“Patients first” sounds simple until you follow the incentives.
We’re joined by Dr Grant Coren, a genetics-trained PhD who moved from cancer research into decades of recruiting talent across the pharmaceutical industry and biotech. Together, we ask the uncomfortable question that sits under mission statements and glossy brand values: do pharma organisations truly value patients over profit, or do we build systems where profit is the only thing we reliably measure and reward?
We explore why communication breaks down, from jargon-heavy emails to patient-facing information that is technically compliant but hard to understand. From there, the conversation widens into how risk aversion accumulates through thousands of “safe” micro decisions, why Big Pharma often outsources early discovery risk to biotech, and what happens when acquired biotechs get assimilated into slower, more process-heavy cultures. We also talk leadership and psychological safety: brilliant people can want change and still feel unable to back a decision if being wrong is punished.
Technology and data get a hard look too. AI in pharma is attracting billions, but adoption is often blocked by culture, incentives, and a habit of hiding behind regulation rather than engaging regulators to modernise clinical trials. We then zoom out to funding realities and industrial policy, including whether state involvement and public-private partnerships could help fix market failures, especially as cell and gene therapies challenge old pricing and reimbursement models.
If you care about patient-centric drug development, clinical trials, biotech innovation, and the future of healthcare incentives, you’ll find plenty to argue with and plenty to take back to your team. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with your take: what would you change first to put patients ahead of profit?
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