On Transitioning to the Industry



Getting better at statistics and evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the single most important skill to work on if you want to (eventually) transition from a clinical to an industry role.  

 

The scenario

Transitioning fully or partially to work in the medical industry can be tempting. Depending on whether you end up at a small digital health startup or at Big Pharma, benefits may include:

  • Less/more flexible hours
  • Equal/better compensation
  • More autonomy
  • More variety

While some people who decide to make the switch are already very established clinicians, most make the decision earlier in their career like within or shortly after completing their residency.

For people who are further along in their career path, the following section may not apply since they have likely already specialized very heavily throughout their clinical/clinical research career. That specialization is what makes them valuable to the industry, e.g. in early drug development.

For pretty much everybody else, I believe that getting better at statistics/evidence-based medicine is the way to go.  

 

The prospects

It's hard to summarize all the positions that young clinicians can take on when joining the industry (especially with all the fancy titles), but I'd like to try. Most roles fall into one or several of the following groups:

  • The entry level Big Pharma physician helps prepare materials for clinical trials and supervises them.
  • The borderline data scientist works together with real data scientists and software engineers on (mostly Machine Learning) projects.
  • The content writer/educator creates educational resources for blogs, coaches etc.
  • The medical product/project manager leads a small team to develop new products or new features for existing products.

If you are a physician in the medical industry who does not fall into any of these groups, let me know - I'm genuinely curious! Now let's have a look at how each of these groups benefits from learning more about statistics and EBM.  

 

The entry level Big Pharma physician

This is pretty obvious. Your job is literally working on clinical trials and if you want to move up the ladder towards designing them, exceptional knowledge of EBM is non-negotiable.  

 

The borderline data scientist

This is even more obvious. Data science is statistics + programming so some knowledge in both will help you a lot. Even if you leave the programming to the professionals, they will look for your input since you have the domain knowledge in medicine. However, this domain knowledge is only 'unlocked' if you also understand the principles of EBM to critically assess the literature (and know enough about statistics to understand what the data scientists actually want from you).  

 

The content writer/educator

This is probably not as obvious. Someone who writes educational content on female anatomy and physiology for their FemTech startup might even be able to do their job without any knowledge of statistics. However, as a writer, you can rarely limit yourself to only writing articles on anatomy. Eventually, most will inevitably write articles that provide some sort of health guidance.

As soon as you enter this space, knowledge of statistics and EBM is crucial. You can't provide high quality work by essentially copying what others have already written. There are just too many bad articles out there. You also can't provide high quality work by summarizing research publications in a simplified form. Too many publications are of low quality and make way too ambitious conclusions considering the methods they have applied. TLDR: You can't provide sensible health guidance if you don't understand statistics and EBM.  

 

The medical product/project manager

If you are guiding the development of a new product or feature, chances are that this development will likely be based on some research. To assess the feasibility of actually turning that research into a working product, knowledge of statistics and EBM can help you separate the hype from the actual potential. In addition, grants are a good way to increase your budget if you're working on something innovative. Guess what is very helpful to writing a convincing, balanced grant application...

If you found this article helpful, let me know! If you disagree with some of the things I said, let me know as well! In one of the next articles, I will share my thoughts on how to get better at statistics and EBM.

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