But, Don’t You Miss Clinical Care?
Liza Kunz, MD is a maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) specialist who works in the US affiliate a large diagnostics company. She’s worked in pharma since 2017.
I had such a wonderful conversation with Liza that I wrote 2 blogs from her interview! See last week’s blog for her transition story and advice on networking!
For this blog, I’ll share Liza’s insights on both her global and U.S. based Medical Affairs roles and the key learnings and challenges she reflects upon…
One important consideration for a global role relates to working with team members across various time zones. She also traveled in her global role considerably – as often as once or twice per month. Another important consideration is that global travel, in her experience, is more taxing than U.S. only travel.
In her U.S. Medical Affairs role, she explains that her work involves (and she makes the important point that they are developing novel assays)
- understanding unmet medical needs
- educating physicians and payers on disease state
- gaining insights (and sharing those insights with cross-functional team members) from clinicians and key opinion leaders via advisory boards and individual conversations
- these insights might be where gaps in clinical care occur and what physicians need to initiate utilization of a certain assay
- contributing to publication strategy
- involvement in payer strategy
- attending congresses and conferences to maintain her knowledge and stay up-to-date on innovative developments
One reflection Liza had regards how much she has learned about the practice of maternal-fetal medicine and specifically prenatal diagnosis across the globe. She clearly had a strong understanding of U.S. practice paradigms but through her pharma career, she has now learned the clinical practices in other countries.
This ongoing education is one of the intellectually stimulating
components of pharma that she enjoys (and I second that!).
Here’s what Liza shared about her key learnings since entering the biopharma/diagnostics industry:
- “I had no idea what it took to take a brilliant insight and convert that into a real commercialized product – how many years it takes to develop a robust, reliable, reproducible test”
- in medicine, physicians are “the captain of the ship” and there is an automatic hierarchy that occurs, especially in emergency situations. The “hierarchy kicks in” and the physician is in charge. In pharma, you learn to work in a cross-functional manner with many different levels and functions (such as marketing, clinical operations & biostatistics)
- the regulatory regulations require a very detail-oriented approach. There are specific requirements for multiple rounds of document reviews and referencing any statements that are utilized. “I had no idea of the high level of regulatory control that exists in industry prior to my pharma role”
Liza also reflected on the most challenging aspects of transitioning to “industry”:
- getting past the “industry is evil” issue – she has had to overcome the stigma of transitioning to pharma. She explains to her physician colleagues that she is “trying to serve patients in a different way”
- “But you are so good at bedside” and “don’t you miss clinical care” – her response: “yes, I do (she still gets to practice several times a month) – “but I’m using my brain in a different way that I find really engaging – not only serving patients but actively learning and I think it will keep my career going for a longer time”
She is not worried about burnout in this role
- Covid-19 brought guilt – her job moved to all remote and of course, there was no work travel. She had moments of feeling guilty about not “being in the trenches” BUT her company had the first FDA and EMA approved Covid assay and she experienced a specific massive impact that the pharma industry can have.