Matthew Mace — Study Connect: The Start-up Revolution in Patient Care

Speaker:I am Adam Walker, a biometrics consultant, and this is Pharma Prescribed Podcast where leaders, innovators, and hidden voices in healthcare open up, no soundbites, no spin, just raw insight, one prescription at a time. In an industry driven by data protocols and pressure, we rarely pause to ask the human questions.

Speaker:What drives us, what breaks us, and what truth live behind the titles we wear. Our guest today is Matthew Mace. He is redefining what leadership looks like at the cutting edge of clinical research on multiple fronts. Founder of Study Connect, Inc. Where he\'s on a mission to streamline scientific innovation through faster trials and smarter collaboration.

Speaker:He\'s not just building a platform, he\'s shaping a movement. You might also know him as the host of the Study Success Podcast, where he amplifies bold ideas and practical strategies driving real progress in our industry.

Speaker:And now, as a newly appointed board director at Precision Cardiovascular, he\'s bringing his deep expertise in cardiac innovation to accompany creating the next generation of monitoring. Pep. Previously as co-founder and CSO at Acharai, Matt led the largest hemodynamic study in heart failure history, securing FDA breakthrough device designation, and raising over \$10 million to bring a novel technology to market with over 15 years across cardiology, ai, and MedTech, plus a knack for turning his vision into impact, he brings unmatched perspective.

Speaker:Purpose and drive. He\'s passionate about new technologies and exploring the boundaries to continue the revolution of patient care. And his aim is to further enhance the reach of lifesaving technology into the hands of healthcare professionals for the benefit of patients. Welcome, Matt. It\'s great to see you again.

Speaker:I hope that hasn\'t been too much of a lead in for you.

Speaker 2: It\'s,

Speaker 2: I\'ll pay you later.

Speaker 2: I come with a warning, right?

Non-farm pretending that I know about clinical trials.

But no, it\'s good to be here.

Speaker:Thank you. Thank you for joining today and it\'s been a while since we spoke, and I know I was on your wonderful podcast a little while ago.

Speaker:It seems like only yesterday we were sat in that little studio in Victoria and,

Speaker:having a coffee. It was also a very warm day, I seem to remember.

Speaker:How have you been since then?

Speaker 2: Yeah, things have been

Speaker 2: great.

Speaker 2: Ultimately, when you dive into the clinical trials world, you realize how much of a it is, right?

Speaker 2: I know the one side, I know the cardiovascular space quite well, and I know,

Speaker 2: devices,

Speaker 2: and when you look at that, you realize that,

Speaker 2: There are a lot of similarities across the whole industry. So I\'d be doing a lot of deep diving with leaders,

Speaker 2: Lots of CROs, a lot of tech co companies, a lot of sponsors.

Speaker 2: And then really understanding that, there is some universal problems and it\'s kept us excited and kept us busy.

Speaker 2: We\'ve just launched a beta test of the first side of our platform, which is,

Speaker 2: very exciting getting physician feedback on that.

Speaker 2: We\'ve got a lot of,

Speaker 2: a lot of back backlog code that we need to work through.

Speaker 2: But yeah, it\'s keeping us busy.

Speaker:That\'s wonderful to hear, and I follow you with interest on LinkedIn. You appear to be traveling all over the place. You\'ve been to lots and lots of conferences and you\'re popping up all over the place. You\'ve been running marathons, Ironman, all sorts of crazy things.

Speaker:How do you fit this all into your busy life? Because I know you also have a child as well.

Speaker 2: Yeah,

Speaker 2: it depends if you ask my partner or not,

Speaker 2: No,

Speaker 2: a very, it\'s a very tough. Thing to balance. And I didn\'t, I don\'t have balance. And I think when I looked at my time in the last couple of years at Acorai

Speaker 2: running a clinical trial,

Speaker 2: Incredibly hard.

Speaker 2: I spent 40 4-0 of the 52 weeks not at home.

Speaker 2: Which was,

Speaker 2: not the right thing to do for by my family, but, you feel like you need to do it when you are founding a company and trying to push through.

Speaker 2: And trying to find balance and, taking on advice. And I\'m really fortunate to be,

Speaker 2: Collaborating with,

Speaker 2: my co-founder who\'s in Bangalore, which means that,

Speaker 2: actually being in London is,

Speaker 2: an opportune place to be.

Speaker 2: But yeah, it requires travel. It requires,

Speaker 2: Meeting,

Speaker 2: Clients. It requires meeting industry professionals. It requires meeting,

Speaker 2: The medical,

Speaker 2: Professionals.

Speaker 2: So was just recently. At American College of Cardiology.

Speaker 2: I say recently,

Speaker 2: like only a few months ago, but actually it\'s quite a while ago.

Speaker 2: And then, yeah, my next actual planned trip is a not until Heart Failure Society of America,

Speaker 2: Which,

Speaker 2: is a conference I love well slotting in the middle,

Speaker 2: the Sydney Marathon, which,

To.

Speaker:It is amazing. It\'s amazing listening

Speaker:To you.

Speaker:So where is your focus right now from a business point of view?

Speaker:On the lead in, as I said, you\'re involved in a number of different organizations, a number of different companies and roles that you perform. How do you split your time between those activities of mind, your personal.

Speaker 2: Look,

Speaker 2: What I\'ve really enjoyed is that the companies that I\'m working with,

Speaker 2: either through Study Connect,

Speaker 2: Actually everything\'s through Study Connect.

Speaker 2: So as a board member,

Speaker 2: It\'s synergistic with what I do in my day job.

Speaker 2: Precision Cardiovascular is a late preclinical medical device company creating a implantable class three medical device.

Speaker 2: It is the sweet spot of what I want to cater for and what I really understand of when you have a drug or device and you need to take it to market or taking it to market requires a very large clinical trial, and it\'s really disappointing that there\'s a lot of advice, but a lot of the advice that we get to round today is not very good or is not very relevant to what we have.

Speaker 2: What I\'m really on the mission for is to try to help those companies and identify, when I can help and when I can\'t help

Speaker 2: with what they do.

Speaker 2: The clients that we pick,

Speaker 2: like precision cardiovascular for example, when I\'m working with,

Speaker 2: three or other clients as well at the moment, they\'re all very synergistic in that space of where they have either a, an early stage,

Speaker 2: Drug or an early stage device that they\'re trying to get in the market.

Speaker 2: And ultimately we try to solution for them. And we know if we build a product that solutions for an individual person, it will have a broad appeal as we continue to grow.

Speaker:So taking a step back, how did you get into cardiology in the first place? What was your background to bring you into this area?

Speaker 2: Luck, really. A good friend of mine, she now knows his story, but she didn\'t know the story for a long period of time. So a friend of mine, Nikki Chapman, so she wanted, we were at,

Speaker 2: Six form together. I actually wanted to do astrophysics. I had a place at Queen Mary University to do,

Speaker 2: To do astrophysics.

Speaker 2: Going into space was my number one thing that I wanted to do,

Speaker 2: And grateful to get a, an offer of a place at university. And,

Speaker 2: she said to me, Hey Matt, there\'s this,

Speaker 2: hospital who\'s trying to recruit and they\'re gonna pay for your degree. And they have this single,

Speaker 2: Clinical physiology, which,

Speaker 2: I thought was a made up word.

Speaker 2: And it turns out to be somewhere in between a sort of technician, a physician\'s assistant, and a nurse,

to go along with her. And,

what ended up happening is they offered me the job.

But the good news was, is that they had multiple jobs across the whole of Kent.

I could speak to them very nicely and said I didn\'t really want to apply, I know that Nikki wants to work here, is she the next candidate? And

That they had.

I elected to go to,

maiden and Kemp, which was only about,

where I lived at the time.

And then Nikki had this. So I thank Nikki for where I am actually,

because that led me on to working for the NHS and then.

Leaving the NHS relatively quickly,

To have bigger human impact,

Where I worked for Abbott and then ultimately now with five startups,

Down my career,

in affecting many hundreds of peoples of lives,

with either innovating tech,

Or just posing really interesting scientific questions.

Speaker:That\'s incredible.

Speaker:With regards to those five startups that you\'ve talked about. Is there a common thread that runs through those? Have you learned this? Have you learned one core skill that\'s taken you through those startup experiences? As someone who\'s, an independent business owner, myself, I don\'t have that expertise around startups, and I\'m sure our audience would love to hear more about that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think ultimately, like no startup is the same as each other, right? And I think when you are. And I took the sort of the easy, easier route and I think the better route that

Speaker 2: you should take,

Speaker 2: which is, we\'ve,

Speaker 2: My first startup was,

post revenue company.

They had a product in market that was doing lot, doing lots of r and d. They were not profitable at the time.

They were growing, but they still had lots of the pressure. So you really understand. What it means to have a runway, but you have the comfort, especially when you come from a blue chip company,

That we have a runway, but the runway is \$10 million and, there\'s a lot of things that need to go wrong to be able to completely run out of cash.

And that was a good,

Lead in and then, worked for, a couple of European startups.

And there were slightly,

Closer to the wind. So really what happens is that the risk appetite continually increases. Yes.

And you realize that, okay, fine. We saw that storm, and we oversaw that storm and we came through.

And then,

original founders of aai,

And we started to collaborate together,

they don\'t have a clinical background, I joined the team,

As chief Scientific Officer,

Really to focus on how do we get this product into market? And, going through different stages and knowing what you need in an early stage, really grit stage, really r and d stage, and the benefit of working for a blue ship and saying, okay, once we actually hit sales, this is how you continue to grow beyond that.

And e and every way in between,

You have to root yourself around the product lifecycle.

In a device category, and the same true for pharma.

My friends who, who are in the pharma cat category of biopharm, startups, you need to know which each stage of the lifecycle needs. When do you need to be dirty and when do you need really,

Put your best foot forward?

And there are times to push and there are times to retreat. And,

One of the companies I\'m chatting to at the moment,

They have a. They have a device,

Where the performance isn\'t as well as they hoped it was gonna be. But that\'s part of the deal when you,

Go in the entrepreneurial journey and to realizing that you\'ve seen this before and you have spoke to other founders and you\'ve created a network and saying, how did you deal with this?

How did you deal with this?

That\'s the biggest trick.

If you are not learning. Then you need to move on, and if you don\'t have the propensity to learn, then startup life and culture is not really for you.

Speaker:That\'s a really nice explanation around some of the things that you learned.

Speaker:Do you have any principles around that user? User experience that you, you take with you? I often think about the fail fast mentality, checking out and then just cracking on. Is that something that resonates? Are there other principles that you follow in software development lifecycle?

Speaker 2: Yeah, look, fail fast is a good one and I think it\'s a little bit more.

pharmaceuticals. We\'re a heavily regulated industry for a very good reason, right?

The end user is a patient and the patient\'s life is at stake of about what we do. So we do need to iterate fast and we need to think fast.

We need to,

make sure that we\'re comfortable making decisions with only 60% of the data so we can become very paralyzed in a medical device.

Company that you want to see all the data before you push onto the next trial or the next study, or the next iteration or the next version, and you need to be very comfortable,

To do that.

That being said, going fast isn\'t the only thing that you need. You need a lot of integrity when it comes to medicine in general.

There\'s a great quote by is the. The Merck, CEO. So Merck number three was saying, do the best thing by the patients and the profits will always follow. And that is the core guiding principle.

So I have a high ethics culture that I try to bring into any company that I have. So always doing the right thing by the device of the right pain, where the patients will always lead to,

An optimal outcome. It may not be an outcome that sits well or venture. As in your timeline may slip by two or three months.

meet those timelines.

The choice between cutting a corner, which no will expose,

expose risk to patients,

is definitely,

something that, I\'m not willing to take.

lifecycle,

product.

So I think when I take that principle and I push that through, and then being able to recognize, okay, when is my ethics too high for the situation that we need, right?

We are creating a test patch. To put on ourselves healthy volunteers, okay, fine. We can make a few,

cuts and corners around this one just to get that user feedback, being appropriate to where you are in the life cycle is important.

Speaker:The principle of do the right thing.

Speaker:I\'ve heard it in so many companies, and whilst many companies espouse that principle, it\'s not always the case, is it? But I think by at least going into situations with that good intention, putting the patients first, and certainly at the center of everything that you do, give yourself a fighting chance with the best of intentions behind it.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 2: You know what it\'s always hard. And

Speaker 2: a good friend of mine,

Speaker 2: he mentored the CEOs of PepsiCo,

Speaker 2: for a number of years, and he is saying, you only need, you need three things to be a good CEO or a good leader in general. So you need

Speaker 2: the ability to bring people along,

Speaker 2: you need to always do the right thing.

Speaker 2: And you need to have the ability to convince others. And you only need two of those, right? So either you naturally are charismatic and energetic and you bring people along and then you can convince other people to come along, and that\'s great, that\'s fine.

Speaker 2: But those are very, both two very high intensity skill sets, and the easy one is doing the right thing.

Speaker 2: But what we quite often get confused, especially in startup world, especially in,

Speaker 2: when it comes to publicly traded companies, is that we gravitate to the charismatic person who can have charisma, naturally bring people along, and also convince people to come along on the journey with them and persuade people.

Speaker 2: That\'s fine, but those eventually run out of steam,

Speaker 2: and the easiest one to do is to do the right thing, but it is paradoxically hard.

Speaker 2: When you are faced with a decision of doing the right thing will cause a delay. It\'s hard to do, but the way it\'s about shifting the mindset. So having seen a number of devices being developed in a number of technologies come to market, you realize that.

Speaker 2: By making an early decision to do the right thing, it will pay off in the long run. So you do have to trust the process, but you also can\'t trust the process. If you\'re a first time founder or you\'re a first time entrepreneur, it is the first,

Speaker 2: The first startup company you\'ve ever worked for because you feel if I can cut 1, 2, 3 hours outta my day, I will get there faster.

Speaker 2: That is very true. What are you missing and what is the risk analysis that you do behind there? And almost never does taking a shortcut result in a better patient. Now

Speaker:That\'s a wonderful summary there.

Speaker:I\'ve worked alongside plenty of charismatic leaders who have taken people along for the ride and the journey, and it hasn\'t always played out as well. And I think

Speaker:You\'ve beautifully summarized that particular point.

Speaker:So as a life science leader yourself,

Speaker:how do you bring people along for the journey?

Speaker 2: Look,

I have is. Is, I don\'t necessarily feel like you have to outwardly bring people along other than we work a lot on first principles, and you and I spoke about first principles before, which is, what are we trying to do and what is the process and does this make sense to you?

And if you can get alignment about what makes sense in the process and what. You are willing to give up and what you are not willing to give up then you can bring people along in the journey when there\'s misalignment. I think that\'s the biggest issue when it comes where startups fail or founders leave, et cetera.

Because if it gets a misalignment of what are we trying to achieve? Are we trying to build a product that meets the. Goals that we set for us at the beginning of this process, or are we just

trying to raise capital? And those two things are sometimes incompatible and we have to be able to be adults and take stock of things.

Look, where are we in the product life cycle, and are we going to meet our goals and let\'s talk through the process and do it

in a way that has no emotion or has less emotion. Because once you put emotion, you turn up the heat,

On it.

It\'s important to figure out what is the right process and what is the right path rather than who is right in the situation.

And I think when you take that and when you put a what is right, first mentality into your team, you will naturally bring people along. But they have to be in that mindset.

is a very challenging task, and hiring is,

As dicey in the likes of, Roche, multi hundred thousand employees worldwide as it is, when you have three people because any influence that you have over the decision making of a team will steer it gradually off course.

You need to have those reflection points to rather bring it back and talk about, okay, what is an Northstar and what are we heading towards and are we still heading towards that? And we have to also challenge, is that the right goal? Do we still want to head towards that?

Speaker:You, you\'ve mentioned in the past,

Speaker:Your business partner\'s based in Bangalore.

Speaker:I\'m curious alongside, identifying good people to, to work alongside how you came to working with her, how that came about, and indeed your complimentary skill sets in spite of the fact that there is a physical distance between you.

Speaker 2: Yeah,

Speaker 2: did think AAR is,

Speaker 2: A phenomenal entrepreneur. She\'s three time founder.

Speaker 2: She has scaled and bootstrapped,

Speaker 2: Her previous startups,

Speaker 2: which is phenomenal,

the coding skills, right?

Speaker 2: That\'s

in a co-founder. But when you are trying to build a company, you need to look at the complimentary skills so you know, how do people think about the problem differently.

So ADT and I, we met over Y Combinator,

founder matching platform. So we were both looking to start new companies.

I had an idea, I had a very strong idea about what I wanted to do with Study Connect.

And she was very adamant that she wanted to work in healthcare. And with that sort of goal of, we can help healthcare companies and life science companies.

Achieve their goals better and help patients,

we agree upon, right? What we do as a company is to help the end user, which is the patient. We do that via helping the sponsor and we took a long discovery period and I traveled out to Bangalore for 10 days and the disease has been here for, in London for 10 days, and we\'re just planning

our next in-person check-ins.

For that, and we\'re constantly reevaluating, is this the goal that we want to go towards?

Speaker 2: But still keeping the mission of, we think that innovation in healthcare is broken. It takes 40% longer now to conduct your clinical trial than it did two decades ago, and. It does and it requires, twice as much capital to do that.

Speaker 2: Now a lot of that is actually, we\'re paying fair prices to the hospitals and investigators and patients, which is completely right. And a lot of it is, there\'s just a lot of inefficiencies that we need to overcome. So how do we sort between the noise and how do we help life science companies navigate this?

Speaker 2: Without going off and spending, two, 3000 pounds with an advisor who doesn\'t really do anything for them, how do we hit

Speaker 2: The number of the issue and really challenge what they\'re doing?

Speaker 2: So yeah, we speak every day. We,

early crack of dawn. We speak, we discuss,

we work and we code and we focus on the problem we have.

I focus on validating our product with users, with CROs, with sponsors, with physicians,

securing clients, doing sales, et cetera. And, she focuses on the product thinking, how do we implement this? How do we grow, how do we, not if we have a hundred users, how, what if we have a hundred thousand users right on the platform?

And how do we build infrastructure,

To meet that? And then we. Realign and we decide if this is the right path and we have con constant conviction that this is the right path When we speak to sponsors and CROs that we are on the right,

the right track, and this is a worthy problem to, to tackle.

Speaker:So on, on that particular point, would you mind sharing with our audience where you are on that? Product timeline with regards to coming close to fruition and perhaps also your rationale behind keeping it small building out.

Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: One of the best advice for all startup companies is to do things that don\'t scale, right?

Speaker 2: So we work with a number of life science companies who are looking to get clinical trials. Off the ground trying not to collaborate with physicians, and they\'re using myself as a port of call to saying how do we access the cardiovascular community firstly, but more importantly is that how do we make sure we ask the right questions?

Speaker 2: Quite a lot of the time we\'ll see protocols sent towards us, which are our mammoth long documents with, 10,000 secondary endpoints. And this is not an executable trial. Now it\'s in vogue, or it was in vogue to overload clinical protocols or in a medical device community, clinical investigation plans, but really overload them and put lots of secondary endpoints, but that\'s not really gonna help you get the market.

generally speaking, founders are discussing their ideas with one or two key opinion leaders who they know, who know the product and are sold on the idea and actually the exposure to broader side sides of the market, just challenging ideas,

is very, really important.

Speaker 2: So what we\'re focusing on today, so we have current beta launch of a physician sided platform. So we know there\'s some gaps in the physician community. How do you discuss innovative ideas? How do you take research one step further?

Speaker 2: Majorities is of these discussions happen an offline forum.

Speaker 2: So they happen in person in conferences.

Speaker 2: And how do we keep the,

Speaker 2: Conversation going? So that\'s, the platform is implemented. We\'re testing, we have user feedback.

Speaker 2: We are, looking to partner with,

Speaker 2: Medical. Communities,

Speaker 2: whether they\'re large or small,

Speaker 2: That we could host their community and help engage their members,

Speaker 2: To discuss with each other.

Speaker 2: in an early development stage, early prototype stage that we\'re taking into coding now, which is a trial navigation platform. So we use the word navigation

Speaker 2: by saying of, whether you are on the platform or not, we can bring our. Communications and we can execute clinical operations,

Speaker 2: Discussions, exchange of documents,

Speaker 2: Just pushing through the process, challenging questions, helping to crowdsource ideas,

Deliver our science before we do that first patient in.

And \'cause the issue is that when you do that first patient in. The likelihood of you changing your clinical protocol or your clinical investigation plan dramatically decreases even if you know there are deficiencies. So we need to help people find collaborators and challenge those. Now, currently we\'re doing that in an offline fashion,

Paired them up with great institutions around the world and we\'re helping them through their clinical investigation plans,

And making those challenges.

When you get to that stage.

Speaker:Thank you for clarifying that. Matt. If I can push you on that go live date, do you have a go live date in mind? Is it something that\'s out there in the ether? If there are people in the cardiovascular community at the moment who are listening to this and thinking this is a tool that they wanna be using, when are they likely to be able to use it?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so

very important. GDPR compliance is very important about how we exchange information. So we have all that infrastructure that we are ready to build, but we\'re also doing it offline now.

We are taking on clients now and we\'re helping them through the process and helping them manage to see what they have so they can see preview versions of what we\'re doing,

Be before the sort of go live date.

upcoming.

Speaker:Nice. That\'s very positive.

Speaker:I appreciate you explaining that and being so transparent about it, Matt. I gather, at the moment there\'s a lot of moving parts, aren\'t there? You are peddling very hard. You have good intention behind this platform and there is an audience that you want to prepare it for us, presumably, as quickly as possible.

and making sure that it\'s ready when it should be,

And been appropriately tested around that. What do you see the future looking like?

What is the future, future plan for Study Connect? Looking a year, 18 months ahead with technology moving as fast as it is in and around, not just clinical research, but in the palm of our hands around AI and,

various other technologies that are out there right now.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn\'t really talk about the 18 months. Look, we have a very clear view that if we make connections and we help. People in the early design phase of clinical trials, which is generally speaking, not covered by CROs, and is

Speaker 2: Huge uncertain ground that people tread on when they go through clinical trials.

Speaker 2: So they think about them and they are in their echo chambers, and how do we help them challenge that? How do we. Create a platform where actually we may just purely connect experts together. You need a biostatistician, great,

Speaker 2: we know 10 great ones that we vetted already, right?

Speaker 2: You need a key opinion leader about societies. Look, yeah, we can help introduce you to those, and we can bring them on the platform and create

Speaker 2: a true marketplace. Ultimately, what we\'re trying to do, and it\'s not those connections.

Speaker 2: What our business model is.

looking into the future and saying, how do we reverse the time it takes to do a clinical trial? So realistically, how do we

a well-executed trial on time and on budget, and we are not a CRO and we don\'t want to be a CRO and we want to work with CROs to help them do that as well, right?

So whether you\'re a sponsor and you want to work with CRO, you want to do it independently. We just want to help you through the process. And we know that the biggest bottleneck is clinical sites, and we know it\'s the insights that we have and we can help glean of. Actually, how long will it take to contract with this site?

How likely are they to enroll the patients? How engaged are the physicians? How well designed is your protocol or a global clinical trial? Quite a lot of the time you\'ll see protocols written in Europe, for example, and they\'re aiming to do a US study well. Hospitals aren\'t the same over in the US and do you know what?

The US is a massive country, so hospitals are not the same from one state to another. So really thinking about that and saying, okay, this is our protocol and we would like to work with you, but does it work? And asking those questions early on, does it work? And we know if we do that. And my experience is that if we do that, we\'re able to deliver trials that are on time and on budget and.

Do you know what, like many colleagues of mine doubted that, one was at Aria was gonna deliver a 1600 patient trial in 12 months and we didn\'t do it in 12 months. We did it in 12 months into three days.

We failed obviously.

That\'s a massive undertaking and it was all in the preparation and it was all in the planning phases and identifying.

The sites that we wanted to work with. And do you know what? We actually turned down big marquee sites with big logos who really wanted to work with us because we knew that they weren\'t going to help us meet our timelines. They were gonna contract for 18 months. We wanted to be finished in 12.

Not going to match and jive with us, right? We had people wanting to collect additional endpoints.

In our trial, that\'s not gonna work. That means a patient needs to come back. We didn\'t want a patient to come back to

our trial. We needed to keep it simple and straightforward.

We needed the study nurse and coordinator to be finished with our trial inside an hour. That\'s what we set ourselves as

and people don\'t really think about that when they\'re designing trials, but actually there are enough physicians, MD statisticians, great CROs, great advisors who help or who are thinking like that, and we just want to connect them and also use our experience.

Speaker:It\'s a really nice summary there and I think for anyone listening, participating

Speaker:in this conversation, in and around it, in their day to day, they will get enormous confidence from the way that you described that, Matt, because I think it\'s one thing having good technology, it\'s another thing being surrounded and being advised by good people who know their industry, who know it from the inside out.

Speaker:But I think to your point. It\'s about connections and it\'s about the capability around those connections, isn\'t it? So if I\'m listening and hearing you correctly, not only do you have a great product, by the sounds of it, you have a very strong professional network in which you can advise and put people in contact with other great people.

Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: And I think just, add adding onto that, like we\'re in the era of AI and we\'re the era of information and we have this point where there is. Nominate amounts of information that we can collect. And we just need to ask ourselves, is that the information we want to collect?

Funny enough, a friend of mine said, the issue with,

chat PT is that it\'s, it always knows the answer and it\'s always very positive, right? So we describe to it and we say, Hey, I have this, Stu I have this idea for a study or this product, and what do you think? And you can do some deep research on this.

And it goes, oh, that\'s amazing. You should definitely do that. And there is nothing like that in the marketplace.

And here\'s three data sources where why it should be good and here\'s how you write your protocol. And this is not. I\'ve seen this. I\'ve see, I\'ve literally seen a protocol entirely written utilizing an AI tools, and I was like, what?

Who, what KOL did you speak to? What physician?

And I\'ll say this as, as well, actually as KOL isn\'t, we normally use KOL as a key opinion leader, as a world expert and a leader, but actually I use it slightly differently. I just find a physician who practices medicine. Who is infectiously excited about the prospects of your product?

That\'s all I want because, they\'ll be engaged, but you also know they\'ll give you good advice. They are, they don\'t have a reputation to, to uphold and they were able to say, you know what, that\'s not gonna work. And we had it this week with, we want another clients and they were very convinced about a certain product decision.

And once we spoke to. We, a physician who sees patients every day and is that isn\'t gonna work. My patients aren\'t gonna do that. And you can approach that one or two ways and go, okay, great.

We\'ll ignore him.

Or we\'ll go deeper and ask deeper questions, because that\'s not always the end of the conversation, right?

So it\'s about making sure that when you. Are going to market that you are not in your own head and you\'re not just speaking to people who agree with you. The number one thing you should do. And the number one thing I try to do is I try to find people who disagree with them because people who disagree with me, I\'m gonna learn a lot more about myself and about the product and about how to.

Speaker:on that point of disagreeing. I really like that sometimes, as you say. I did an exercise recently in a workshop where we asked the same question to three or four different chat GPTs, and we got three or four very different answers.

Speaker:And as you iterate and ask the same questions to each one of those. It becomes further and further away,

Speaker:even to the point where you\'re asking for a random number to be generated. You know that in itself.

And it was really enlightening.

the realms of using these tools or advisedly having guardrails around them, like we discussed when we spoke on your podcast, Matt, it really just reinforces again the value of expertise. You talked about that infectiously excited physician and I think that is just absolutely pivotal.

It\'s being with people who get. The enthusiasm who have the magic and the enthusiasm in what they do and how they describe that. But also, you know perfectly well if you are dealing with that particular individual, that they\'re gonna be working alongside some other equally infectiously excited individuals.

And that\'s an exciting place to be.

It\'s a great point.

Speaker:I think we\'ve had a really. Conversation today, Matt,

Speaker:And I always like to finish with a quick fire round and,

on various rules of life and business. So if I can move on to that. So what is the one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?

Speaker 2: Question. Everything. Definitely. I didn\'t question enough when I, especially in blue Chip, didn\'t question enough.

Speaker 2: It would\'ve brought me ahead a lot faster.

Speaker:Very good. What are the three top qualities you look for most when building a team?

Speaker 2: So mission

is everything.

Honesty is the second characteristic that I always try to,

to find and then humility. So realizing that you don\'t know the answer.

So quite a lot of the time, one of my, one of my tricks is to answer a question, which I know they don\'t know the answer to. We\'ve probably spoken for 20, 30 minutes already, and we just ask a question, which like, I know you\'re not, I know they\'re not going to know the answer completely, not in their area of expertise.

Then seeing how they react. Because if they act with honesty and humility to say that they, they don\'t know the answer, but they may know some adjacent information and they offer that adjacent information, you know that they\'re the right fit because they\'re the people you need on the team.

Speaker:You made a great point there as well.

Speaker:I\'m reminded of the principle of the no dickhead policy. Basically don\'t surround yourself with idiots and you\'ll be an awful lot better off. I think it\'s some great points there.

Speaker:Outside of work, I know we\'ve touched upon Marathon, marathon running Iron Man family. Of all the things that you\'re involved in what\'s your passion? What\'s your, what\'s at the top?

Speaker 2: It\'s,

Speaker 2: you know what it, this is no, no joke. Really. Actually,

Speaker 2: one of my favorite things to do, and even when I was traveling a lot with Acharai,

Speaker 2: was I always try to get home for Saturday mornings.

Speaker 2: And Saturday mornings is when I take,

Speaker 2: My, my little daughter out. To the play park that is near nearby Asa. And so actually that\'s the one thing I enjoy. It\'s not going to the play park it\'s spending time, and getting her to explore,

Speaker 2: What she has. Currently that\'s the biggest passion I of mine.

Speaker 2: And if you took that away, I think I would be destroyed. I could stop running, that would be fine. But yeah if I didn\'t have that Saturday morning of daddy daughter time I think I might explode.

Speaker:I love that.

Speaker:Having previously run marathons and done lots of triathlons in the past, there comes a point, sadly, I have to share this news with you, Matt, you might not be able to do this forever.

Speaker 2: And no, I saw an 85-year-old

Speaker 2: who\'s doing all seven major marathons this year. That\'s the goal. But no, it\'s, it\'s true. My grandfather,

Speaker 2: Ran for. Great Britain when he was,

Speaker 2: in his formative years, and he can barely walk a hundred meters now.

Speaker:The first marathon I ever ran was for the premature baby Charity Bliss, when my daughter was,

Speaker:About 18 months, two years old, and I crossed the line only half an hour before a 97-year-old man called Fauja Sing, who was the oldest man at that time to have WR run the London Marathon. So I\'m not saying never, I\'m just, advisedly telling you that I probably won\'t be running the London Marathon at 97 myself.

Speaker:So finally, what is your number one golden rule in life and business map?

Speaker 2: Yeah I said it before, I had to do the right thing with the patient. That, that\'s the one goal, but just do the right thing and be honest. I think that is, is the important thing. I think once you know your limitations and know yourself, and you are honest with yourself, life is just infinitely easier than slightly tweaking off course. It\'s not a slippery slope, it\'s just, it\'s not congruent to who you are, right? So I think just being brutally honest and being truthful and doing the right thing always pays off.

Speaker:It\'s a lovely, it\'s a lovely place in which to conclude the conversation.

Speaker:Firstly, I\'d like to thank you so much for taking the time today, Matthew. It\'s been really enlightening and I know our listeners will have enjoyed listening and learning some of the principles that you work towards and the experiences that you\'ve shared with us today. If anyone wants to reach out to you, what\'s the best way to make contact with you?

Speaker 2: Just. Look at me

you can head to our site, which is,

Directly connects to my inbox so I can never sleep.

Speaker:Wow, that\'s fantastic. So as I say, I just wanted to reiterate and thank you so much today for taking the time. Matthew, thank you for coming on Pharma Prescribed.

Speaker:It\'s been an absolute pleasure today and we look forward to continuing the conversation and hearing the success of Study Connect.

Speaker 2: Thanks Adam. We\'ll,

Speaker 2: we\'ll speak soon. Looking forward to, seeing more episodes.

Speaker:Thank you so much for being here