Here are my 14 cents on why Novartis' BioCamp is right for you

When I got rejected from the two core committees at XLRI, I felt devastated. The feedback was that I was "High-risk, high reward"— I didn't seem like a team player and that my focus was all over the place. Considering I was going through a challenging phase personally and was under medications for Depression and PTSD (after losing people under my care during COVID19 frontline work), I took it more personally than I should have.

All of my 1st terms transpired like this: feeling always drowsy (due to meds), anxious (with frequent panic attacks), out of place (untimely zone-outs), impulsive and utterly incompetent.

Very fortunately, however, I was able to recover gradually in the second term. Thanks to a compassionate therapist, who introduced me to boxing, and an amazing book #Good Vibes, Good life (gifted by an even more amazing friend), I was able to gradually cut the dependency on my medication completely. With this came the understanding that it was my ability to collaborate and focus that was being questioned, rather than my work ethic... And the seniors of these committees were absolutely right!

It took time for me to understand, that I was doing everything under the sun (applying for every committee, every case competition, every company) to prevent my mind from being idle and to keep the negative thoughts at bay. But the experience helped me identify a few fundamental problems with not only the medical curriculum but also with the healthcare ecosystem at large.

The current outdated medical curriculum & doctor-centric healthcare model is the reason why we, as a community of care providers, have grown indifferent to the larger complexities, challenges and more so the contributions of every other non-care delivery sector of the health industry. As government physicians, we are trained in resource-deprived high-volume care-centres to be as individualist as possible, to be the lone wolf, to compromise on our health inorder to improve that of countless others. An insider will tell you, that there is little to no collaboration in its truest self.

We have been conditioned to communicate less, depend less on others, delegate less— yet work more than is expected of us. "The same thing that made me a loving physician, made me a terrible leader". No wonder the fragmentation of care delivery we see today is so resistant to change. As disappointing as it may seem, we are treating the downstream symptoms in the healthcare assembly line rather than the root cause of the problems.

It took a lot of reflective journaling to figure this out, but once I did, my life changed forever. I shifted my philosophy of "working FOR people" to "working WITH people" and that made all the difference. And this is where Novartis India's BioCamp comes into the picture. It gave individuals like me the opportunity to grow (intellectually & personally) and more importantly, it validated my belief that change is possible (and that too for the better).

Novartis India’s BioCamp brings together a pool of highly talented individuals from all walks of life, not restricted to healthcare, and provides a conducive environment to progressively learn from each other. I can't emphasize this enough - there is something in it for everyone who wishes to grow and explore, especially those who reach their fullest potential when challenged by people better than them. It is a testament to Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect, which states that "When ideas and talented people from different fields are brought together to collaborate, step-changes can occur".

I still remember feeling challenged yet humbled by the plethora of talent I interacted with on Day 1. From day 2, the charm of the event kicked in and I saw it for the learning opportunity that it truly is. Over a span of 3 days, I got to learn from the perspectives of not only the best young minds in the country but also from the very people I wish to emulate.

The best part of the event, however, is the case study. It is in fact a disguised live business challenge that one gets to take a stab at and that's where the real magic happens. My team had a person each from Business management, Marketing, Pharmaceuticals, MD Pharmacology, Biotechnology, Biomedical Engineering, and Big Data Analytics. We argued, challenged each other and learnt more in 3 days than we did in a term. Such a cross-functional approach is how problems of the future are going to be solved… But I ask you— Why to wait for the future to solve them?

So when you do decide to apply next year, just remember that there are 48 of us (and plenty more considering this is the 12th edition) who are ready to guide you through the process in order to ensure you make the most of the opportunity. 

Here are my biggest takeaways from the event

• If one is receptive & observant, learning can come from anywhere

• The leadership scorecard is reset every day

• Collaboration beats the competition

• Curiosity is its own reason

• It is okay to be vulnerable

• There is strength in kindness

• There is power in focus

• The Medici effect works

• Un-boss to inspire

I would like to close this essay with my version of Kahlil Gibran's iconic quote-

"At Novartis India's BioCamp, I have learned curiosity from the participants, humility from the speakers, and perseverance from the business challenge; and, therefore, I am grateful to those teachers."

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Sanjay Murdeshwar, Simon Brown, Shannon Thyme Klinger, Ashwini Mathur, Svetlana Pinto, Animesh Chaturvedi. Liana Albuquerque, Saurabh Singh, Mahesh Iyer, Naveen Gullapalli, Amitabh Baxi, Arno Tellmann, Saumil Mody, Julius Vaz, Debashish Banerjee, Alenka Stefanic Petek and everyone else, I may have missed, who made this event possible.

None of this would have been possible without my friends who helped me through the initial rounds (Shlok Khemani, Vaibhav, Shitij Agarwal, Kesava Aulla, Deepak Ailani, Nandana Varshney, Poornesh Hathwar), My medical colleagues, Hariharasudan Natarajan, Dr Keerthu, Dr Mady, Dr Abu, who helped me refine the HEOR Model for Pricing, my supportive batch-mates & seniors at XLRI, my Team at BioCamp (#3), my facilitators - Pallavi, Praveen and most importantly my mentors (who deserve special mention).

They say that the teacher appears when the student is ready, but in my case ... the teacher appeared and then made the student ready. I am forever grateful to these people for being the blinkers that helped me navigate through the haze - Dr Rahul Sheshgiri, Dr Arnav Singh Tanvar, Kalyan Bhaskar, Rajkumar, Sankalp Chhabra, Rahul K Shukla, Yashaswi Kumar, Dr Sahil Gupta, Sharmistha Somayaji and Yogesh Chordia- Thank you!

Signing off ~ Dr Nadeem Ahmed N