MBA student streamlining the path from lab to the patient
Harvard medical student and LBS scholar Tyler Hayes, who will graduate from both schools in 2020, has impressive plans to apply his MBA to the business of medicine.
Hayes is a rare but growing number of MD and MBA candidates LBS has attracted. He specialises in translational medicine – an understanding of the mechanisms that target and invest in viable discoveries, finance their transformation through clinical trial to therapy and ultimately bring them to the global marketplace.
He plans to apply his MBA experience to understanding the forces that drive innovation in drug development and to close the gaps that stall innovation before it reaches the patient.
At Harvard, Hayes has worked as a researcher at the University's Stem Cell Institute, where he developed experimental pipelines to study drugs in clinical trial for stem cell transplants in leukaemia.
“Medicine can be inefficient and it is one of the reason I wanted to come to business school,” said Hayes “Medicine shouldn’t always be run like a business but there are a whole lot of inefficiencies when we move towards the patient. For example, when I was researching oral cancer, I felt there was a huge disconnect between the laboratory and patient care.
“There is more interest in translational medicine today because funding for research is becoming more competitive. You really have to make a strong case that what you are doing will end up benefiting patients – that has to be the intention. 50 years ago research was less directed and you could study something esoteric and discoveries were made by chance. Today resources are limited and research is expensive, therefore it is more important we are judicious in allocating funding.”
Previously, Hayes was also a project leader in oral cancer at the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King's College London, where he also received a Master of Research in Translational Cancer Medicine. He won a Fulbright Scholarship to Switzerland, where he improved stem cell technologies for skin grafts at l'École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
Outside of class, Hayes has been an organiser of LBS’s student-led EUROUT conference, which draws attendees from business schools across Europe to London on an annual basis.
“Out in Business has been a fantastic family and network,” he said. “I couldn’t have found that at any other School.”
Hayes is the 2018 recipient of the Reaching Out MBA Fellowship which is a joint effort between Reaching Out and London Business School. It aims to empower lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and ally (LGBTQA) MBA students to become professionals who will lead the way to equality in business education, in the workplace, and throughout society. All MBA admits are eligible to apply for the Fellowship, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression but recipients are expected to be highly engaged in leading LGBTQA diversity initiatives and to bring this work to the School.
