Understanding the Role of a Medical Science Liaison: Insights from Dr. Abouzari

<p>hello everyone this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy I'm joined by a doctor of Podiatry here Mo please introduce yourself in your role and and what you do hi there thank you for having me uh my name is Mo abuzer as as you mentioned I have my doctorate in podiatric medicine and surgery I also position the MBA in Healthcare Management and I was one of the few individuals who initially at uh the Medical Science liazon Society became a board certified MSL um currently I am um in the job market unfortunately because of some of the layoff that has happened but uh in in the grander scheme of thing I have been in field medical for the past 15 years of recur [Music] you started off with that Bachelor's in chemistry and biochemistry a very challenging field to to start off in and then you went and you decided to get your DPM what led to that uh degree because not as many people know about that as they do about you know Dentistry or medicine I guess those are the two a lot of people think of as as clinical doctorates but DPM is also a clinical practical doctorate as well what was the reason for going in that route thank you for the question uh the most uh simplest answer is my dad had a lot of foot problems and a DPM was able to actually after visiting probably about five to 10 different doctors a DPM was the one who diagnosed him uh gave him the remedies that he needed and my dad was able to be very mobile after that and that played a very um important role in my mindset I always wanted to be in medical field um my goal was to actually become a pediatrician not a podiatrist but uh Podiatry allows you to do all both adult and pediatric as well as surgery before you enrolled you were an analytical chemist right correct and so is that a role that usually requires more education than a bachelor's I feel like a lot of chemists have phds or you know Masters in in chemistry and you started off with only a bachelor in chemistry right correct well I was fortunate enough when I attended USD to take some classes in analytical chemistry and instrumentation within research I always had a very analytical mind and I was um one thing that's missing from my resume is that uh I can be a Certified mechanic I actually went and uh after college did some some certification in that I uh love holding ranches and my dad was a mechanical engineer so mix of all those things allowed me to be very good with my hands and as part of being an analytical chemist you need to understand how the science work but at the same time because you work with so any instrumentations you kind of have to understand uh mechanical and Electrical uh Diagnostics and being able to take things apart and fixing them and that's how I kind of excelled in there I was very good with my hands impressive and and that's a good connection for people to draw as well uh I worked for a little while uh doing you know oil changes and tire changes and everything like that and and I found that it gave me some really interesting skills that I would not have expected right so that's very cool you when you graduated with your you know your doctorate did you start practicing at all have you practice extensively as a p i um so I was fortunate enough that as I was waiting to figure out what I want to do I had an opportunity to do a wound care fellowship or a wound care internship at the University of California San Diego wound care center in hrist and the mentor that I had there he was from the industry himself one of the few DPMS that had practice went to Industry and came back to practice and he was The Guiding Light that actually opened the door for the whole medical Affairs for me because he one day he told me that have you ever thought about being in the industry and it was a bit of a shock to me because when you go to these professional schools the thing that they're teaching you is you're going to finish you're going to go through your residency you're going to do your boards and you're going to start practicing and seeing patient however many of them that you're going to see wherever you're going to work but nobody teaches you about the Alternatives what can you do with your degree now one to step back um not having an MD or a FD or PhD does make it a little bit more difficult for individuals with any non noticeable degree coming into the uh industry because specifically a lot of folks on the side of the hiring don't know what can you do or what what is your background going to bring for my company or for me one thing they lack to realize is that my degree as a DPM is actually a Subs specialty of orthopedic surgery you can diagnose the same amount as the MD does you go through the same training and actually a little bit more because uh the way the allopathic medicine or osteopathic medicine works the first two years is all uh didactics and by your third year you start doing some clinical rotation and in your fourth year you have completed your clinical rotation as it DPM in your first year you're actually rotating through clinics you're seeing you're seeing patient with either students who are in their third or fourth years or you're seeing it with residents and attendees depending on what school you go to so that allows you to have a lot more a bedside manner where is something that you really don't learn in med school that's the personality trait that you bring in um you learn to listen to patients um so that allowed me to uh kind of kind of connect the dots I had the industry experience as an analytical chemist I did some customer support and then when he uh you know opened this new door of medical Affairs he put me in contact with several msls that he used to manage and when they explained to me what they do it really created this buzz in my head that this is something I love to do because when you teach to you're in a Forefront of Technology but most importantly you're still treating patients maybe not handson but a lot of time the value of the education and product support that you do it allows you to treat rare diseases treat uh you know infectious diseases so on and so forth and so can you know I have not really been familiar with the term medical Affairs or MSL you know this is new to me it's probably new to a lot of the audience can you introduce us to what it is and then also what initially Drew you to it when you first found out about it so the term medical Affairs uh kind of came to reality of it I would say about probably 20 years ago where a lot of these uh biotech Pharma companies realized that you can have a sales rep that sells the product but you don't have somebody who's going to be able to truly on a a peer level either educate or support the product that you're selling and at the same time A lot of times the idea of presenting data was something that was missing you can unless your sales grip had a background as a pharmacist or as a uh nurse and and it actually kind of started From nursing degrees where where a lot of nurses cardiac or ICU they started transitioning into the industry because they were so good with people and they could explain things and that kind of flourished into now having folks like f d or phds out of laboratory coming into medical Affairs where they do several things one of the biggest thing is you are a peer so you're able to talk I want to call it shop you can actually talk the science with the clinician who is treating Mr Jones or uh someone else for diabetic neuropathy or for wounds that are associated with diabetes or you've been a um nurse in the O that understand how to utilize instrumentation or how to do catheters or whatever have you and those individuals are very successful because they have Hands-On training and they can actually explain things so medical Affair traditionally started there and then in I would say about 10 years into it or so companies learned that you can have somebody by the name of a medical science EA on there is actually a very good book by a friend of mine who is um part of the MSL Society uh Dr Samuel old um and now I I forget his last name he's going to kill me but I actually have his book uh Jacob DWI Dr Samuel Jacob DWI um he wrote a book how to bring break into your first MSL role and he really explains how the whole notion of MSL uh came about what does the industry think about it um but fast forward to now there are many companies that they created a medical Affairs division with clinicians who do travel with sales folks on a medical device side is a little bit different than uh Pharma there is more restriction on the Pharma but the Restriction comes from the FDA so it's pretty uh plain um and these folks get to talk to clinician get to find the bottlenecks and bring it back into company so the notion of the word liaison is truly a bidirectional thing uh where you teach but at the same time you get insight and you bring it back with these thought leaders or key opinion leaders that you talk to let's talk too about the briefly the work life balance and then the pay right because a lot of these professionals had probably excellent pay working in all the systems but of course work life balance so we know is really poor in a lot of these you know 80 90 hours a week so what does that look like in in the medical a on Space it all depends on what kind of a company you work for if it's a large company with uh large number of individuals as msls smaller territories um probably have a pretty good life work balance but if for example I have worked for both if you're working in a startup environment um that's definitely different at the same time in a startup environment you get to do more though than the traditional cookie cutter what they think an MSL should do um so it has his pros and cons however you want to work um having work at startup there are times that travel does get horrendous um the field work does get horrendous and your work life balance is not certainly there but as the product goes through his FDA clearance or approval as the product becomes more established uh or your team grows things T tends to uh calm down a little bit uh paywise I would say depends on what kind of a practice you were at depends on what kind of a background you had um uh sometimes pays probably a little bit better than what you made maybe as a nurse or as a a farm D who just started for a couple of years or even as a clinician um but then of course uh one of the benefits I would say is your responsibility Narrows down a little bit because you're focusing on certain products when you deal in patient care you're dealing with a patient that comes with multiple diseases or multiple symptomologies or multiple conditions and you kind of have to remember everything because you're treating an individual you're not just treating a a condition or symptomology I wanted to ask about that as well because one of the concerns a lot of clinicians have is they they want to be mentally stimulated that's a lot of the reason why they went into the the work what challenges are you overcoming in your role what is you know keeping you really engaged you know I know you've worked for you know three or four really well-known organizations that have some really interesting products out there can you just give us some examples sure so as a again it looking at it as a clinician um if you have your license and you want to keep your license of course you go to CME courses uh continuing medical education courses where you actually continue to have your license active and and in a good stand additionally a lot of time as a field expert you are attending conferences where you have two roles one is attending the conference um learning about new products in the diseases space because part of understanding why is your product is better is understanding the competitive market space so you're constantly reading articles we as as msls when we had um we had Journal clubs for example just like how you would have Journal clubs in your residencies and somebody would read a journal uh or a new article or a new product and present on it um as msls you can actually and I've been fortunate enough to do so present at symposiums on some of the data that your company has presented you um I have helped created posters for Symposium I have presented posters at symposium um I have presented lectures at Symposium so it all depends on your comfort level uh it's definitely I would say in order to be a good MSL or a field medical person you need to be extrovert if you're an introvert it's going to be very difficult um and and those those typically tend to have a really hard time connecting with the audience but big part of being an MSL is to feel comfortable in front of um room full of people who will have answers I'm sorry questions for you regarding your product or competition so that's one part of being MSL the other part is a lot of time you are participating on boot duties where if a client comes and asks business questions from the business people but then they suddenly transition into the medical side of thing per per kind of FDA guidelines um sales cannot answer off label questions or sales cannot answer more uh patient management kind of questions and those usually come to your side where you really have that PRP and interaction very very interesting it's it's my wheels are are turning a bit hearing this so how does that differ though from Academia right because some I see some similarities but earlier we were talking about the differences what are some of those differences that you see so I would say uh differences in Academia is well when you attend a conference as an academic you basically attending it from the perspective of I'm either presenting a data that I worked on with the industry right uh you're a subject expert and you're presenting uh some clinical trial that you're doing on your side but you necessarily do not although some do you do not have to participate in any commercial activities or any um uh sort of a uh off label use or anything like that as Academia when you present in conferences you're basically presenting your work your data that your group created it could be regarding a disease space disease State symptoms associated with something or a new product or a new device that or drug that you're using but the data is limited to um your your uh institution unless you're doing a multi- entity institution that you know you have several different clinical trials like um and then you go to com you go to uh seminar uh seminar rooms or lecture rooms and just learn about new technology and leave right um the difference is as a medical Affair IND individual in the industry you're actually part of the commercial structure you actually have to and I always say this um Us in meta fars we like to say we don't like to sell anything we're we're different but in reality of it when you're in a commercial role you're actually always selling something what I sell is my knowledge and what I sell is the data that my company has created without that the sales folks on the commercial side don't have anything to present except maybe the financial data and everything like that then there is the aspect of Health economic Marketplace that comes handy when you have a new device new diagnostic how is that going to impact patient care how is that going to impact the cost to the hospital one of my uh roles allowed me to do a lot of Health economic presentation to uh CFOs and CEOs and CMOS and that itself brings a whole new level of involvement because now you're talking to seu so you better understand the data and you better understand um what kind of a bottlenecks they have as a MSL a lot of times Your Role is not just to present your data is also to understand what your customer needs are so you do a lot of research prior to going to these places is from the perspective of for example their National discharge data or their National um uh you know length of stay at the hospital and things like that depending on what what you do very good overview I really appreciate that a lot because that that makes a lot more sense now um let's talk about that board certification a bit you mentioned that you were one of the first people or the first person right early on to get that board certification how what is that board certification can you explain yeah there are several programs out there that are being run by different organization each one of them has his pros and cons and I'm not trying to um push anybody towards anything but one of the areas that has been kind of looked at is that trying to bring a little bit more regulation into the world of the medical science leaon or medical Affairs in general and these companies uh who have longstanding tradition of knowing the field decided to start doing some sort of a standardization in their approach of if you get this uh you know board certification or uh certified uh uh license or something something like that allows you to show that you understand not only the basic but you understand beyond the basics and it allowing you to kind of set yourself a little bit differently than the other individuals who don't have a word certification so back in 2018 um the Medical Science liazon Society was one of the first institution that put together a kind of a comprehensive look at medical Affairs and the requirements of um msls in the field and they came up with a questionnaires it was a exam uh done through a third party that they had designed uh about 70% of the exam focus on the Pharma side of thing and 30% uh focus on the medical device side of things and um just through my my connection to the Medical Science leison Society Through The Years uh I was asked by Sam if I wanted to participate in the beta testing to see the value and to see who will pass who will not and when we took the exam um there was a a large I I think there was about aund 120 individual who took the exam and about half of them a little bit more than half passed the exam um from the medical device side of think maybe there was 30 of us and I was one of the fortunate ones to actually pass the exam and uh uh you know uh not pay for it I guess that was the nice thing about it but at the same time I was very very uh humbled for the Medical Science Leon Society to reach out to me and ask me if I wanted to participate in taking the exam did you find the exam challenging yourself yes I mean um definitely my forte has been medical device and Diagnostic and when you look at some of the regulatory aspect of Pharma um you kind of have to be up Tod dat with some of the regulation it's almost like if you don't work on that side you might not know all the regulations and uh the way this exam was designed originally was that there were some um uh website that you could have go look and learn about it but it was kind of a blind exam it was really trying to take what you know over the years and how much so of course if you've been in the field longer it would allow you to learn more and know more so knowing some of the FDA regulation knowing some of the I regulation associated with clinical trials uh knowing the European entity there was some questions from there uh Canadian entities so um you you kind of um uh when you're looking at these things um if you don't know it you wouldn't pass the exam and and I was fortunate enough I always love to learn and I always love to read even stuff that I have no business about reading I try to stay informative no that's great though because it needs to have you know it needs to be rigorous in order for it to have value and so that's that's excellent and congratulations of course on being able to get it for free that's wonderful um so if somebody's listening to this right now and they're pretty interested in maybe taking a turn down this path what would their first step be I would say several different uh aspects one try to network within your field that you want to get into with as many msls uh medical Affair managers um VPS as you can and and uh you know reach out to them be honest and say hey I want to enter this field U you seem to have a background uh in it and I love to ask some questions I have many people uh before LinkedIn changed their algorithm that would reach out to me as aspiring MSL and ask me questions it's not an easy field to get into just overnight it does take sometime and and that would be a frustration for some of the folks that you know they definitely they have a great background they want to get into medical Affairs and they uh give up very quickly you can't give up it's not a field that it happens overnight it's almost like every other field I would say you know you have to have uh to do your homework you have to learn about things um invest in some of the seminars that uh there are groups like Caroline group put put it together there is MSL Society there is Maps medical Affair professional society that they put seminars that you can ATT and learn about things there is plenty of Publications out there um the book that I mentioned breaking into your first MSL role is a pretty good book that breaks things down uh for you there are several other ones um that have been published um it requires some homework some some research um then then the next step steps is sometimes you might have to enter the field of metapher through a different side of things you might want to especially if you're coming from Academia and I say that to a lot of colleagues uh look at what you have done and see if that company allows a role like that for example you were uh you know doing research in molecular uh Diagnostics maybe jumping into a molecular diagnostic MSL role might not happen because there are so many more candidates out there that are more qualified um maybe there's a scientific role maybe there's a research role inter to those roles get your foot inside the door first and then once you've worked couple of years or a year or so um start connecting internally within your company and re reach out to folks my first job at thermofisher came very similar to that I connected with the MSL that she was very instrumental in getting me into uh Thermo as a as MSL I did most of my work prior to that as a consultant I did some scientific work I I built analytical Laboratories uh um you know work for several startups that way so there are and and probably I had a more non-traditional way of becoming an MSL some people are lucky they been practicing and they connect with the industry and they get their first job as a MSL so it all depends but the more people you know the better it is for you from the perspective of positioning yourself in medical Affair roles so that networking again is just a huge key absolutely absolutely if there's local shows that you can go to um that would be a great area to participate uh I know in for example I I my my love is infectious disease and I've been a member of the Infectious Disease Society of America for about eight years um there is a local chapter in California I'm a member of I attend lectures um and those are some of the places that industry participate um American soci Society of microbiologists for example have a large uh show that you can attend and they have smaller chapters all over the place those would be a good place to connect with industry don't be afraid of talking to uh vendors they probably are your gateway into a company they might know someone who knows someone that they might get you in so um networking absolutely traditional networking not just sending people emails try to um and I know everybody's busy but at the same time there are lots of great people out there that are willing to talk to you and give you a few minutes of their time uh don't be afraid of um you know grabbing a coffee La last week I was fortunate enough to grab a coffee with a medical director that lives in my town and I applied to their company I was having a hard time hearing back from the recruiter and I reached out to him and I said hey I applied for this job I'm really interested in joining your company and he start talk chatting with me and then the next thing I know he goes hey why don't we grab coffee and I'm like you know what that's one of the things nowadays we miss is the whole interaction with each other uh we went and grab a coffee he gave me 30 minutes of his time and 30 minutes ends up to be two hours you know so that plays a huge role and there are so many good people out there that are willing to uh talk to you really appreciate you introducing us to this kind of field uh in really a whole industry as a whole as well this is the first time I've heard about a lot of these things and also thank you for the excellent advice on how to break into it I think that's going to really help a lot of our audience out so uh Dr Abu Zari would love to have you back on uh in the future and and I couldn't be more grateful for you spending your time with us tonight I appreciate appreciate and thank you for having me always happy to help out</p>