Founder's Story
Leading with Heart and Hustle: Dr. Mary Hames on Turning Pharma Challenges into Triumphs | Ep. 194
Mon, 31 Mar 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 Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Chapter 1: What inspired Dr. Mary Hames to enter the pharma industry?
Hey everyone, welcome back to Founder Story. Today we have Dr. Mary Hames. 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? 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 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.
Chapter 2: How does the fractional medical team model work?
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. There'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 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... 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.
Chapter 3: Why focus on neurology and rare diseases?
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, you know, my mother had epilepsy, my sister had epilepsy.
And so from a young age, you know, that 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, 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 niche-y. And so when you're in one of those areas, it's helpful to have that unique expertise if you want to 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 want to be in 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?
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Chapter 4: How is AI revolutionizing pharma communication?
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 we're using a couple of different things with large language models but one of them is and drafting a lot of medical communications so you know we do a lot of writing um
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 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. 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. 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 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.
So, 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've 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
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of using AI in pharma?
So if you're trying to rely on AI to do, say, a 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 the 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 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, you know, 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? 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 beyond
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, the emails that have sent, you know, 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. You know, 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. Yeah. How do you create success around this? And 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?
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Chapter 6: What are the benefits of a fractional medical team?
I think we did. We've 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, 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, you know, that's got something new and different. They're in a difficult place. They'll bring in a VP of medical affairs that that's got, you know, 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 VP of medical affairs is, ends up with their 20 years of strategy, you know, sending emails and booking flights and, you know, 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, 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 or that's really just doing strategy.
And then they'll have, say, half an MSL that's out of the field. And, you know, two-tenths of an operations person and an administrative person, things that they really need to be effective in their jobs. So then importantly, they can ship that over time. So let's say quarter one, you know, we need a whole lot of strategy. Then quarter two, we need Congress coverage.
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