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Innovative course helps medical researchers
get their product to market
Though scientists spend years working to find cures for diseases, only a miniscule number of products ever make it to market. Conversely, business people have little knowledge of what it takes to get a drug to market.
Charles Frame, an adjunct professor of marketing at Goizueta and a clinical associate professor at the Emory University School of Medicine, teaches a survey class in the MBA program that he hopes will change that disparity. The class, Biotech Market Analysis, joins business students with a background in venture capital or health science, along with researchers in the medical school. Katherine Caesar Montgomery 02MBA helped develop the class by bringing in industry experts.
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Dr. Muta Issa |
“The class is a natural outgrowth of Emory Healthcare System’s needs for putting research to use,” says Frame, who has taught the class for three years. “We want to help entrepreneur researchers learn how to get their products to market.”
MBA students are put into teams of five or six and matched with an Emory researcher who has a promising drug or product. At the end of the course, students make a presentation to interested parties, such as chief executive officers, as well as to the class. They set out a plan of study for the product, isolate the problems, and recommend courses of action.
Scientists say the course is a real eye opener. “For the first time, I understood the various strategies and the processes needed for successful commercial transformation of ideas and inventions,” explains Dr. Muta Issa 04EMBA, associate professor of Urology, Emory University School of Medicine and Chief of Urology at the Atlanta V.A. Medical Center. “The majority of us academicians and scientists tend to be preoccupied in our own world with little knowledge of how to take research to the next step. In fact, scientists may spend their entire career in research creating vast amounts of knowledge and tens of peer-reviewed articles without impacting one patient.”
Business students, who are at times astounded by the process for FDA approval of a product, learn real world experience.
“The class was an easy transition into the job I have now,” says Kristin Moon 02MBA, a healthcare consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers. “It allowed me to work in the real world with scientists who are dealing with issues of healthcare technology every day. It’s great to help them work through that on the business end.”
–Beverly James