Building a High Impact Customer Education Program
Lori Harada is Senior Manager of Commercial Technical Excellence at Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies. Starting out as a nurse, Lori found that education was her passion and she’s been involved in it ever since. In this episode she shares the importance of education, what types of people are drawn to it and how to prepare them for success, considerations for designing an education program, and how Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies is changing the lives of patients.
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Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service and is minimally edited. Please forgive the mistakes contained within it.
Patrick Kothe 00:31
Welcome! Recently, I made a video for the first time using Final Cut Pro. That's Apple's video post production studio software. I'm pretty comfortable with audio editing. But after opening up Final Cut Pro and clicking around a little bit, I discovered I really had no idea how to use it. So like many things, I went to YouTube and Google University for help. And instead of going through a comprehensive training program, I just watched the videos and in the next video that would solve the problem they currently had, and would move me along a little bit. Some of these videos are good, some were bad, and some I needed to rewatch a few times. Not an ideal situation actually took me longer to complete the project and left me frustrated. And I know there are things I should have learned that would have made the project better and left me more prepared. The next time I make a video. I can imagine the Product Manager at Apple, shaking their head wondering why anyone would be so dumb. They're also probably wondering if I'd continue to be a customer. Or because I wasn't trained properly, it's going to torpedo the sale. Most of the medical devices we sell require training to be used correctly. How we approach training can make all the difference in the customer's proficiency, confidence, and frustration level. And let's not forget the impact on the patient. Our guest today is Laurie Harada, Senior Manager of Commercial Technical Excellence at Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies. Starting out as a nurse, Lori found that education was her passion. And she's been involved with it ever since. First as a clinician inside the hospital, then moving into industry, with Baxter, as an independent consultant, and Terumo. In our conversation, we discussed the importance of education, what types of people are drawn to it and how to prepare them for success considerations for designing an education program and how the trumeau blood and cell technologies are changing the lives of patients. Here's our conversation. Laura, you spent much of your career in clinical education. What drew you to clinical education.
Lori Harada 03:16
I started in nursing back in the early 80s. And when I got out of nursing school, I went directly into an intensive care unit. So which is typically rare for a new graduate to go into to such an intensive medicine practice. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it and I loved sharing that knowledge with new people coming in. As I progressed through the basic intensive care unit to a open heart intensive care unit. I became a preceptor. So that's someone who teaches or mentors, new graduates or new employees to the unit. And I found my niche in educating people complex processes to make them simple. And it really sparked an interest in moving into clinical education. I left the hospital and was hired at Baxter healthcare as a technical specialist as they called it back then, and that was a person who trained their customers on their products. And and of course I was in the blood collection and separation industry I still in but I learned how to train people through working in that role. And I have progressed through the last 35 years of training people and training people how to train people.
Patrick Kothe 04:53
What is it about training people? That is so exciting for you
Lori Harada 05:00
It's seeing the look in their eyes that they finally get it. It's that aha moment that you realize you help them understand a complex process, you made it simple for them to get it, and they can apply it in their work day life. So it's that, that spark,
Patrick Kothe 05:24
it takes us time to get good at whatever it is that we're trying to do. Teachers aren't teachers, immediately, they have to learn how to teach. Tell me about your evolution in how you started to you had the knowledge? And then how do you pass that knowledge off? that somebody's going to grasp it?
Lori Harada 05:50
You know, that's a that's a good question. It's a lot of trial and error. Because if you don't have any formal adult education processes, which nurses typically don't, they're taught the medical industry and how to take care of patients. To train someone is a unique skill, and to be able to convey something complex to a individual, so they get it is a skill. Now, there are many classes that you can take about adult learning transfer and things that help give you the tools to transfer that knowledge. But the practice of doing it day in and day out over and over and over again, you develop your own style. And that's the one thing that I teach people, when I'm teaching them to teach is to you will see my style, and you might like my style, but it may not fit your style, you need to develop that style on your own, so that you're comfortable and confident with conveying the information that you're trying to teach them. If you're not confident, it won't come across that way. So practice makes perfect, just like in any skill, whether it's swinging a baseball bat, or a golf club, or whatever, it's practice. And if you repeat it, and it becomes a habit, then it becomes more natural to be able to teach that way.
Patrick Kothe 07:29
Some of us have taught, some of us have have trained and done education. But all of us have been in a room or been in a training session that's either been really interesting and captivating, or has been extremely boring. And that educator may or may not know what they're doing up there. And may may or may not have that feedback that they're boring the heck out of somebody and or worse. It's a critical skill, and they're not transferring that skill.
Lori Harada 08:05
Yes, you're absolutely right. I've been in many sessions that I've sat there going, Oh, my goodness, where did this person learn to speak?
Patrick Kothe 08:17
Well, we're gonna get into into developing programs in a couple of minutes. But I thought it was interesting kind of how you got going. And I wanted to pull on that thread for a little bit. But let's talk about clinical education. What is clinical education to you?
Lori Harada 08:31
Clinical Education is pretty broad, because it could encompass as simple as how to take a blood pressure, if we're talking medical, clinical education, or it could be as complex as how to run a medical device. And it depends on the industry. I'm in particular, in a particular industry of cell separation and collection. There's dialysis, there's Heart Lung machines, there's all kinds of medical devices out there that you need to master and learn to use optimally.
Patrick Kothe 09:17
So from a an industry standpoint, from a medical device company standpoint, it's teaching someone how to utilize the technology that you're providing within their care setting.
Lori Harada 09:30
That's a that's a good way to put it. Thank you. Yes.
Patrick Kothe 09:33
The first thing you have to do is you have to understand that care setting and understand kind of how you are going to be interfacing with them what they do, and then how your device fits within that.
Lori Harada 09:47
It's knowing your audience and knowing how your audience is going to be using that device.
Patrick Kothe 09:53
There's many different ways of of of training. Everyone's got an instruction manual. And you can, you can give somebody instruction manual and say here go at it. And, and then there's, there's hands on training, there's video training, there's virtual training. Tell me a little bit about those methodologies. And why you why you would choose one or the other, and what your experience has been, and what have been the most impactful types of, of training methods.
Lori Harada 10:30
So, I'm going to start with the most impactful because the most impactful are small groups face to face, where they can have direct hands on with the medical device that they're trying to learn. And they can practice over and over in a safe environment, so that they can make the snakes but you're there to protect and provide the safety that they learn while they make those mistakes. Because if you never make a mistake, then you're not learning, you learn from your mistakes, that's probably the most optimal. They're the small groups, three to five people, all around one or two devices to get their own hands on. Virtual is another option. And with the onset of COVID. Back in 2020, we hit a peak of virtual trainings and 85% of all of our trainings were virtual, because we just couldn't be face to face. Virtual serves many roles, one when you can't be there. And two, with the technology that we have today, like you and I are sitting here looking at each other over a computer screen, that technology has improved, especially over the last three years with COVID. A lot of hospitals, a lot of of settings now are providing all this virtual space that we can use on a regular basis. And people have it on both sides, when we first were getting into virtual trainings, they would never have a camera on the other side, they would rarely have a microphone, it would be hard to hear them, they could hear us, they would never see us it was a bigger struggle. Nowadays, it's a lot easier to do virtual training. Now you don't get that same kind of hands on. And in virtual a virtual world, you really need to have a champion on the other end. So the instructor can be on one side. But the learners on the other side of the camera, need to have someone there to keep an eye on everything. Because virtually you can't see everything going on like you can in a face to face environment. Now, another option for training is elearning, or modules that are created and are accessible over the internet. We have several elearning modules on our website at my company, and they have proven to be very effective. When we can't get out there and be face to face or even be virtual, we send them to our website. And they can review what they may have learned a year before or do some annual review for their annual competency. Those are great tools to have for augmenting the learning process.
Patrick Kothe 13:39
So in an ideal world, if you're introducing a new technology into a new customer, it's getting face to face in a small group setting with your device and having them go through a training live with you there that would be the optimal way of of doing it.
Lori Harada 13:57
That would be the that would be the optimal way. But it also depends on the device. If we have a simple device such as, say, a sterile welding device. So a device that Sterling welds two pieces of plastic tubing together, you might be able to learn how to use that over a video and not face to face. So it depends on the complexity of the medical device on what's ideal, or what's optimal, if it's a very complex device face to face is is really optimal.
Patrick Kothe 14:33
So I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier and that was letting people fail and, and learning from mistakes. So you've you've got a pretty complex machine, which we'll get into in a second and some of the products that you've got, but how far do you let somebody go when they've made a mistake? They may not realize they made a mistake and it may come back to them you know several minutes later and then they have to go go back and say, Well wait a second, that mistake was made a while ago. Because in a real situation, that's what's going to occur. But if you if you train them and immediately when they make a mistake, you correct, correct that right there? Is that the best way of doing that?
Lori Harada 15:17
Well, you bring up a very good point. And one of the hardest things a trainer can teach a trainer to do is to put your hands in your pockets and bite your tongue. If you're seeing someone make a mistake, because you need to let them make the mistake. Now your question was, how far do you let it go? Before you call a timeout? And say, Okay, let's discuss what's going on here. And you lead them down the path of what went wrong. I don't like to tell them what went wrong, I want them to find what went wrong. And when they discover the issue, or the error, or whatever it is that went wrong, they'll remember it much better than just telling them because just like telling a child to do something, they're never going to remember it unless they learn how to do it.
Patrick Kothe 16:19
You train a lot of different people. And you've trained physicians, residents, nurses, advanced practice providers, all kinds of different different people. Is it the same is training one group of people different than training another?
Lori Harada 16:34
Yes, absolutely different. Back in in my early nursing days, I was actually an advanced cardiac life support instructor ACLs. We taught the residents I worked at St. Louis University Hospital. So it was a teaching hospital. And I was part of the ACLS teachers that taught the residents advanced life support. And it is really different teaching physicians and residents than teaching nurses or teaching phlebotomist, you know, depending on their education level, and their interest. Interest plays a key part in learning. If you truly are interested in learning, you will learn if this is something that you're being forced to do, and you really don't care that learning is not going to stick that well. You have to be truly interested.
Patrick Kothe 17:29
Education can live in different parts of a company, it can live under the sales arm, it can be under marketing, it can be under its own, in its own department, have you experienced kind of all of those different flavors
Lori Harada 17:47
I have in previous lives in the industry, the education department was its own entity. In other realms, it's been under commercial sales. That's where I am now is under commercial sales. It's also been under human resources as a Education Department. So it varies depending on what you're trying to accomplish
Patrick Kothe 18:15
to education under HR kind of brings in another another part of it it's there's there's outside education and Inside Education, could be sales training, and could be just general education for everyone who works at the company and needs to understand what what the product is all about. So have you done both? And is that training different internal versus external?
Lori Harada 18:40
I have done both. Yes. Typically, you start with a basic training module. And then you adapt it to your audience. So you have all the parts of what needs to be covered in a training. And whether it's internal or external, you really need to know your audience, and then gear that information towards the audience. Let me give you an example. We do an overview class of one of our devices called this backdrop dia, which is a cell separation device. And the overview class gives our engineers and the people who work at our company, a high level overview of what the system does, does and how it's used. That's different than training an operator how to use it. But we use the same materials, just in different ways.
Patrick Kothe 19:39
You keep coming back to know you know your audience, and certainly that's number one. Yeah, certainly, certainly the key. What's a typical day have somebody in education department when they're dealing with external education, who do you interface with? Is it sales and marketing the customer When do you get contacted? what's your what's a typical day of somebody in clinical education.
Lori Harada 20:05
So I have a team of 12 people that covered North America. On Monday, they're usually getting on an airplane flying to a customer site. Tuesday, they start with a education program, whether it's training on one device or another, they begin training and they spend six to eight hours in that customer site, training them on that device. Now, how they get that request comes through sales. So sales is interacting with the customer, the customer says, Hey, I need some extra education, I've got a couple of new nurses. And we want to train them on the audio or the treatment. How do I do this sales mix that arrangement, they contact their counterpart on my team, because we all have, they all have territories that they work within. And they have different salespeople that they work with sales contacts, the specialists, then the specialists context, the customer, and begins the process, setting up the logistics of where the training is going to be how long it's going to be the dedication that the students need to have from the manager. So they can participate in the training. One thing that happens a lot is we come on site, and we're here to train them how to use a device, and they get pulled away because of emergency or because staffing is short. And there are all kinds of extenuating circumstances, but having the buy in from the manager for the support of that individual to participate in the training is really key. You heard me say know your audience. But the support of management to support that individual to participate in training, training is, is essential to do your job. And if you aren't trained properly, you're not going to be efficient in your job.
Patrick Kothe 22:09
It's always a challenge, when you're in a when you've got somebody that's in a clinical environment to carve up enough time sufficient time to go through the full training. These people will as you said, they're come and go, I got this going on I got this phone that's that's going off, I've got to go take care of that. Setting, the expectation, I would imagine is got to be something that management has to buy into and say, in our experience, in order to perform a proper training, it's going to take x amount of dedicated hours or minutes, or whatever to be able to do that Do I have your commitment to perform training in this way? Is is that kind of one of the first steps that you need to have when you start that process? That
Lori Harada 22:57
is exactly the first step. And that starts with sales. Typically, when the customer comes to sales and says, Hey, I would like training, or it starts with my team of specialists, because customers will reach out directly to them as well saying, hey, I want to arrange for some training. One of the first things out of our mouth is Can your team commit to two full days of training or whatever it takes for that training? And we have that discussion with the manager ahead of time to get that buy in Now does that always happen? Not necessarily. That's ideally, to have that buy in is so important.
Patrick Kothe 23:40
And from from the person sitting in there, it's got to be a strong whatsit. And for me, right, and that kind of goes back to this discussion about who you're talking to, whether it's a clinician or it's whether it's the person who's running the machine, or the person who's getting the results off the machine that needs to know a little bit about it, if you got a surgical item and and it's the it's the physician who's running it, who has their hands on and it has full responsibility for everything that happens with that versus the nurses prepping it. There's different levels of training different to different side of the coin, you need to know this side, you need to know that side. So when you're designing these programs, and you're on site, so somebody's coming on site, do you run all of that together? Or do you break it apart and say, you know, this person or this group, we're going to we're going to handle this, this section, and we need to have this these people in the room at this time. And then we're going to go at this and we're going to look at it a little bit different. It may be different specific with with your product, but in other other training sessions where you've got multiple customer groups, how have you handled it?
Lori Harada 24:53
So it depends. It depends on again, the audience and what you're trying to Teach. If it is a complex medical device like a blood cell separator, then you focus on the main people like the two to four main operators so that they get that attention. And that experience, a physician doesn't need to know how to run the device, lots of times, they'd like to know. They like to have that engineering understanding of things. And they can sit in. But it needs to be clear who the main audience is, in a room full of people. It you can't train 10 people to know the intimacy of a complex medical device, you can train to four easily, but you can't train 10. And those other six people need to understand that they're there to listen and take in as much as they can. But the focus is on the four main people.
Patrick Kothe 26:05
Laura, you said you manage 30 people right now. And it's a fairly large group that you're managing. Let's talk about setting up education programs, hiring, staffing, and training trainers. So let's start off with the personnel side of it. What makes a great educator, and what are some of the things that you look for when you are hiring somebody for that role?
Lori Harada 26:34
What I look for, is someone who's interested in teaching someone who's got that passion to teach. And when I when I'm hiring a new specialist, I asked them to present on something, I don't care what it is present on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I don't really care, present to me something and I watch their eye contact, I watch their speech, I watch and listen to how they read their audience. Because all of that plays into becoming a good educator or trainer. And when you've got some basic skills, I can teach you everything else, I can teach you all about the device that that's easy. Now, if you come in with experience on the device, that's even better. But usually we have to retrain them, because they've been taught one way and not the right way. So I'm not worried about that part of it, I'm more worried about the connection, and how that person can can connect to other individuals. Also, I look at how that person would fit within this team. Because the team supports each other. If that person is too much of an individual and not a team player, they're not going to fit in, in the team. And to me, fitting in the team is important. Having that passion to teach is important. And the rest, we can teach them.
Patrick Kothe 28:20
You identify the right person, I think those are great traits. And you know, kind of the way that you're looking at it, you could train product training with it with anybody but people training is and how to read people and how to communicate is a special skill. And it's gonna directly impact how someone's going to be able to absorb the information. So once once you have identified that person, how do you train the trainer's
Lori Harada 28:46
we do have a train the trainer program for our customers. But for our specialists, they go through a rigorous process of training, whether they know the device or not, they still go through this process. And they have milestones that they check off. For example, we call them customer trainer three or customer trainer four, which are levels. And a basic customer trainer is a level three. That means that person has gone through all the internal education has practiced and done mock trainings in front of customer trainer level fours which are are really our train their trainers. And then they go out and they get signed off in front of a customer. Most of the time the first time you try signing off in front of a customer, it doesn't happen. They have a meltdown or something crazy happens and they realize that no, I'm not quite ready. I need more practice. I need more observation. And we actually in our internal learning management system have a checkoff process that they have to go through of procedural classes, observations, mock trainings, exams, the whole gamut before, they're actually allowed to go into a customer site by themselves and train. Usually it takes six months before a specialist is signed off on one protocol on the idea, my newest specialist in the field now has been with us a year. And she's signed off on three in a year. And there are eight or nine protocols to be signed off on. So it's, it's a, it's a process because we want them we want to teach them how to teach. We want them to understand the device inside and out, because they're the expert going into the account, they're always going to know more than the customer, because we're training them all the nitty gritty details. Now a good trainer is someone who identifies the customer's needs or the audience, and gives the information so that person can remember, Pat, do you know how much a student remembers the first time they learned something, what percentage,
Patrick Kothe 31:21
I don't know, I would assume it's in the 20 20%
Lori Harada 31:24
to 16% 16%. And that's the thing that we teach our specialists. And when we teach customers Train the Trainer, because we do have Train the Trainer classes for customers so that they learn how to train our devices, we teach them the key 16% That your learners are going to remember, the rest of it is great to know, but they're not going to remember it. You want them to be safe, and operate the machine safely, and treat the patient or the donor with respect and accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. Focus on that 16% that they're going to remember. And then in the next training session, you can build from there. It's like Legos, it's a building block, you start with the basics, and you build from there,
Patrick Kothe 32:17
Laurie, yet, it's an extensive training process. And at time, you're also hiring people who may not have a training background and don't understand what it's like to get on an airplane on Monday morning and be gone from their families. So I would imagine that is a critical component to because turnover will kill you if you've got a long training program. So how do you? How do you manage that?
Lori Harada 32:44
I think in most organizations, whether it's a hospital or industry or whatever, you get assigned a mentor. And that's your buddy. And that person helps you with those growing pains, as I call them. Because if you're a nurse, coming from a hospital into industry, you have no idea how to rent a car, how to book a airline flight, what happens if my flight gets canceled? What do I do now, you know, there's so many things that you have to learn outside of just learning the device itself. And that's maneuvering in the industry and maneuvering in the world. Having a buddy or a mentor to help you through that learning process. We also assign, they could call up their buddy, or they can call me their manager and say, Hey, I just I just got canceled on a flight. What should I do? And I don't know how many times I've had that conversation with brand new specialists is Okay, so let's, let's see what's going on let's you know, look at the United schedule and call united and, and teach them how to relax and not get so anxious about travel. Because travel can be very stressful. Well, and
Patrick Kothe 34:06
then it's just you know, the glamour of travel wears off, you know, after you've been doing it for three months. Doing it for three months. And I you know, I've had I've lived it, where you get up every Monday morning, you get on a plane and you're home on Thursday, and you can't be the coach of your kids teams and and all of those life kind of starts happening and you start saying well, is this travel every week? Is this the career that I want to have? And that's that's kind of from your standpoint, how do you make sure that you're hiring the right people that can take that if you're hiring up them from the hospital. It's a completely different world.
Lori Harada 34:48
It is a completely different world, whether it's the hospital or blood center if it's if it's not from other corporate settings. It is a whole different world. And in the beginning, I pay a lot of extra attention to that new employee, we talk on a weekly basis, I check in with him on a regular basis about how's it going with travel? Are you are you getting through this because the first three months were the toughest and, and understanding that travel is not glamorous, it can be painstaking. And some people will make it. And that's okay. And, and giving them that right to make that decision. I'm not cut out to do this. Once you get through the first three months, then they get into a groove of, okay, um, I never really unpacked my suitcase, I just take my dirty clothes out and refill my bottles and keep on going. Some people thrive in that environment, they love being on the road, one of my senior specialists, who I hate to say this is turning 70 This year, and she's gonna retire and leave me. But she thrives on that travel just thrives on it. Some people love it. Some people don't. The thing is, is to recognize when it doesn't fit, and make that tough decision. I keep track of those newbies very closely to see how they're doing. I you know, HR has the stay questions, you know how to stay at your company. And I go through those stay questions, especially with the new people do it with everyone, but especially with the new people so that they're still liking their job, they still feel like they made the right decision to leave clinical and come to industry. Some people, we clinical come to industry find that after a couple of years, it's just really not what they want. They want to go back to clinical, they go back to clinical, and then they realize I like the industry better, then they'll come back.
Patrick Kothe 36:54
That's the most crucial part of an education program, in my estimation is the people it's yeah, it's not the it's not the you know, the videos or anything else you make. It's the people who are doing it and understanding what it is so, so let's the people now let's let's transition real quickly into some of the other things when you're designing, designing that training program. So let's talk a little bit about what you're designing for the customer. How do you set objectives, a syllabus, what you're going to cover, and how you measure your success?
Lori Harada 37:29
Well, it all depends on the audience. I always go back to the audience, you have to know your audience. And you have to know what it is you're trying to convey at my company trumeau blood and cell technologies, we provide continuing education credits for nurses. So we have to follow a specific format for our programs, they have to be they have to have objectives, they have to have an evaluation, there needs to be an agenda. There are specific things that we have to follow so that we can be accredited to provide continuing education credits, not all industry or corporations do provide CE use, we do. We're accredited through the California Nursing Association. So where do you begin, you begin with objectives, you chunk I call it chunk the material. So you bunch it in small learning segments. So for example, introduction, maybe that's five or six slides, and then preparing to perform the procedure and monitoring the run and ending the run. So you chunk these pieces so that they can go back. It's like modular almost, where you can go back and review a specific module that may be about what's happening during the main part of the procedure, or what type of data do I need to prepare to perform the procedure? There's bite sized pieces of knowledge. And that's all laid out in a design plan. When you first create a training program, you have to chunk it out first and then build the pieces of each.
Patrick Kothe 39:21
When you're deciding on the mediums that you need as a manager of a department. How do you decide how do you decide on the types of training materials that you're going to have? And whether they're for your department or whether you're also going to be sharing them with sales representatives who may be doing follow up training as well?
Lori Harada 39:43
Well, the advantage of of my company is we have a global training department that develops the training materials globally. And then each region takes those materials and uses them in the region, in the manner in which they see fit for their customers or their audience. And believe it or not sales as a customer besides our regular customers. So understanding, again who your audiences, I go back to that every single time, then that's how you design that program. We take these materials and use them in every facet. So whether it's one on one, whether it's virtual, the same information is used virtually versus in person, because it all has to go through a approval process to get the blessing of the corporation that you're saying the right thing, and you're giving the correct information, whether it's in person live face to face, whether it's virtual, whether it's an eLearning module, all of that material is basically the same, it's just conveyed in a different medium.
Patrick Kothe 41:10
Let's talk about Tirumala, and what your product is all about. So trumeau blood and cell technologies, tell me about what the purpose of the technology is what it does. And then we'll talk about the equipment. We have multiple
Lori Harada 41:25
different medical devices, but our core business is in the blood centers, where we collect platelets whole blood, we provide the support for the blood system in the United States. Another business area that we have is in the hospital realm, which is all around treating patients for all kinds of diseases. And all these devices are blood cell separators. So a blood cell separator is a glorified cream separator. It was designed back in the 50s. And the technology has greatly advanced since then, obviously. But it's a way to separate blood into its different components. Whether you're collecting platelets to transfuse to cancer patients, or packed red blood cells to give to accident victims who've lost a lot of blood. Or you're collecting stem cells to treat cancer patients and cure their cancer. What we're doing is we're separating blood and we're collecting different components. And the two main devices that we have are the Truma XL, which is on the blood center side collects platelets and packed red blood cells. And then the spectrum of DHEA, which is the therapeutic device that treats patients, whether it's a patient that has something wrong with their plasma, and we need to take all their plasma out and replace it with fresh plasma or albumin, or whether it's a sickle cell patient that has all these nasty sickle red cells that we want to get rid of and give healthy donor cells back to or whether it's a cancer patient that needs to go through a stem cell transplant to treat their cancer and cure them of cancer. And then the cutting edge area is immunotherapy, where we take those cells out of the body, we turn them into cancer fighting cells, and give them back to the patient to specifically target a type of cancer and kill it. So that's the that's the sexy part of it all is the immunotherapy because it's so cutting edge. And there's so much progress going on right now, with curing cancer and I'm saying cure, not remission, I'm saying cure. People are being cured of their cancer with immunotherapy. And it all starts with a collection of cells.
Patrick Kothe 43:53
So you mentioned flip phlebotomist earlier, your technology. Let's talk about the products, is it the machine and blood is put into it? Or is it the collection of the blood and then passing it to the machine? Are you making the plastic components and the tubing as well as yes separator.
Lori Harada 44:14
So so we've got the device, the hardware, we do make the disposable that's a single use only that fits on top of the hardware. And it's a continuous flow process where blood comes out of one arm goes into the disposable, maybe about a cup of blood, if you know we want to look at volume about a cup or so. And it separates we pull out what we want and then it goes back to the patient in the other arm. In the donor world when we collect platelets. It's a single needle operation where it's an intermittent flow and we pull the blood off we fill the rest of For we process it, and then we give it back. So it's either continuous or discontinuous, depending on what procedure we're running. But it's a small amount of blood that comes out of the body, and then goes back, all at the same time.
Patrick Kothe 45:15
Your devices are meant to be used in line with the patient, not offline, back in back in the office when when bloods already been drawn.
Lori Harada 45:24
Exactly. Now, we do have some devices that are used back in the lab for immunotherapy. And that's the what we call the quantum and afinia. And that's back in the immunotherapy where the quantum is a bio reactor where it grows the cells up and turns them into cancer fighting cells. So that's another whole division of our cell and gene therapy. Business area. So we do have some that are back in the lab. But our core business is connecting directly to patients and or donors and processing on the human.
Patrick Kothe 46:02
What's competition look like? In this space? Are there? Are there multiple competitors? Are there a couple of competitors? What does that look like?
Lori Harada 46:09
There's really one competitor. When we look at the donor world, we are kind of split 5050. Between that company and our company. When it comes to the therapeutic side or the hospital side 85% of all stem cells for transplant are collected on our device the app to
Patrick Kothe 46:31
your customers, and the training that you that you do with it. Do they find the device easy to use? Is it complex? How how do they find it when you're doing the training? Is it is it something that is a hard lift to get them to understand it or have your engineers done a good job in making it easy for them to use it?
Lori Harada 46:56
Well, the treatment device which is the blood center device was designed specifically for phlebotomist not for advanced education, phlebotomist typically have a high school education. So it's very simple to use, and very easy to use. The Spectre Optavia, the device for the hospital is more sophisticated, it has more features on it than the trauma does. So it takes a little more finesse to run it. However, it's pretty easy to learn because of the graphical user interface, it tells you everything to do. So basically, if you can read the screen, you can run the device.
Patrick Kothe 47:40
How involved as your group, when it comes to defining new products, or getting feedback to your marketing and product development people on on improvements to current devices or new devices.
Lori Harada 47:54
My team is key in that in fact, the engineers come to me and say, Hey, can we meet with your team to talk to about this new design we're thinking about or we want to run by your team, this change that we're going to make on the disposable because we want to make sure that the customers are get it. Or we're making some screen changes. Because we're updating the software, we want to run the screen changes by you. So they come they know that my team is the face of Toronto to our customer. And we see on a daily basis, what's going on in the field. So we're great resource for r&d and marketing to know what's trending out there. What's the buzz? What's going on? If not, every week, I have somebody coming to me saying hey, can you ask your team this question or? Or can we meet to run this by them?
Patrick Kothe 48:54
What do you think people inside your company don't know about what you guys do?
Lori Harada 48:59
I think what people don't realize is that this team generates revenue. Education can be seen as a cost, not a revenue. And my team does generate revenue.
Patrick Kothe 49:13
And that's because you're delivering value to the customer. There's true value in there. If we're just in servicing surgical instrument, there's not a whole lot of value. You're providing value that either the blood center would have to train their own people or they would need to bring in experts to train it. And that's the value that you're delivering.
Lori Harada 49:34
You're absolutely right. We do deliver a value and our customers recognize that value and they're willing to pay for it.
Patrick Kothe 49:41
Well, Laurie, thank you so much. This has been just a really interesting look at clinician education as well as internal education but really focusing on clinic clinician education and very interesting to hear your your views on how to do it properly. If If you're gonna give some advice to somebody who's at a company that is either developing education program it within their company or as launching a product, and is it's got an education component they need they need to put together for that individual product. What kind of advice would you give that person?
Lori Harada 50:24
I think I've been saying it all along, you know your audience, understand who you will be educating, then design that around your audience, and use all sorts of methods. Because people learn differently. Some people are tactile learners, some people are book learners, and you need to be versatile in your methodology for training. But it all goes back to who am I.
Patrick Kothe 50:56
Laurie spent her career in education and has a well rounded view of how it fits within a medical device company. After we stopped recording, I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into the turnover issue that that we touched on. And what she told me is that turnover is very low under Group. I suspect that's because of the care she talked about in training her trainers, not just product training, but people management. A few of my takeaways. First 16%, she, she talked about that 16% retention level of that people have when they go through a training. And the way that what she's doing is making sure that they nail that 16% First, anything above that is gravy, but make sure you understand what the 16% is that you need to get them to understand. And then build on that. So it's kind of like as you said, the Legos you're just building on a foundation, build a solid foundation, and then add additional training on top of it. The second thing was in dealing with mistakes and allowing people to make mistakes. And what she said was if you never make mistakes, you're not learning. And what she's teaching her trainers to do is put your hands in your pockets and bite your tongue. Allow people to make those mistakes, don't let them go too far. But allow them to make it in what she what you described calling a timeout and helping them find out what went wrong on their own. So getting people to understand and come to that realization herself as opposed to saying stop you did something wrong. The last thing and this is a theme throughout throughout this episode was know your audience. And that's whether you're doing training or or talking to management or talking to customers is knowing your audience specific with training it's meet them where they are, what is their function, what is going on within within their department, meeting them where they are, and then understanding and providing them what they need. Thank you for listening. Make sure you get episodes downloaded you device automatically by liking or subscribing to the mastery medical device podcast wherever you get your podcast. Also, please spread the word until a friend or two to listen to the mastering medical device podcast as interviews like today's can help him become a more effective medical device leader. Work hard. Be kind.
