Our oldest, about to head off to college wants to major in chemical biology. They love the lab. Ten years ago, I might have told them to focus on doing their research in the summer, to aim for a position in academia and learn to write a lot of grants. Now I’ll tell them to look at internships at pharma and to do a dual aim. Before, there might have been an either/or attitude to academia that isn’t relevant anymore.
In health services research as well, there’s a persistent belief in public health and academia that industry is somehow “less meaningful” work. If you move into pharma, biotech, health tech, or consulting, or market access, you’ve stepped away from making an impact to science or humanity.
We think that framing is backwards, as some of the most consequential healthcare decisions happen inside industry.
Decisions about:
what evidence gets generated
what outcomes get prioritized
what treatments get reimbursed
what providers adopt
and ultimately, what patients can access
Industry needs more scientifically rigorous people in those rooms. A lot of healthcare organizations are trying to solve deeply technical and system-level problems, and these are not purely “business” problems but scientific, economic, and policy problems.
Especially in countries like Canada, where healthcare decisions involve complicated interactions between:
HTA bodies
provincial reimbursement
government stakeholders
clinical evidence standards
health economics
and public-system incentives
You cannot navigate those systems effectively without people who actually understand them. You on the other hand may be producing work that never meaningfully influences decisions. The science may be excellent, but if it stays trapped in journals, conferences, or niche academic circles, its real-world impact becomes limited.
Meanwhile, major decisions about treatment access and evidence standards continue happening elsewhere. So if you’re currently a health services researcher, industry needs your expertise.