Founder's Story - Leading with Heart and Hustle: Dr. Mary Hames on Turning Pharma Challenges into Triumphs | Ep. 194

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

In this episode of Founder's Story, host Daniel sits down with Dr. Mary C Hames to explore her remarkable journey into the pharma industry. Driven by personal experiences with epilepsy within her family, Dr. Hames founded BioLogic Pharma Solutions to address the volatility and challenges in pharma. By pioneering an innovative fractional medical team model and leveraging AI to enhance efficiency, she is reshaping how pharma and biotech companies navigate product launches and market fluctuations.Key Topics Covered:Inspiration & Personal Connection:Early family experiences with epilepsy sparked her passion for neurology and rare diseases.Industry Challenges:Tackling unpredictable product approvals and frequent team turnovers in pharma.Innovative Fractional Model:Introduction of a scalable, flexible fractional medical team to support companies during periods of flux.Leveraging AI & Emerging Technologies:Using AI to draft medical communications and summarize complex data, with human oversight to ensure accuracy and compliance.Advice for Aspiring Founders:Embracing a fearless “act as if you cannot fail” mindset to seize opportunities and address unmet needs in the industry.Action Steps:Connect & Learn More: Visit biologicpharmasolutions.com and connect with Dr. Hames on LinkedIn.Reflect: Consider how a flexible, multi-skilled team approach could enhance your business strategy.Final Takeaway:Dr. Mary C Hames’ insights blend personal passion with innovative business strategies, offering a compelling roadmap for success in a volatile industry. Her approach demonstrates the power of adaptability, decisive action, and the smart integration of technology in driving lasting impact.Our Sponsors:* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://www.avocadogreenmattress.com* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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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. 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? Before 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 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 and had a 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 gonna get approved. They don't know what's gonna happen with it. And so there's a lot of turnover. There's a lot of companies that have to let whole teams go. And then 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. And 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 with a bio company in these specific industries? Yeah, so niche, 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, there could be gaps in

the diagnostic testing markets. So it's, it's harder. And personally, how I got into neurology is just, you know, my mother had epilepsy, my sister had epilepsy. And so from a young age, you know, it's scary. And so I was always a little bit interested in neurology because of that. And then, you know, when I got into pharma, 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 we've done a lot of that. We've done a lot of radiopharma as well. And again, it's just kind of nichey. And so when you're in one of those areas, it's helpful to have that unique expertise if you wanna enter those markets. Yeah, it sounds exciting.

I mean, talk about some incredible breakthroughs that could significantly positively impact the entire world. I mean, who doesn't wanna 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? Yeah, 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 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 we do a lot of writing. When we're doing that writing, we can feed parameters into an AI system, you know, such as what are the stages of the clinical trial and what information can we give and what information do we not want to provide or we can't provide because it's not publicly available. a large language model draft, say, an abstract for 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 and outlook.

So then we just review the question, review the answers and send it out. So it saves us a tremendous amount of time. We're also using AI in our data summaries when we attend meetings. So one of the core competencies of medical affairs is collecting information as it's breaking. There's a ton of information that's, 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 are, we still attain 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 superpowered by AI. So 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, if you're trying to rely on AI to do say literature search or answer

questions, it's really important to continue to have competent people, actual people reviewing and auditing and making sure that the information given to you, fed to you by AI is accurate. I 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 that AI is now ubiquitous, you know, it's it's there. It's, it's, it's staying. So it's, it's really more of how can we use this compliantly? What can we do with this that that's going to be safe, that's within our comfort levels? So, 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 been in their database, the emails that have sent that this was the summary.

So 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 if there's a tool that they can use in a low risk way, that's going to speed their their progress, they want to know about it. fractional model where it's fractional medical team. I know there's fractional CEO, fractional CMO. We've had different guests that fit in 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? And are you one of the few doing it?

Did you really create this sort of part of the industry? I think we did. We're 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, you mentioned it is in other industries, but 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. And so that VPO 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 gonna 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. And two-t have, say, half an MSL that's out of the field. And 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.

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Get started for free today. You can scale up or down the different types of people that you need depending on that fluctuating need of the company. And we find that this is really useful for pharma companies that have, you know, that their situation in 18 months is going to look very, very different than it does today. So 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 gonna be your medical writer and it's certainly not gonna 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. Talking about working in a rapidly evolving, fast moving industry and coming in to help. I 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 that general sense, how does one get started when they see these? I think we you know most founders are solving some sort of problem but I think it's always challenging to get started yeah I agree it's it's really scary I think the best advice I have is to is to act as if you cannot fail just jump and you know look back at your successes think of all the things that you've done right and and go for it you know, look back at your successes, think of all the things that you've done right and go for it.

You know, it's gonna be scary, there's gonna be ups and downs, but ultimately when you get that itch, when you get that, you know, when you see that need and you wanna do it and you know that there's a market for it, it's not just gonna go away. You know, the only way to satisfy that

is 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 gotta 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. So 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, biologicharmasolutions.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. I'm sure there's tons of people out there that are gonna watch this and they're gonna 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.