Typically, it takes several months for third-parties and consultants in the life sciences industry to get data back to pharma companies with payer research. Today's guest is Baiju Aurora, CEO of Market Access Transformation (MAT) is shrinking getting payer response research to a few days.
Baiju has led the MAT team for more than five years and their first product, Rapid Payer Response, provides pharma companies payer research in only a few days from their payer network.
Baiju’s career has spanned pricing, market access, health economics, and outcomes research for bio pharma, medical device, and diagnostics companies.
Key Takeaways:
Show Notes:
Market Access Transformation (MAT) - Rapid Payer Response
The Physician Payments Sunshine Act
Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance (FSPCA)
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
European Pharmaceutical Market Research Association (EphMRA)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Application to be on the show: From Lab to Launch
Music by keldez
Qualio website:
https://www.qualio.com/
Previous episodes:
https://www.qualio.com/from-lab-to-launch-podcast
Apply to be on the show:
https://forms.gle/uUH2YtCFxJHrVGeL8
Music by keldez
Typically, it takes several months for third-parties and consultants in the life sciences industry to get data back to pharma companies with payer research. Today's guest is Baiju Aurora, CEO of Market Access Transformation (MAT) is shrinking getting payer response research to a few days.
Baiju has led the MAT team for more than five years and their first product, Rapid Payer Response, provides pharma companies payer research in only a few days from their payer network.
Baiju’s career has spanned pricing, market access, health economics, and outcomes research for bio pharma, medical device, and diagnostics companies.
Key Takeaways:
Show Notes:
Market Access Transformation (MAT) - Rapid Payer Response
The Physician Payments Sunshine Act
Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance (FSPCA)
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
European Pharmaceutical Market Research Association (EphMRA)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Application to be on the show: From Lab to Launch
Music by keldez
Qualio website:
https://www.qualio.com/
Previous episodes:
https://www.qualio.com/from-lab-to-launch-podcast
Apply to be on the show:
https://forms.gle/uUH2YtCFxJHrVGeL8
Music by keldez
Qualio: Hi there. Thanks for tuning in to a new episode. I'm really glad you're here. Today we're talking to Baiju Aurora, CEO of Market Access Transformation or MAT. We'll refer to it as MAT throughout the episode today.
Baiju has had an impressive career spanning pricing, market access, health economics, and outcomes research for biopharma, med device, and diagnostics companies. He's been leading the team at MAT for the last five-plus years. Their first product, Rapid Payer Response, provides pharma companies payer research in just a few days from their payer network compared to the industry average of several months and using consultants or third parties to get that data back to the pharma companies.
This approach can reduce pharma companies' time to market dramatically. That’s what we talk about a lot in this episode is reducing time to market. Some other high-level takeaways you'll get from this conversation with Baiju are embracing unexpected clients. Baiju shares how they acquired their first handful of customers and got big pharma clients much, much faster than they originally expected.
Another is industry trends in pharma including consolidation and execution, and how faster market research can propel pharma companies forward. The third insight from Baiju is why you should consider building a company with profitability first in mind rather than scaling growth. All right, let's get to it.
I'll just start by saying thank you, Baiju Aurora, for joining us on From Lab to Launch today. We really appreciate your time.
Baiju: Thank you for having me.
Qualio: To get things started, help us understand what you do at Market Access Transformation or we'll call it MAT from here on out. What are you folks up to at MAT?
Baiju: We started the company because we saw that there was a pretty stark unmet need in the area of market research with those stakeholders that would lend themselves to making a decision on the value of a product. So payers, payer advisors, policymakers, those types of stakeholders, and how pharma reached those stakeholders.
The way that they had previously reached them was what we would consider quite antiquated and that the market research methodologies would be mainly qualitative interviews. So the pharma company would contract with a consultancy and then they would do a set of interviews that would take around six months end-to-end to do a project.
We saw that that was really not meeting our client's needs. We live in the era of agility. So many things have changed in those six months. The environment changes in terms of what products get approved and how the marketplace changes within the policy, but also within a pharma company. The way that they prioritize different drugs and indications changes too. What we found is that the legacy way of conducting payer research as we call it would take six months. The results would be less meaningful when it came time to deliver.
We thought, let's modernize this, bring technologies to the table. It wasn't really an aha moment. That's definitely something that's needed. We decided that with our company, we would look to come out with technology solutions and cutting edge solutions to help pharma companies address those unmet needs, and the first product being Rapid Payer Response.
Qualio: Baiju, from the intro that we gave, your background over the last 15 years in the healthcare industry—from consulting to launching startups, and business development—did getting involved with MAT come out of that and seeing that unmet need come out of your career experience before the company started?
Baiju: Yeah, it very much did because the majority of my tenure has been either within a pharma company or in support of a pharma company. I've seen it from the ground up, starting my career in pharmaceutical sales. Seeing it from a doctor and patient point of view, moving into areas like marketing to see how holistically you would look to go to these physicians and market the product. Then moving into consultancy to see how different agencies and pharmaceutical services companies supported pharma in a lot of the work that they needed to do in order to get products to launch.
One experience in particular, when I was the head of early pipeline pricing access, health economics. All products are in early development for Takeda Oncology. I would have seven, eight products in development and many, many different indications just seeing how often things changed in a company's direction. That is, I would say, the chief experience that I obtained to say this is an area that needs to be solved.
Qualio: All right. From there, you've been leading MAT for almost five, six years now?
Baiju: That's right.
Qualio: In the last five years with Rapid Payer Response, how have the needs changed in the pharma industry? Because something we've talked about a lot in this podcast is how just the industry, pharma specifically, if you look at the last 18 months with the pandemic going on, so much has changed in terms of the supply chain and other things affecting the pharma industry. What have you seen over the last five years leading MAT and some of the innovations?
You're trying to shrink timelines from several months to get that data back to these pharma companies down to a matter of a few days. You're shrinking a lot of the development cycle here, which is awesome. What were some other developments you've seen over the last five years as you've been leading MAT?
Baiju: At a macro level, we've definitely seen product timelines from when a product comes to fruition, from the lab to launch that timeline shrinking. Decisions are made about moving into what would be your pivotal phase three or any pivotal, moving into a pivotal trial, sometimes without getting a chance to go through every phase of research. If you have a product that's in phase one, we see that there is going to be some activity.
We see pharma companies taking a higher risk to go straight to market on a phase one trial or coming straight to phase three and skipping phase two entirely. Those decisions are made at great risk. We hope that Rapid Payer Response, our product, can come in and help them with the timelines like that.
We've also seen other changes where just fewer pharma companies aren't developing their own products from the lab and they're acquiring those products early on. When you acquire those products, again, it's a big risk to decide, okay, I'm going to pay this amount of money to then have some return in the future, and how do you quantify that return on investment? We hope that our platform can help with those decisions as well.
Qualio: One thing you mentioned that I think is interesting, a lot of pharmaceutical companies these days are acquiring new products. We've talked to a couple of individuals that will start their own compound on a pharmaceutical company and hoping that the company that they left will then come back and acquire that because they spun off. It's not something that's too uncommon these days.
One thing I think would be really interesting, as well, is we've talked to a lot of founders of companies as they try to bring their products to market. Something that's interesting about Rapid Payer Response I was thinking about is you have two parts of your demand audience. You have pharmaceutical companies you're selling this to, but you also have the source of the data. The payers that are coming in could be on a beach somewhere.
You've made it so it's fully remote. You've had to market and get the supplier side of the data that you're offering. Tell me about how you've approached the go-to-market for both of those audiences. I think that's something that could be really useful for others.
Baiju: In both areas, the goal was to solve unmet needs. We've discussed how we've supported pharma companies. But from a payer perspective, they take part in these market research exercises all the time, usually through phone interview-based approaches, online, or face-to-face ad boards where they go and they fly to a location and give their input for a day or two. Both of those approaches can be very intrusive upon their schedule.
If they have full days of meetings, it's hard to say I'm going to take a day off and then go to an advisory board or to schedule an hour phone call with somebody to interview them. It's difficult to do that within their schedules as well and dedicate that amount of time many times after hours. What we thought is, why don't we offer them a solution so that our payers and those that advise payers can log in at any time and answer questions starting in the morning and finish it at lunchtime? As you mentioned, that picture on the beach of being able to be on holiday or vacation and participate in a way that doesn't come in the way of the rest of their fun time.
Qualio: That's the dream, being able to work how you want when you want. The dream is getting a lot out of, especially the last 18 months, I'd say with remote work. But you were doing that before really even remote work became such a standard thing in many industries nowadays. I'm assuming, has COVID-19 and the pandemic accelerated what you've been doing at MAT? Have you been affected by that at all?
Baiju: Yeah. It's difficult to say we've leveraged a very, very trying crisis that's happened. But certainly, we've grown quite a bit in the past two years. I think we were already under that trajectory. Maybe even despite COVID, we've grown quite a bit. Our clients have always looked for ways that they can interact with stakeholders without having to do face-to-face meetings. Our trajectory is certainly not hampered by COVID-19 in the least.
Qualio: Have you seen any impact on the customers that you've served over the last two years and how that's changed? Maybe as you look into the future, anything from the past two years that has affected how your customers' business is being run?
Baiju: If we think about our pharma clients, certainly, at the start of the pandemic, there was this sense of uncertainty on what they should be doing when they couldn't come to the office in a time where they were typically office-bound. But I would say just within a few months, it was an industry that regrouped and realized that they still have to do research. They still have to understand the value of their products, even more so now than in the past where maybe there was a scarcity of resources. Fortunately, it didn't seem to be impacted too much by the pandemic outside of the first month or two.
Qualio: Okay. Yeah, interesting. I think that’s been an interesting question to ask a lot of people about how the pandemic, COVID-19, affected their businesses because everybody’s had to innovate in different ways on either side of the coin there. One thing that's important with these payer responses and research is a certain level of quality standard [...], double-blind studies, and things like that. We talk a lot about the quality and good practices on this podcast as well.
Talk to us a little bit about how as you've developed your company to meet the needs of your clients, how have you had to adhere to specific standards? One thing I've seen on your website is the Sunshine Act. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit, as well as being compliant so that the research they do get is fully trusted.
Baiju: Sure. It's certainly a hot button. Even though it is a hot button, maybe slightly less than would be in physician-based market research. Because when you do research with doctors and healthcare professionals, there is an additional layer of compliance that would not be as stringent with payers. However, certainly, it's an area that's a hot button for all pharma companies.
That is both internal and external. Internal compliance, most of our pharma companies have adopted some sort of online mechanism to vet the questions that are asked ahead of them going out to the field. That could be done on a country level or some internal department that handles the vetting of those questions. Depending on the types of questions that are asked and the nature of whether a pharma company has a product in the space and it can be considered off-label promotion by talking to the stake or getting information from the stakeholders, there are different levels of scrutiny of compliance internally.
We have now 52 clients in 5 years. I don't think we've ever come across any situation that we haven't handled before, at least in the past couple of years. A lot of these compliance platforms have different names for the pharma companies but still have very similar properties. So we've kind of managed through that.
Externally, as you mentioned, the Sunshine Act mainly applies to physicians. But we certainly adhere to the Sunshine Act in terms of the amount of remuneration for the stakeholders that are allowed by the FCPA guidelines that we adhere to in Europe. We have something called GDPR, which we’re compliant with, and we've done extensive research and certainly gotten a large amount of legal advice to ensure that we are GDPR compliant. Then we are also certified by multiple countries that have marketing research certifications.
There's the EphMRA in Europe, the Loi Bertrand Act in France. There's a BHBIA in the UK as well that we adhere to and have been certified. It's certainly a hot button, but we feel good about the fact that our platform, everything is done online. All of the answers come back in written format, which adds an additional layer of compliance.
Qualio: That's great. Documentation is very important and quality compliance for sure. Having everything properly documented. You mentioned something that I'd love to just ask you a general question here. Over the last decade-plus of your career in the healthcare industry, there are various levels of compliance. You mentioned just a few that are country-specific. This one is in France, this one is from the UK.
There's this interesting compounding effect that I think we're seeing a lot in the industry. As the world's becoming more flat, if you will, countries have specific regulations. A company like yours is trying to meet clients’ needs across the globe as international expansion is part of the business development and growth strategy, as many companies have. Being aware of the different compliance regulations across many different countries.
Just generally speaking, Baiju over your career, how have you seen the quality or compliance landscape change as the world flattens as well as companies try to expand internationally and as regulatory boards, FDA, EphMRA, or whatever it may be? They tried to also adopt, see what other countries are doing, and in some way maybe normalize compliance standards across borders.
What are your thoughts on that? I think compliance is a really interesting and evolving sphere as the world becomes more technologically advanced, as well as it becomes more flat. What are some of your thoughts on that?
Baiju: Compliance, as I mentioned before, is quite an area of focus for our clients. In our microworlds in market research, we understand that it's something that hasn't evolved too much in the past number of years outside of our clients wanting to vet the ways in which the questions are asked to ensure that it would adhere to different standards.
But just on a macro level, you can see that just the way different account managers and sales representatives must detail their customers has changed quite a bit from having free rein to go in and do the things they need that they are looking to do to now, all messages having to be vetted before they go out.
They have to ensure that within these messages that there are not any undertones of off-label promotion or anything that could be construed that way. On one hand, it could potentially hamper a company from going in and really talking about the product value. But on the other hand, there are now new ways in which they can do that. Everything now, of course, is on an iPad and you can transfer information very quickly. You don't need these long big detail sales aids that you're putting in your bag when going out to your customers. Everything is at a fingertip’s reach.
This enables those that would promote their pharma products to have a lot of different options that they didn't have before. I would say that there are pluses and minuses. Technology has counteracted what could be minuses and pluses as well.
Qualio: That's a great, great answer there. Another thing that I thought would be interesting to discuss is, over your career, we talked to a lot of leaders that have multiple business problems that they have to address. For example, funding is one major business problem that many founders face. But just over the last five years of you leading MAT, what are some of your favorite experiences or lessons learned that you think would apply to other founders, whether they be in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical devices?
Your career has expanded a lot of those different industries within life sciences. Now as a CEO of this company, what are some lessons you've learned you think would apply across any of those companies that others can take away?
Baiju: It's a good question. I also had the luxury of having a business partner that's been through this process multiple times before. A lot of the lessons I didn't necessarily need to learn. I can learn vicariously almost through my business partner, that’s Paul Howard.
One of the things that we did purposefully, and it could sound maybe a bit callous, is that we built the company with profitability in mind, not to scale a company, just to say I want to keep getting bigger. Because when that happens, you lose track of the denominator. How are you going to scale? How are you going to train the individuals once you scale one level? All of these things, if you don't build profitability in mind, you realize that you'll be overextended very quickly and then you will need to find funding.
When you need to find funding, you also then lose control over what you need to do. You could lose control over what you want to accomplish. We were able to really bootstrap our company from day one and build in profitability within a year by understanding what are you building, how much is it going to cost to build, what is the customer's willingness to pay for it, and how can you make it not a transactional situation where you're just doing things on a project by project level? Because as soon as that project is over, now you have to go get another project in a consultancy model.
We wanted to build a subscription approach so that we really understood how we could be immersed into a client strategy. Then when you build a subscription platform, you also are getting compensated for that subscription upfront. You can really build a demand. You know exactly what the demand is going to be and what the supply is going to be right from day one.
That's not always possible in every industry, but I think just by understanding when you build profitability in mind, you understand how to scale properly. You understand how to keep quality at the forefront, and hire the right people, grow the right people, and have them be successful and feel good about the culture that they're a part of rather than not knowing where their next projects are going to come from.
Qualio: I like that. Prioritizing profitability over scaling and the insatiable desire to grow as many companies. I think if you look back at the software industry over the last two decades, you can see a lot of that and how that's come back to bite a lot of companies later on, as they didn't have the profitability to mind. They had scaling and growth as the number one priority.
Baiju: Very much, and we've evaluated a lot of companies to potentially looking to acquire them. The mentality that sometimes there. It’s like we've built this great concept. That means we should get paid for that concept and not execution. If you can't execute or if you haven't proven that you can execute, that sort of Silicon Valley mentality has a lot of risk to it.
Qualio: Yeah, wise words. One thing you mentioned that I think would be really also useful is you have 52, I think, customers you said. Right, over 50? Tell us about the first handful of customers that you acquired.
One of the founder’s greatest delights is when they get their first couple of customers. Those are always really fun and interesting stories because their customers perhaps came in ways they weren't expecting originally when they set out to start the business. If you wouldn't mind, just tell us maybe how the first handful of customers were acquired by MAT, how you've evolved your business, and what others can learn from that?
Baiju: It's a good question because we were very surprised when we went to market. Very early on, our hypothesis was that similar to compliance, procurement plays a much bigger role in how pharma companies choose their suppliers. When you centralize something like that, pharma companies tend to have their set of preferred providers, and getting into big pharma can be very challenging. We thought that our first initial set of customers would likely be mid-size to small to biotech-type customers that didn't have that or had less of a hurdle in that regard.
We were very surprised that it was instead big pharma that came to the table right away. Potentially, this concept of having an approach that is more robust, faster, and less expensive than the traditional approach was very appealing to them. Many of our clients remarked that they were looking to do something like this somehow, internally or externally. We were able to gain a niche and get through the procurement hurdle very quickly. What surprised us was that it wasn't the small companies, the nimble companies that came on board right away. That was certainly something that took us by surprise.
Qualio: I was looking on your website and we'll have a link in the show notes to your website to look at the customers you have listed there. Some of the biggest companies in the pharma industry for sure are there. I was surprised to see some of them as well just because it's amazing how a lot of companies will perhaps limit themselves when they think of, we only apply to small- and medium-sized markets. But the needs don't necessarily change across companies. Perhaps the scalability or how internationally they can address the needs of global enterprise companies.
But what you mentioned that I think is really important for anybody to take away is it's important to find a niche and an audience, but also have an opening to maybe not limiting yourself. It's this proving of contraries maybe that has to happen, one of the many that happen in business where you want to have a specific target market. But also realize that there are other opportunities out there and so you don't want to limit yourself to just one particular audience that maybe is not what it's going to be in the next couple of years.
Baiju: Very, very true. Hopefully, what we have is scalable to do that as we look into all of the customer sets that a pharma company focuses on so that they don’t just focus on physicians or payers. They also have a major focus on patients, policymakers, and policy advisors, so that the P’s are the customers—payers, physicians, policy, and patients. We look to see how our platform can potentially accommodate a larger stakeholder set.
Qualio: Yeah, that's great. We've talked a little about the future here. Where do you see the life science industry evolving and in particular, your industry clients that you serve over the next five or 10 years? If you could look into your crystal ball and maybe make a couple of assumptions in terms of what we see now and predict some evolutions in the future? What would you say, you wouldn't be surprised if such and such happened in the next 5, 10 years in the industry?
Baiju: I'm sure the prototypical word consolidation that's continuing to happen as pharma companies are doing less of developing their own products in-house. How they work on efficiencies by continuing to combine and look at execution as their main pillar, and then bringing in companies that are more than computers, smaller stage, and ability to acquire different platforms rather than just drugs and development, but an actual platform of product types. We see that as an area of evolution.
That's definitely one of the things I could see changing over time, but also note that the pharma industry does not evolve at the same speed as many other industries. As much as we see cost pressures that are increasing, looking to commoditize the way products are being developed and driven, things don't change as quickly as the thought process of what you would probably expect.
Qualio: Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe when we say 5, 10 years, things that are evolving probably more like 10, 20 years. Extended by two, a factor of two, or something.
Baiju: We are seeing—especially in areas like oncology, specialty care, and rare disease—more of a combined approach of not just one new technology that is being used but a combination of approaches to be one combination drug or one combination technology that can be used in a first line, second line, third line situation, rather than a product simply going on its own into the market.
Qualio: Yeah, and you said you're seeing that more frequently?
Baiju: We are, yeah.
Qualio: Yeah, interesting. I think that, especially as in therapeutics, we're seeing very personalized and digitized therapeutics happening where people want to have some type of drug they can take, but also some type of digital company [...] with that. We're seeing a lot of companies have this combined software and also pharmaceutical components where they can track their response to it or their health as they're taking this drug and monitor the progress over time.
Maybe it's not necessarily the same compound as what you were speaking of, but a compound of products and applications to the patient individual is something that we’re also seeing a lot of these days, which is a good thing, I think. As people become more aware of the drugs they're taking and putting in their bodies and how they can track their response to them.
Baiju: Really good point. Yes, certainly personalized medicine is the process of the future to see how every patient is different and has a different set of DNA. And to make products that can be geared towards those differences will be efficient to the market as well.
Qualio: Another question I wanted to ask is about market research. I used to work in a market research company as well. We always felt like our competitor was companies not doing market research. As founders and the people are developing their products and trying to go to market, sometimes they feel like they already know what the market needs based on personal experiences or certain aha moments. But I feel like, oh, it's always a good idea to expand your research to understand more widely what the market is and what we think of your product.
Maybe if you could give some insight into just the importance of market research in the pharma industry, but also yourself as a founder leading this company, what type of market research that you've done? Because I feel like sometimes founders have so much going on with product development, with fundraising, or whatever it may be, the market research takes a backseat to loads of their company initiatives.
That can a lot of times lead to the business growing slower or acquiring customers and not retaining them at the same rate that they would like because they lack that research component. Any insight you have there because you run a market research company? It must be dear to your heart.
Baiju: Yeah, it's like a painter not painting their own house. First of all, to your first part of the question, definitely pharma accompanies, it's something that there's a definite need and a reticence to want to do market research earlier on in the lifecycle of a product.
Getting into phase one and phase two, understanding what the landscape is, and how that could be evolving and changing. So they don't make a mistake and power a trial with a competitor that is not going to be the standard of care by the time they launch, or decide that endpoints and outcomes that may be sufficient for FDA or EMA approval may not pass the muster test for a payer and what they want to see.
There is, especially in our area, the push to do market research earlier on in the life cycle. That is definitely a market trend that we feel we're on the forefront of, but certainly has been there before us. But in terms of our own company, we have done two different initiatives. One is to understand from our payers themselves how they're appreciating our platform? How are they getting value out of what we do, and how can we evolve and do things differently?
We've done two-payer satisfaction surveys and we've done one customer satisfaction survey, but we'd like to do more. We have a number of new platforms and products that are in development for MAT, one that we'll be launching in Q4 this year. It's very exciting, but we would like to do more market research than we have, admittedly.
All the things that we would tell our customers is do something upfront and make sure that you're launching with the right endpoints in mind. We are looking to do a bit more market research so that when we do launch, we accomplish what we did for Rapid Payer Response as we really address an unmet need in the marketplace.
Qualio: I think you have a good point there where when you're launching a product, you want to have as much market research done as possible to feel validated that you're launching this thing and you know you're meeting a need. But also at some point, you have to call it enough and then launch your product, take a step into the dark, and launch it without having done an exhaustive amount of market research that could delay your getting to market. It's one of those, maybe proving contraries again that has to happen in a business where you want to do market research, but also launch a product quickly, and you have to figure out the right balance between those two.
Baiju: Very much, yes.
Qualio: Baiju Aurora, thank you so much for taking time on the podcast today to share about your experience, CEO of Market Access Transformation, definitely transforming how pharmaceutical companies can access the market and get the research they need to launch confidently. Last question here, what advice would you give to other founders, entrepreneurs in the industry? Think of it this way, if you could leave maybe a tweet or a voicemail to people in the industry, what would you say? What would you want everybody to know?
Baiju: Don't try to recreate the wheel. Come up with something new and exciting, something that you can really feel invigorated, then you continue to and persist in wanting to innovate. That's a key thing. Efficiencies are nice, but when a culture is built on its own because they're all behind you because you have something that is really hitting on an area that has not been served, it's something that just develops organically. That's what lights the fire under me five, six years later.
Qualio: I like that. Thank you again so much. For anybody who wants to know more information about you or connect with you, how can they get in touch?
Baiju: You can absolutely send me an email. You can go on LinkedIn. I'm there as well. I'm baurora@marketaccesstransformation.com.
Qualio: Awesome. All right, we'll link that in the show notes, to your LinkedIn profile and to your website. Thank you again so much for taking time today. I know you're busy. But spending a couple of minutes with us and sharing your insight was really valuable. Thank you so much. We look forward to following what's going on and see the next product that's launching in Q4. Best of luck with that.
Baiju: Wonderful. Great, and thank you as well. I enjoyed it.