Mark Silcock

Company

Phusion Health

HMX Course

Immuno-oncology

As head of patient programs at Phusion Health in Australia, Mark Silcock leads a diverse team that helps pharmaceutical companies bring new drugs to market. While he is able to draw on his training as a pharmacist, he recognizes a need to continue learning to understand the latest advances in medicine. He chose to learn with HMX to better support clients developing oncology therapeutics.

Immuno-oncology in Australia is relatively new; there are only a couple of products in the marketplace. I think the market is only going to grow, and in my mind, it’s going to grow really rapidly. And so I did a bit of self-analysis – what do I actually know about immuno-oncology?

I felt that I was relatively familiar with some high level concepts and industry terminology but I certainly did not have a detailed working knowledge of the principles and concepts underpinning contemporary immuno-oncology. I think that this is what was ultimately my driving motivation to apply for enrollment in the course.

I found the [HMX] learning platform really easy to navigate. It was really intuitive and easy to swap between pages. I found the progress bar along the top helped me navigate where I needed to be within the timeline of my course. I also found it really helpful to get regular emails saying the new course [material] has just been released. In my work I’ve got a lot going on, and sometimes it’s really helpful to just have a gentle reminder to say, ‘there is work to do in terms of your online study.’

One thing I would say that I wasn’t expecting, which came with a real joy when I saw it, was the videos where you have the real-life professors and doctors sitting around the table or in the laboratory talking. For me it was one of the highlights of the course; I find those really, really insightful. I felt like I was in a lecture theater whilst I was sitting back in my lounge room in Sydney, enjoying the sunshine on the weekends. I could almost feel myself just chatting with the professors and the doctor. It’s really interesting just to get a real-life take on, ‘this is what happens, this is the process.’ Because I think people like me who sit in an office all day, we become a little bit removed from the reality of clinical practice and how, in a way, we all as stakeholders come together, whether you’re a practicing physician or whether you’re an academic or whether you’re somebody like me that works in the pharmaceutical space. I think it’s really interesting to have a bit of a deeper understanding of what other people actually do.

The other thing was the ability for the students to post a question online. That was a real opportunity for me to be able to follow and track questions and threads from other students. The [course moderators] were highly responsive in terms of time and quality to their response. A student would put up a question and then very, very quickly they would come back with an answer. I found those to be really high-quality explanations and in some cases, these are highly complex scientific concepts. I think the ability of the moderators to just be able to cut through that and provide really simple explanations – that was really, really great. I really felt that if I had an issue or a problem, or if there was something I didn’t understand, that the Harvard HMX team were very much on board to provide not only support, but also answers to my questions.

In my mind, it’s the two Cs of credibility and confidence. I think the fact that I’ve completed this online course on immuno-oncology at Harvard, I think it immediately gives me credibility within that field, within the pharmaceutical sector, certainly in Australia and certainly overseas as well. So I think that credibility is really important. I think though, what is important is the confidence that it gave me, so I can then engage with and talk to customers and clients. The fact that I now have this newfound confidence and credibility, I can really strongly and confidently step forward to say to [a client], when you’re ready at some point in the future, my team are here to support you, as we’ve got expertise and knowledge in terms of immuno-oncology and what that means to stakeholders, whether that be physicians, patients, hospitals, or otherwise.

So I think for me, it’s very much a starting thing. I’d never undertake the course with the expectation that it would revolutionize the work that we do, or revolutionize the way that I interact with clients. But I think it provides a really strong foundation to be able to very much lean into the future in terms of the developments of immuno-oncology in Australia. Certainly in the next one, two, three years, I think that the future for immuno-oncology in Australia is really bright. I think this course has given me a really strong foundation to start discussions and interactions with companies that ultimately will be great in terms of perhaps new business, but also great for me, personally, because it allows me to continue to develop and learn as I go.