's going to get approved. They can bring on a fractional team, and then they could have, say, two-tenths of a VP that's really just doing strategy. And then they'll have, say, half an MSL that's out of the field.

10:49and two-tenths of an operations person and an administrative person, things that they really need to be effective in their jobs. So then importantly, that can shift that over time. So let's say quarter one, we need a whole lot of strategy. Then quarter two, we need Congress coverage. When you realize you need to hire, it's usually already too late. I've been there wasting weeks waiting for decent candidates. If I had used Indeed, I could have hired way faster. So when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast.

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12:47So it gives them that ability to be dynamic because, you know, when you hire just one person or you hire a specific skill set, they can't always quickly adapt and do a whole other job. You know, your person that's in the field summarizing Congresses is likely not going to be your medical writer. And it's certainly not going to be a marketing person or an operations person. But pharma companies need it all. So when we can give them a little bit of a lot of different people, it again, really just increases their efficiency and productivity. Talk about working in a rapidly evolving, fast moving industry and coming in to help.

13:25I mean, I could see there's a lot of complexities here that you've solved. So what advice would you give to other founders who, just like you, they see a need in the environment of their industry. They see a problem that they have to solve. Maybe something fractional is the answer. But just in the general sense, how does one get started when they see these? Because I think most founders are solving some sort of problem. But I think it's always challenging to get started. Yeah, I agree. It's really scary. I think the best advice I have is to act as if you cannot fail. Just jump and look back at your successes.

14:12Think of all the things that you've done right and go for it. It's going to be scary. There's going to be ups and downs. but ultimately when you get that itch when you get that you know when you see that need and you want to do it and you know that there's a market for it it it's not just going to go away you know the only way to satisfy that it just to jump in you just have to go for it and you have to be ready you know maybe it won't work out that's all right you got to try so i'd say just jump yeah act as if i mean if you never think you're gonna fail all the amazing things we could do if we're stuck always thinking about failure, we would never move and act on anything.

14:54So many things in this world would probably not exist if those people went out. That is amazing advice. Dr. Mary Hames, if people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information, they want to find out about your company, how can they do so? Yeah, so you can check us out online, biologicpharmasolutions.com. We're on LinkedIn. We've got an office here in Grand Haven, Michigan. So we'd love to talk. Well, thank you so much for joining us today on Founder's Story and all the inspiration that you've done to really carve something, carve a niche of your own, which is not common for founders, but always amazing and inspirational.

15:34I'm sure there's tons of people out there that are going to watch this and they're going to think the same thing that they can do it too. And that's what we're all about here at Founder's Story is the impact that we can all have. So thank you again for joining us. Thanks so much, Daniel.