Things & Thinks Half & Half Ed. 2
I launched this monthly dialog series to get to know thoughts on healthcare and personal leadership journeys from leaders in the healthcare sector and already received enthusiastic feedback from several readers for the first edition.
This month, we meet Ashima Bhatia, Senior VP and Head Global Clinical Development at Wockhardt Ltd.; she describes herself as ‘a passionate health care professional, mom to my beautiful princess and blessed with a loving supportive husband and family’. Ashima has led teams in several organisations in challenging roles across clinical development, clinical operations and medical affairs for the last 20 years. I have personally worked under Ashima’s leadership and I am excited to present her thoughts on healthcare and leadership.
T&T: Hi Ashima, thank you for agreeing to be a guest here on Things & Thinks! Let’s start with your backstory?
AB: I grew up in a middle-class Punjabi family in the holy city of Amritsar, a town in northern India. From my early years, my parents believed in the power of education, self-discipline and self-belief and they inculcated these principles in my mind. After completing my school, with a nudge from my father, I went on to study at Maulana Azad Medical College, one of the most respected medical schools in India. During my medical studies, I realized I wanted to learn more about medical research rather than continue in clinical practice and hence chose that as my post-graduation field. At that time, pharmacology was not considered as a go-to field for medical students in India and I received quite a bit of flak for choosing it (and not choosing other so-called ‘lucrative’ fields like gynaecology/obstetrics or other clinical fields) but I was quite certain and in hindsight it has definitely proved to be a good decision!
T&T: That decision seems like the beginning of an unorthodox career.
AB: In a way, that’s true; after completing my education, my career in biopharma began, starting with Eli Lilly, then to AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, bringing me to Wockhardt where I lead the global clinical development. Throughout this journey, a few things stand out-I always got to work on challenging, so called risky roles, that were newly minted roles in the industry and I always received great direction from my managers/mentors. The roles were quite diverse, ranging from pure medical affairs to clinical research, pure operations roles to combination of manager-leader-business development and now whole spectrum of global drug development! Looking back, it sounds quite straight forward now; however it involved crazy amounts of resilience and conviction (sometimes travelling across the globe for 20–25 days in a month and making presentations about Asia R&D capabilities at 3 AM to our West coast partners) -so a lot of learning-on-the-go, taking risks and challenging myself to give my best.
Another aspect that I have really enjoyed through these roles is the diverse, talented team members and peers that I got to work with, manage and lead.
T&T: Your current role, leading R&D in an India based multinational pharma, continues the unorthodox track, right?
AB: Definitely, it is…apart from growing in the depth and breadth of the R&D framework itself, I now lead a drug development team right from the concept to approval across the R&D process, thinking about costs, complexities and resources and how to develop products for different markets. Another aspect I feel immensely proud in my current work is to work on specific problems for the Indian market, like working on antibiotic resistance for Indian population. This value proposition has helped me build a team with very talented and capable team members. This breadth of work is quite rare for a role based in India and I feel fortunate to lead such a team in Wockhardt!
T&T: Is there something you learned in college that’s proved almost wrong?
AB: I am not sure about something that turned out completely wrong, but something that could have been better is to get more education towards practical real-world skills, which actually help you build skills and capabilities for your future roles. Like after completing post-graduation in pharmacology, I still had to start from a scratch when I joined the industry to work in clinical-medical research, I think it would have been awesome if we had practical trainings on drug development like visits/internships in the industry and inviting R&D leaders to speak to us on different aspects of a health care/ bio-pharma profession. Our education system was, and in some cases this is true even today, not oriented towards thinking about what happens after we finish education. There is hardly any counselling about different choices about further education or career. Maybe this is changing now, but it needs to happen in a more structured manner, and has to start early on, from school-level upwards.
T&T: You talked about self-discipline; what are you deliberately practicing these days?
AB: Let me share a reflection here- as you know, our work makes our daily routines quite busy. With most of the day juggling between work commitments and chores at home, I had little time for self-care. I had started to put on weight and I was showing early signs of other health issues. The problem is I was not ready to spend the time I used to get from my commitments for myself. I wanted to spend it with my daughter, my husband and my parents. But I realized if I don’t take care of my health, I will not be able to do justice to any of my roles. Another bit of reflection, especially through the pandemic time, is how we need to be grateful for small things in our life that we take for granted, for our family who is always there for us, for our good health, for the people who were still helping us even during pandemic for all essential services and our friends, peers and team members who supported each other during this difficult and challenging time.
So that’s what I have been practicing — taking out time for self-care and expressing gratitude through maintaining a daily journal.
The good part is my daughter sees this and has been following me-she sees me taking time out for my exercises and meditation and she started learning Yoga by taking online classes during COVID, she also maintains her own daily gratitude journal. These small things have helped in improving my and my family’s overall wellbeing and also helped me perform better in all my roles — professional and personal.
T&T: What’s something new you’ve learnt about yourself in the past 3–6 months?
AB: One thing that has definitely been a revelation for me and my team is our resilience, especially during the pandemic.
We are tougher, more resilient than what we think-tough times will not last, tough people will!
I never thought that we can work through the chaos of the work, house chores and the zillion other professional & personal responsibilities. I am not a stranger to remote work but I have always had a disciplined routine around my work. During the pandemic, this went into chaos and I am surprised at myself of how well I was able to manage this!
T&T: Talking about remote work, I think you must have been one of those rare people in India who have worked for the longest time remotely in pharma?! How has been that experience?
AB: That’s true, I have been doing remote/home-based work for the last 17 years now! So yes, I was ‘quite at home’ during the pandemic; two things have helped me through my experiences-how to form a disciplined routine for my work at home and second and more important point -knowing when and how to stop! A few things I follow myself are trying to stick to my start and stop times, knowing not to take breaks too frequently but still making sure I take the needed breaks from my desk.
T&T: Is there an example you would like to share that you would not have imagined is possible for a remote-working team?
AB: Yes, at Wockhardt, I led a team through a Covid-19 trial in a Covid-19 designated hospital, working with complex deliverables with challenging timelines. Our team was not ready, we did not even know how to handle everything remotely and that also in ultra-short timelines — like drafting the protocol and study documents in evolving COVID management paradigms, managing regulatory submissions and approvals, site initiations and staff trainings totally on-line without basic amenities that we take for granted like printing and couriering services. I am so proud that my team was able to complete all trial activities within timelines and was able to get good quality data, for one of our all-remote clinical trial.
T&T: Shifting gears to healthcare, did you have a personal encounter with healthcare in the recent past? What are your thoughts?
AB: My father underwent bilateral knee replacement a few months back. There were a few things that stood out for me about my father’s experiences as well as my involvement as a caregiver. From my father’s experience I realized how much homework and knowledge patients and their caregivers are able to get even before they reach the doctor’s office. They already know the different treatment options, the best hospitals/facilities and they already have opinions about how their issues should be taken care of. One good step that our healthcare system has tried adopting is to focus on this aspect of patient needs — about willingness to discuss their treatment options. During my father’s surgery, it was great to see that the surgeon and his team were ready to answer his questions, explain the procedure to him in detail and also the after surgery care was great at the hospital with all due discussions with the patient and care-giver. But sadly, all after care vanished once he was discharged. There seems to be a big gap in comprehensive patient care after their discharge from the hospital — thinking about patient needs, how we can support the patient’s rehabilitation, their nutrition needs, their mental counseling and physical rehabilitation. My father had a difficult recovery through six months after his surgery, which is expected, however there was never any ongoing counseling given to him through this difficult time. We cannot check with such patients only after the 6 months/1 year follow up period. This level of seamless comprehensive care of patients is lacking in our system. We don’t need just treatment options; we need comprehensive health management solutions to hand hold the patients till their recovery and rehabilitation.
T&T: Of course, there is the problem with stretched resources in our hospital system.
AB: I agree and maybe that’s where technology can come to help. I was reading your interview with Aakash Ganju on how this can change the way we deliver healthcare in the coming years. You can try so many things, you can support patients via apps, you can help them to track their own activities, and you can guide them remotely!
T&T: Is there anything that you see biopharma is doing well that the other healthcare sectors can learn from?
AB: So learning from this experience and also other observations about global healthcare, I feel one of the good things that biopharma have started doing is to start looking at patient needs as a continuous journey, rather than thinking only about dispensing treatment. So there are companies who are thinking holistically, providing tools and support mechanisms including digital ones like treatment companion apps. I think the rest of the healthcare system can learn from this.
T&T: Conversely, anything that biopharma can learn from other sectors?
AB: While biopharma has started their journey towards thinking about patients as end-customers, we are still not completely there. Here is a simple example-while I was trying to treat a minor respiratory infection for my daughter, there is hardly any thinking about how this set of patients (paediatrics) would consume your product-does it have different flavor options available rather than just one generic option that all kids might not be able to take?
In biopharma, taste/flavor can be a nice-to-do thing but for the patient-my daughter-this might be perhaps the only thing that matters! So this means we need to understand our customer better. I think the consumer industry does this much better.
T&T: From your perspective, what will be the biggest challenge for healthcare in the next decade?
AB: As I said earlier, patients are getting more and more aware about their own diseases and the treatment/management choices they have. So the next challenge-as well as an opportunity- will be to provide them what they want. We can’t hold their attention on fancy but nonsensical things; apart from the scientific advantages of your treatment, how you provide that treatment has also started becoming more important. We need to think about what they are thinking about, what they need and structure our products and services around the patients’ needs. Adopting personalized approach towards patient care will be the biggest challenge but also can be turned into the biggest business advantage across all healthcare sectors.
T&T: What’s the best piece of advice you could give to someone starting their first healthcare job now?
AB: I will talk about biopharma-I think anyone interested in joining will need to think about this as a great learning opportunity. Healthcare as a whole, and especially biopharma, is getting more and more complex and thereby a challenging field. My advice to the newcomers would be to be open for learning new things, get groomed in this wonderful field and its different aspects ; find a good mentor; find out which aspects of the job you love. Don’t think much about the title; think if the role can give you the right learning opportunity. As you progress further, you may not have the luxury of this learning time so make good use of it in the initial phases of your career.
T&T: Finally, any leadership advice/tips in healthcare, esp. for females?
AB: Yes sure; a few things- the early days of my career coincided with early days of my married life too. So one thing I learnt personally quite early on was the importance of your spouse/partner and your family in how your career shapes up. I remember the frank discussions I had with my husband about my career decisions and all the support I have received from him throughout. The kind of respect I receive from my husband, our parents (from both sides!) and other family members has been a cornerstone of where I am!
Family support is critical for everyone, but especially so for our female colleagues due to cultural and biological reasons. Having said that, it also depends on you — taking ownership for whatever you decide based on your priorities and then giving it your all. If you have taken a decision to take the next promotion/ a new job, know that this would mean additional work commitment so be ready for that. If you want to take a sabbatical to spend more time with your child/family or learn new skills, be happy in your power to take that decision and enjoy and make full use of that time. But most of all, I think we should all together create a culture where our female colleagues feel empowered to take these decisions- whether it means providing more flexibility at work place or supporting them as peers and family in their decisions.
I would also like to point to some good advice by Sheryl Sandberg in her book ‘Lean In’; it’s a fantastic book not only for our female aspiring leaders but also their male peers and family members.
One of the quotes from the book that particularly resonates with me is how ‘Done is better than Perfect’.
This is true not just for females but works universally for everyone. Trying to find the perfect work-life balance doesn’t work, trying to be the most perfect wife, mother, daughter and employee can be really daunting. Aiming for perfection in everything causes frustration and paralysis. So, whether it is in your personal or professional lives, sometimes making sure things get done is far more achievable, than trying to achieve 100% perfection in everything.
To sum up, we need to empower females to make their own choices and once they make a choice, let us support them fully on them.
T&T: that was a great discussion, Ashima! Thank you once again for your time and sharing your thoughts so candidly!
