Outcomes Rocket Podcast_Sempre Health_ Bharti Rai: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket Pharma podcast sponsored by Sempre Health. I’m your host Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney, and today I have the privilege of interviewing Bharti Rai, Vice President of Commercial Excellence, Insights, and Analytics at Novartis. Bharti is an accomplished leader with 25 years of experience in healthcare and Big 4 Management Consulting. She has been at the forefront of business transformations to champion data-driven decision-making and customer-centricity. She is passionate about the intersection of commercial strategy and execution, omnichannel customer engagement, and analytics and digital. Since joining Novartis in 2018, Bharti has led the vision, creation, and turnaround of the commercial excellence, insights, and analytics function. From the ground up, she has made it a competitive advantage for Novartis. Prior to Novartis, she held roles at Bayer Healthcare across a wide range of functions and responsibilities. Before Bayer, she was at Deloitte Consulting in the Public Sector practice, leading multimillion-dollar change initiatives. Bharti holds an MS in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University and a BA in economics from the University of Mumbai. Bharti, thank you so much for joining us on the show, welcome.
Bharti Rai:
Thank you, Kyle. Thanks for having me.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
So maybe to kick it off, I’d love to hear your, what inspires your work in healthcare?
Bharti Rai:
Yeah, I think a lot of people that have joined healthcare, I feel like they resonate because they are passionate about patients and health and usually inspired by some loved one touched by a disease, and it’s definitely true in my case. You know, it hit home, a bit too close. And second, I started my career, my education in public policy, and I worked in public sector. So I’m really passionate about I think anything that has broad public impact, and healthcare to me is a basic right because we all know, when your health is not good, your dreams, your ambitions, your day-to-day life, it can really suffer, so it just, and it did hit home to close. So I’m really passionate about that.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Yeah, the interesting thing about healthcare and working in it, right, is that we’re all consumers of healthcare and our loved ones are as well. And I think it’s very mission-oriented, I feel like, the work we do.
Bharti Rai:
Absolutely.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
So how are you, and I would say pharma, more generally positioned to add value to the healthcare ecosystem?
Bharti Rai:
Yeah, I, so pharma as an industry, right, we’ve been talking about how do we change our business model and how do we become more impactful, I think we’ve been talking about this for 20 years, honestly, within the industry. The way I think pharma is well-positioned, I think it’s a few things. One, as an industry, we do have, we are a financially strong industry, right? As opposed to some other industries like CPG, very thin margins, health systems, right, lots of cost pressures. And there’s cost pressure in every industry, but I would say given the grand scheme of things, one, we’re in a position of being able to invest, that’s sort of one. Second, I think we, as you know, the medicine itself is only one part of the patient flow, the patient journey, the healthcare ecosystem. And at this point, I feel like almost every industry needs to pivot to a broader healthcare mission. And you can’t talk about disease and wellness without talking about nutrition and health and transportation to get to your doctor and everything else that goes with affordability, right? So I feel like pharma is well-positioned because we not only provide the life-saving medicine, but if we can go a couple of steps further and look at the entire patient journey and what they need, I think we could have great impact. And then there are a lot of partnerships right across the ecosystem. There is so much consolidation happening in the industry. Retailers are becoming healthcare companies, providers, PE, private equity is buying up providers and group practices, right? So there’s just so much partnership and mix happening that pharma has to move beyond, I feel, just being a medicines company.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
This macro theme of moving beyond the pill, right? So thinking about the services, the other products that you can wrap around, the actual therapy, is that right?
Bharti Rai:
Absolutely, but the thing is, we’ve been talking about beyond the pill for years. It’s not a new concept, right? The question is, why doesn’t it happen to the extent that it would actually make a difference? And I think for that, pharma as an industry has got to look at healthcare as a whole, as opposed to the medication only, right? So it’s a big sort of change which requires the right investments, the right resource allocation, the right tolerance for short-term performance gain versus long-term, right? So it’s a lot of systemic things that need to change in the industry for it to happen, but we’ve been talking about beyond the pill for years. And I think there are a lot of good examples where we do go beyond the pill. We order, we offer services, we help with nurse support, or certainly copays or affordability and other services, but it has to become a bit of a movement across the industry.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
And do you think value-based agreements or contracts with health plans, PBMs, is that a critical part of moving beyond the pill to make sure the economics are aligned? Or do you think you can move there without those mechanisms in place?
Bharti Rai:
I think it is both. I don’t think one should stop the other, right? Otherwise, we’ll be in the cycle for another 20 years. So I think there is a bit of movement we can do if we just look at the patient journey more holistically. And we’ve done, because I’ve run insights and research, right, so when you look at what a patient needs, right, or what they’re saying, what they’re not saying. A lot of times in market research, you ask the question, you get an answer, but it may not be the implicit need, really, patients don’t want to be reminded about the disease on a day-to-day basis. They are looking for a lifestyle that will help them live with the disease and forget about it, right? So there is a lot we can do before we get to sort of the value-based contracts, which is a whole separate topic, and a lot of my colleagues are well-versed in talking about that.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Of course, of course. So what makes what you do today different or better than what is available in the marketplace?
Bharti Rai:
I think there are a few trends that we’ve tried to capitalize on, and I see a lot of other companies in pharma trying to do the same. First of all, if you’ve heard the buzzwords of Data and Digital and Transformation, we are all there, we’re all there. Now, the question is, what does that mean to the company and what does value look like? What does short-term wins look like if you are sort of going big on the Data and Digital journey? So I do feel like for the last several years as an industry and even in my role, we have really tried to sort of harness the power of data and we’ve tried to find the nuggets that will truly move healthcare and patient care for the good. For example, there’s a lot of, we have so much data available in healthcare, it’s not a question of lack of data. And in the US you have it granular to the patient level. So we are able to diagnose patients that have gone undiagnosed for years in certain therapeutic areas. Six years, seven years, eight years, right? They haven’t gotten the proper diagnosis. And you can see in the patient journey, because we have the data, that they’ve bounced around from one doctor to another specialist to another specialist, they’ve had some test results, then they’ve gone back for more lab work, then they’ve gone to another doctor. So you can just see the complexity of the healthcare system playing out in the data. And if we can use that to then help and partner with our physicians, providers, health plans, to diagnose early and diagnose better and diagnose more precisely, that’s just one use case of what we have been able to do and we can do more as an industry. And then I think there’s also a lot around once the prescription is written, how do you keep patients adherent? How do you help them? And it’s not just, that’s not a technology problem, in my mind it’s a huge behavioral science problem. The technology exists to send reminders and all of that, but if, imagine if you got a reminder every day, stay healthy, lose weight, go to the gym, I don’t know if you’d do it, right? So it’s definitely a more deeper, complex problem.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Alright tech, stop and unsubscribe from those reminders.
Bharti Rai:
… I don’t have to lose weight but stop reminding me.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
And so what are some of the other ways that you kind of focus on to improve outcomes or kind of improve the business that pharma operates within? I mean, you mentioned the diagnosis. You mentioned kind of supporting the patient and taking the therapy. What else, or expand on either one of those?
Bharti Rai:
You know, another thing would be, are we treating the right patients who could benefit from the right medication, right? So that, there’s a bit of work we’re doing around physician targeting, more agile targeting. And when I say targeting, I mean who, which physicians have the patient population that are likely candidates for this kind of medication, for example, that’s a use case. Or even providing information on making the right decisions to get on the right medication, right? So I think more choice, more information, but simpler to navigate for physicians as well as patients, that’s a whole untapped area, I think for patients. Just a lot of struggle in finding the right information to make decisions. And as we see the whole world becoming more and more consumer, kind of, the whole consumerization, I think healthcare has to provide more for patients, but we are afraid to do that a bit because how far can you go and how much can one, how much should one pharma company do, right? That’s a great topic and a debate that I’d love, love to have. And I think there’s a lot of room for partnership there on, can we actually group together to impact one therapeutic area, whether it’s cardiology or diabetes as a whole, as a population?
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Sure, orienting it around the patient as opposed to the individual former manufacturer of a therapy class, right?
Bharti Rai:
Yes, exactly.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
It makes a ton of sense. And so what is one of the biggest setbacks that you have experienced? And what was one of the kind of key learnings of that setback?
Bharti Rai:
Professionally or personally?
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
You take it either way.
Bharti Rai:
So there’s no learning without setbacks and mistakes. I think the greatest things happen there, right? I would say, you know, it is when, you know, you’re sort of on a path, and it’s a good path, how do you sort of continue that momentum as opposed to letting other factors either stop or halt it, right? I’m being vague, I know, but I think just sort of keeping on the path, I would say is sort of one big thing to add impact. The other one is, on a personal basis, and I, probably a lot of women can relate to this, but the time when you’re, you have really little kids and you’re a professional, full time at work, and in my case, three kids, two years apart, so you can imagine when they were all under five or under six, oh, my god, right? So that’s the time where I felt that, and I had the best boss in the world, oh, my god, he knows who he is, and I wouldn’t have survived without him and I joined the company and I got pregnant. And then every two years I got pregnant, I was like, oh my god, I didn’t plan this, I promise, right? So that was a time when it was so fulfilling personally because I was enjoying the babies, but professionally I was, I mean, I was, I had a great role, honestly, I shouldn’t complain at all, but I felt like I was stagnating and not growing, and what do I do next? You know, what should my path be? And I felt like I just didn’t have the mental or the physical bandwidth to go there. So that’s a real personal struggle that I actually love and enjoy because I got through it. And the three munchkins are, you know, teens and tweens now. And it’s just, you know, for everyone out there, if you can get past the first five, six years and manage work, you’re good, right? So hang in there, it’ll pass.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
I love that, and it’s very timely, Happy Mother’s Day. It was just yesterday.
Bharti Rai:
Yeah.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
I’ll have to connect you with the CEO of Sempre Health, she has a two-year-old, and so is running the company as we’ve been going through a lot of growth and has been bringing her daughter, Maya, into the office as often as she can to be both mom and CEO. It’s really awesome to see.
Bharti Rai:
Yeah, and that’s the other thing, right? The mom’s guilt never goes away, it really doesn’t, even when they’re 14 and 15, because the problems just change. But I think this whole idea of integrating work and life, and it’s okay if your kids are there or if you have to take off for an hour to do something important. I think the flexibility and where hopefully where work is going will help greatly, for all, for both parents, right, dads and moms.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Yeah, and I think that’s one of the silver linings of COVID, quite honestly. When we’ve been forced to work at home with family around us, it kind of, everyone is a lot more understanding of that integrated lifestyle where it’s not a work-life balance, some other ends of the seesaw. It’s really one full day that you have 24 hours and you have to prioritize accordingly.
Bharti Rai:
Exactly, and it’s a mindset thing too. I feel like in the US we, we’re just too focused on work and you should be. We should probably learn from the Europeans who figured out that balance and they are still at work, right, mentally and devoting the time, but I think it’s maybe it’s, and again, a behavioral science mindset thing.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Absolutely, so I’d love to hear looking forward, what are you most excited about? So what big trend theme that you’re seeing within the pharmaceutical value chain that you really think is going to unlock a lot of value for this ecosystem overall and especially the patients too?
Bharti Rai:
Yeah, I think the first macro theme I’m actually excited about with the caveat is the fact that pharma-life sciences is all about digital transformation these days. Since, especially, since COVID, it’s been accelerated. I think they are taking digital customer experience and customer-centricity very seriously, which is great. Now the question is how do you make it work, right? What is that combination? How do you take that seriousness and not fizzle out in a couple of years or not get tired or not invest fully or not bring your entire organization along, right? Because it’s not about hiring three people that are, you can learn from another industry, it’s not just about that because those people might stay, they may not stay. It’s, what do you do with the rest of the 95% of the organization that you have? How do you pivot them? How do you change? How do you retool them with new skills? And then how do you help the others that may not associate with the change or may not be able to get there, right? It is a big change. How do you handle that?
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Yeah.
Bharti Rai:
So I think I’m excited about the digital transformation, but I’m also a bit nervous because it has to be done really, really well with a lot of thought. And I do feel that as much as we say digital transformation, pharma, life sciences, the leadership, and most of the people that grow have still grown up in the non-digital way of doing pharma selling and marketing, right? So even picking the right talent, you’re not sure because you haven’t done it before. You don’t know if you’re actually hiring the right people even, right? So that’s sort of one. The other thing that really excites me is the whole digital health space, which I know there are so many startups. I know there’s a lot of funding. Some people say there’s a whole bust bubble coming. But just that trend of people trying to digitize and simplify the healthcare experience is truly inspiring because we are the worst experience for consumers out of any industry, really, like, and we know it because we’ve been patients, right?
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Yeah.
Bharti Rai:
So it’s just sometimes so frustrating, and, and for me, you know, I grew up in India and when I come here sometimes when I go to India to see my mom, I try to actually do, like, some of my labs and MRI or even buy a medication back in India because it’s so easy, I can just walk in and get an MRI, it’s done, right? No appointment, I don’t have to wait for a month. I don’t, you know, it’s just so, it is not simple. And I and there is a myriad of reasons why, but I feel like a whole bunch of entrepreneurs trying to disrupt and not a lot of them will survive. We know that. But the fact that we are trying to disrupt is super inspiring. And third, I would say what I’m inspired by is truly this focus on patients. A lot of people are saying it now. Because I started in strategy, I fell in love with operations and execution. The strategy is great, we are all about patients, now what are you going to change in the company to make that happen? For us, the accountabilities, how are you going to incentivize? How are we going to do resource allocation? What initiatives are going to take priority? How do we bring that to life?
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
I love that. And the strategy, right? It’s so easy to talk about patient centricity but actually, execute upon it, that’s where 95% of organizations fail and come up short, is not really integrating that with the delivery or execution of the strategy. So maybe before we conclude, could you share one closing thought and where listeners can get in touch with you?
Bharti Rai:
Yeah, absolutely. So I am on LinkedIn and maybe that might be the best way to get in touch with me. And I have New Year’s resolution, right? This January was to truly network with a broad spectrum of healthcare folks that are doing interesting things. And that’s my other parting thought, is that as professionals, we get so busy with our day job, and especially if your calendars are like mine and it’s been nonstop, I feel like we don’t take the networking call just for the sake of networking.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Yeah.
Bharti Rai:
You know, there’s nothing out of it. Nothing to sell, just to share inspiration and ideas and see what others are doing. And so that’s been my resolution in January. I have spoken to at least 60, 70 new people since January that I have either been putting off, meaning to connect with, and it’s been amazing. It just opens up your mind, you know, in a completely different way. So that’s, so take the networking call, you know, if you’re interested in, in my case, I studied public policy and now I’m in healthcare, right, pharma, life sciences, I really wanted to connect with people doing like a lot of social good or some government and policy-related, and so I just reached out and had conversations and who knows where to go, but at least you expose yourself to what else is going on out there.
Kyle Wildnauer-Haigney:
Well, I love that. So everyone listening, please reach out to Bharti on her LinkedIn because she’s eager to network with everyone. Well, Bharti, thank you so much for joining us today on the show. Pleasure speaking with you, learning more about yourself, and hearing about the great work that you’re on, that you’re working on. Have a wonderful day.
Bharti Rai:
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure, a lot of fun. Thanks.
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