Garth Sundem   00:00

Welcome to this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series: “Elevate”. I’m your host, Garth Sundem. And today we’re talking about scientific storytelling with Murali Gopal, Vice President and head of Medical Affairs at Phathom Pharmaceuticals, and Dave Gulezian, Co-Founder and CEO of Alucio. So scientific storytelling is one of those things that you know, it’s like omni channel or it’s like generative AI where it’s been floating around in the zeitgeist for a while now, and I think everybody has their own definition. And Dave, I would love to hear how you define scientific storytelling.

Dave Gulezian   00:44

Thank you so much, Garth. I think it’s interesting because, you know, many different people can have different definitions of scientific storytelling, which I think is okay. But when I think of a modern approach to this, I think of adjectives like personalized, attention grabbing interactive, so more of two-way dialogue. And there’s a quote that I really like, by Robert McKee, who’s a pretty famous author, lecturer, consultant who says storytelling is really the most effective way to bring new ideas into the world now. And I think that’s applicable more broadly, but also even in our world of medical and science. And so it’s certainly a very important topic for us.

Murali Gopal   01:30

I have to say, I agree with Dave, I see the storytelling aspect is not necessarily a verb, but more of a process than I do of a thing. And what I mean by that is it has multiple components, it has the component of what Dave talked about has to be interesting. You have to have a good narrative, you have to have good storylines, things of that nature. But overarchingly , if I had to define what storytelling was, I think most people probably interpret that as talking. And honestly, it starts with listening. And so it’s about really understanding what need is in the landscape that you’re in. We’re all in the healthcare industry. So you can’t go in and attack every problem in the same way, you have to really understand what the problem is, or, or even if there is one. And so understanding that then you can engage in what David was talking about here, which was customization, really focusing in grabbing the attention and things of that nature. So I do think it’s okay to have different definitions. But in general, if I were to describe it, what I would say is being able to convey scientific information in a in a very concise and interesting way, which meets the need of the recipient. That’s what I would call it.

Garth Sundem   02:45

That’s so interesting to way storytelling, I’m getting that as a real real a real theme here. You know, I think of storytelling and I think of somebody on this barstool, you know, holding forth, right. But you’re saying that storytelling actually comes as much from the listeners as from the teller.

Murali Gopal   03:04

Yeah, it really comes from understanding what I mean, if you even think back in the medieval times, I think that the Bards that were there at the time, I think they put stories together based off of what they saw, or heard or interpreted, people wanted to hear about, and that’s how they would get crowds to gather and pay. It’s the same thing, if we’re going out and talking to healthcare providers, and again, we’re not making up things. It’s not fiction, it’s, it’s real. But if we’re going in there, and I’m telling you, for example, Garth, you’re your primary care doctor, and I’m telling you about things that you do 10 times a day, you’re naturally going to be bored with that, right? If I’m able to tell you one thing that is slightly different, or may enhance the way that you do those 10 things, that’s essentially going to be much more valuable. So it’s not about the length of the story. It’s not about but the content being compelling enough for you, and that it provides something to you. And again, going back to the medieval times, it was entertainment, now we’re talking about actual application of, of clinical therapy that can help healthcare providers in with their patients.

Dave Gulezian   04:11

Yeah. And I think just to build on that, I think it requires, the ability to be agile and creative, depending upon what’s being said, right. So, as you’re listening, being able to pivot maybe to another topic that’s relevant to what the audience is interested in. So, it can’t just be a one-way communication stream, it really has to be adapted to what the audience is interested in, what they might have additional questions on, where they might want to take the conversation based on their own learning needs and interests. So I think it does really, does really involve a two-way type of dynamic to your point Garth.

Garth Sundem   04:58

Right, and you’d have to know the 10 things that I do every day that would be boring for me to hear about and be able to predict the one thing that I would like to be able to hear about, you know, so I think of MSL, you know, engagements and, you know, historically I think of the slide deck and you sit there and you deliver it. That’s what companies are set up to do. Sometimes still.  Are companies ready for a sea change in scientific storytelling. Do people hesitate when they think that this is the approach that they need to implement, or is everyone on board?

Murali Gopal   05:36

I’m happy to go first, I’ll say it’s an interesting answer, everybody’s in a different place. And it’s almost the same. The same thing that you hear from, from healthcare providers, when you tell them about a patient or a disease state and the level of non adherence. They’re all like, oh, yeah, there’s a lot of non adherence, but not with my patients, right. So it’s sort of the same sort of thing, where yes, we all have to do this, we do it really well. But maybe others don’t do it really well. And Dave, to talk about some some research that they’ve done, where it actually does really indicate, surprisingly, to me, that a lot of people do feel like there’s room for improvement. And he can talk about that. But what I would say is, from my experience, in working with different companies, from large to small, and in different roles, being a director in Medical Affairs to a CMO, in general, it’s how you get the company to be ready for it. So in essence, the vision of this pulling through the vision of what storytelling is, is not a one-time discussion, it’s not a one time do I invest in this, because there’s multiple components to it. And so being able to get an organization to understand, first of all, the team has to have the skill set to be able to do that, and we have lots of smart people as MSL, obviously, right? That’s what gets you in there. And in the past, that used to be what we leveraged with the healthcare provider. Now, it’s, you have to have that. But then on top of that, you have to be able to read your audience, you have to be able to understand their business, if I can use that terminology, which is in healthcare, and you have to be able to understand what gaps they might have. And then you have to have the tools to be able to customize the approach that you take with them. So if you have a static slide deck, that’s 40 slides, and the last twenty are, all safety and again, everything needs to be fair, balanced and compliant, obviously. And you walk through that and that’s how you approach everything, eventually what that’s going to do in today’s world where it’s I’ve got two minutes to talk to you or I don’t need to hear about all that or just give me the brief point, you’re essentially not going to be providing value. And over time, the health care provider is just going to stop seeing you right. So you have to be able to deliver that in a way. And what that requires is really advanced listening skills, knowing the science well enough to pivot, I love what Dave said about the flexibility, you have to be flexible. And you have to have the tools that allow you to be flexible in real time. And so I think that with when you talk about are companies ready for that it comes down to are they willing to invest in this? Or are they just going to pick one of those because one of those alone is not going to make up for the other aspects.

Garth Sundem   08:20

It’s funny I can I can tell already in this conversation that you’re both flexible. Dave, what do you got on the research?

Dave Gulezian   08:29

Yeah, no, it’s great. As a as Murali indicated, you know, we just came out not too long ago, the MAPS, America’s annual meeting for more in Puerto Rico, and we had a workshop related to this topic. And we asked the folks in the room, we did a survey around where their organizations were in this kind of area of personalization and modern scientific storytelling. And it was interesting that 92% of the folks in the room said that their organization’s had some room for improvement or significant room for improvement in this area. And so that was also very consistent with broader research we had done last year, not only to Medical Affairs executives, but out at the field level of MSLs. The two results were surprisingly similar. So we think that there’s certainly an indication of a lot of interest in this area, but also a recognition that there’s certainly a ways to go to get organizations where ideally they should be in terms of supporting this. And I would say another area, in addition to the flexibility of storytelling, that’s important. It’s also how that message is delivered. If you look back at the history, and I think in your example, Garth, you talked about, using the slide deck as the main instrument to be able to communicate. It’s interesting now that, we’re really not, from a technology perspective, limited to just that, there are other elements that can be used things like video and animation and PDF and websites and third party resources, other tools, that depending upon what the audience, what their information needs are, could be used very, very effectively. So I think we also have to kind of break the dynamic that there’s only one way to kind of communicate the story there are, there are different ways and, through technology through process and different types of approaches, we can really leverage that in terms of having the greatest impact on our, in our engagements.

Murali Gopal   10:37

Dave brings up a really good point with regard to breaking the norm. And Garth, you’ve spoken to that too, about, you know, doing something slightly different. So I won’t tell you how long I’ve been in industry, I’m sure people can do the math, but I’ve been in it long enough that I was in the initial discussions where the words storytelling was argued about. So Medical Affairs doesn’t tell stories, right. And so I was at the very beginning of that, trying to understand well, what the challenge was, and so you really have to put yourself in the shoes of these other entities, maybe it’s compliance, maybe it’s regulatory, maybe it’s commercial, where it’s sort of like, well, that’s what we do, or that’s not what you do, or you’re conveying scientific information, we still are, you even have to get that through to your own team. So on the scientific side, there was pushback going, I’m not a storyteller, I’m a clinician or I’m a scientist, or I’m a whatever. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t downplay what you’re delivering, it’s a methodology to deliver it more effectively. And so if you if you think about are companies ready, are they not ready? Think about the fact that if you haven’t even had that discussion, where you need to start from, why would I tell stories, and so getting back again, to are companies ready for this or not, part of that has to be a trust and understanding what Medical Affairs is, and you know, is all of us here know, on the call that’s challenging, that definition changes all the time, there’s consortiums all over the place to try to help define what Medical Affairs is. And it’s hard for companies to understand what the value of that entity, they know they need it, they don’t know why they need it, right. And in a lot of cases, so if you’re able to effectively deal with those hurdles, the company is much more ready, and you can move faster in that direction. And if they’re not, you really have to have those baseline discussions in order to establish some level of, of trust and intimacy to be able to say, Okay, we’re going to take a chance on this, because as you guys know, and you can see this in any industry, or in any part of life, when you try to do something differently than the way that it’s been done forever, there’s always natural, why would I do that that’s not going to be successful. This is what used to work, right. But all the great. All the great innovations that actually occur are by people who have said, Can we do it better? And so I it’s funny, because I get, it’s a blessing and a curse. I’m one of those individuals that always looks for innovation and how to do things differently. So the blessing is always trying to get better, and you know, never just resting on the laurels. The curse part of it is okay, well, I’m never satisfied with the thing that you actually have. And so people are like, really, you’re moving on to the next thing already. But, and Dave can speak to this better than I can. We were talking about this a couple of weeks ago where it was well, do you think about technology and getting ready for technology of what is available today? Or do you think about tomorrow? The clear answer to me is you always have to think about tomorrow. Because if you’re already implementing something today, it’s antiquated, right? So by the time, if you’re not considering what could be utilized in the future, then you’re always going to be behind. So it’s not that you always have to be the first but you have to have a vision or a visibility to what’s possible. And so, Dave can talk about Alucio and all the things that they brought, we partner with him now, and I’m not speaking on behalf of Phathom, obviously, I’m speaking on behalf of my experience. But before his company’s capabilities, were made available or brought together, we used to bolt things on to different other programs to try to get those processes together. So it was clunky, it was like a Franken system or whatever you want to call it. And it was sort of, okay, well, we have to put information in in different places and all this other kinds of stuff. So I will say that in order to get to that part, which is the quite honestly, the easier part being able to go, oh, there’s a tool I can use. It’s getting everybody else on board with why you have to do it differently and why that definition makes sense and how that’s going to provide value. And even though we’re in healthcare, we’re still in a business. And so from a business standpoint, what’s the business rationale To do it differently?.

Garth Sundem   14:51

Let me take a dig in on something that Dave said earlier and Murali you brought up as well that you know, it’s a lot about how this information is delivered. Dave said, you know, now we’ve got video, we’ve got PDF, infographics, we’ve got all these tools. How much of scientific storytelling now depends on the technology exoskeleton and how much still depends on a person. Now I’m thinking, storytelling seems like such a human thing to me back back to that medieval example. Right, with the bard connecting with the audience. And and maybe as part of this discussion, can you teach a clinician how to tell stories? Or do you start with the storyteller, a science minded storyteller and try to level them up with their scientific understanding? Dave, what do you think how much of storytelling still depends on the person?

Dave Gulezian   15:43

Yeah, I think a good amount does, I think it’s a little bit of both, you kind of have to have both elements. But certainly the personal delivery, the training that’s involved with that, being able to effectively weave a scientific narrative into a story that’s effective. That’s incredibly important. And you know, it takes time, it takes experience, it takes training, I think there are a lot of elements to that. But you also have to have the underlying process and technology to support it as well to do it effectively. And I think the interesting thing is, you know, my training after graduate school was I did some consulting work with a management consulting firm that focused a lot on operational processes. And actually, I cut my teeth in the pharma industry that way. And so we lead really with, process reengineering, it was called at the time. And that was really important, the process sort of was the center of everything, and then these other elements around it, once you optimize your processes could support that. But another way that we learned also was that technology can also lead process. So if you make the commitment, organizationally, to a certain type of tool, or capability, you then are almost forced to, to change processes and adapt process to basically get value and to fully have the tool be successful. And so I think that’s where these other elements, you know, there’s the personal element, and the people delivery. And then there’s the support for how this is delivered through process and technology. That’s really important, too.

Murali Gopal   17:22

I have a slightly different viewpoint on that. So I agree with in principle, you need everything right. I mean, that’s just the best, right? But if you have to pick one or the other, I think it really depends on the type of story you’re telling. So you have comedians, that tell comical stories, you have science fiction writers that tell, you know, fictional story. So you could argue that science fiction writers have to have a lot of creativity, right in pulling together a good story. So if I’m thinking about this being a scientifically related healthcare industry, you know, treatment for diseases, patient betterment, the foundation has to be in science, the person has to have a good understanding of the science. And that’s honestly the differentiation, or one of the differentiations, between commercial and Medical Affairs is that you have qualified individuals to be able to describe that science. Now, the aspect that is that you need to put on top of that is, in Medical Affairs, we’re not telling a false story. We’re not telling a jokey story or something to laugh. We’re trying to convey technical information or data in a clinically relevant manner. So in in, in reality, what our teams need or what Medical Affairs teams need to look like, when it comes to that storytelling skill, is we need to be good translators, we need to be able to take data and translate it into meaningful messages. So can it be taught? Certainly, are there certain people that do it better than others? Yes. Will everybody be able to do it? I don’t think so. You know, so and the, the efficacy of an individual will be varied now there are certain populations or certain audience members where you don’t want to translate the information in a different way, you just want to spell it out like it is p values and everything else like that. So there is a place for that, right? There’s a place for all of this, it’s being able to understand where those places are, and then putting your resources and your talent in from those perspectives in the right scenario.

Garth Sundem   19:28

And that brings us back to that way storytelling are sort of the need to understand your audience before you can understand what story to tell. So if we were going to pick one thing, what is the top change that you would recommend organizations and moving towards this approach to scientific storytelling? You know, what one capability does an organization need to prioritize? You know, what is our what is our call to action to the audience here? had to do to do one thing, Dave.

Dave Gulezian   20:03

I think Murali has got a strong point of view on that, which he’ll explain. But I guess for me, and it probably is a little bit more of the umbrella over it, I think it’s a commitment to change is the one thing that I would say, because it’s that change management process. And I think in the organizations that we work with it, it usually starts from executive leadership on down and saying, like, you know, we want to do things differently, we want to do things better, we want to move the needle in terms of how we’re affecting these, these HCP engagements to really move the folks that we’re interacting with along their scientific journey. So I said, I would say that commitment to change and openness to change is probably the most important thing.

Garth Sundem   20:47

And that’s cool, Murali, just half a second, let me just put a point on how cool that is that it’s not that you need to invest in building your video library, you know, for explainers, or whatever. But to commit to change in general. That’s a really neat answer. So Murali, what do you think what is the one thing that so

Murali Gopal   21:05

I will say I had, I was all prepared to go down this route. It’s not one thing, because it’s not, there’s a whole bunch of pieces that you have to put together. But I have to tell you, that we’re all learning at all times, right? And I can tell you that even just from this interaction with the two of you, and discussing this for the 1,000,000th time, or whatever, the evolution that had dawned on me, was what Dave just said. So if I had to pick one, if I had to say, what is the most important thing, it has to be that ability to be flexible, or commit to trying to do something different? If you’re talking about actual application, which is where we all go, right? Tactically, how do I do this, then there’s multiple pieces, you can’t have the technology without the people without the training without the I mean, if you have one of those, then you’re essentially not gonna be able to pull it through. Because if you had the training for the individuals, they can tell the story, but they don’t have the tools to be able to do it if you have the tools, and they don’t have the training, and they don’t have the ability to then maximize the tool that they’re actually working with. So the actual implementation there, you can’t think of it as a one thing thing. But if you do need to, if you do need to pick something and say, What is the thing to just get started? It’s a absolutely what Dave said, that is the and I will say, that’s also the biggest challenge. So once you can get past that past that point, the rest of it, they are capabilities. Now there are trainings, there’s a greater understanding of this. So it is very possible to do which is super exciting to me, because again, I was back at the discussions where it’s What do you mean storytelling, and I remember that to now. And so this is a super exciting time.

Garth Sundem   22:52

Greatest need is also the greatest challenge. And if you can commit to change, then the direction of that change, I guess, can then be mapped but let’s, let’s leave it there for today. Thanks, Murali and Dave for joining us to learn more about how your organization can partner with Alucio visit Alucio.io That’s Alucio.io. MAPS members, don’t forget to subscribe. And we hope you enjoyed this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series: “Elevate”.