[caption id="attachment_68" align="alignleft" width="271"] Rich Wilson[/caption]
Introduction - Who is Rich Wilson?
Richard R. Wilson, MD, earned a BA from North Park College and an MD from Northwestern University Medical School, both in Chicago. After this residency, he was initially in a group private medical practice. Following his years of medical practice, he entered the field of pharmaceutical and medical device development and has 38 years of experience in that field. He is the co-founder of two medical product companies. Rich also maintains an active US medical license (Illinois and Minnesota). He has served in leadership positions and as a consultant to medical centers and to both start-up and established international medical device and pharmaceutical companies. Additionally, Rich has authored numerous published journal articles and abstracts and is a named inventor on many issued patents and pending patent applications. His academic activities include teaching undergraduate and graduate classes. As an adjunct faculty member at the University of Chicago Graham School, he has been teaching seminars on medical team leadership and on medical product development since the late nineties.
- You are currently co-teaching a course titled “Project Management and Leadership in the Healthcare industry”. Having two instructors sharing the planning, organization, delivery, and assessment of instruction, as well as the classroom is a very interesting, fine-tuning, teaching act. How did this come about, and what is it that you enjoy the most about it?
- What aspects of your professional experience are, in your opinion, the most valuable to your students? Three aspects come to mind, all grounded in one of the foundational guidance of Hippocrates – “As to disease, make a habit of two things: help, or at least, do no harm.” The first aspect relates to having final medical (and often senior management) responsibility and authority for numerous medical product development teams. That teamwork has led to global sales of new pharmaceuticals and global sales of a combination of drug-medical device delivery systems, such as metered dose medication inhalers and transdermal drug delivery therapies. The second aspect that comes to mind is developing and mentoring teams, that is, experiencing first-hand the critical necessity of ethical, entrepreneurial, and high performance project teams. The third aspect is, to the best of my ability, combining the following: leading into the future, listening actively, learning continuously, enjoying others’ successes, and laughing, at times starting with my own foibles.
- From medical practice to medical product developer – can you tell us about a key moment in your professional journey?
- What do you consider to be your most rewarding career move?
· To provide excellent medical care to patients |
· To contribute to ethical, entrepreneurial, high performance teams and organizations |
· To develop therapies that improve patient care and health outcomes |
· To learn and to have fun |
- …and your toughest professional experience?
- What should people interested in a career in Clinical Trials Management know about this field prior to considering our CTM certificate program?
- Can you share a piece of advice that has proven to be very helpful in your career?
- In your opinion, as an inventor, what new application or procedure would benefit clinical trials management at this time? Continuous learning is critical when it comes to developing new medical products and procedures. Therefore, never, never, never stop learning. Strive to create project teams that lead and define the future in healthcare. In fact, it is much more satisfying and a lot more fun to be a medical project team that leads rather than one that duplicates.
- What is your next professional pursuit?
- Favorite vacation spot and hobbies?
July 13, 2016