What is CMR Institute’s mission & vision for the life sciences industry?
CMR Institute was founded nearly 60 years ago by physicians to advance knowledge, drive performance, and enhance healthcare. Our mission has always been to assist the life sciences industry in bridging its value gap with healthcare decision-makers and their patients. We do that by providing the only fully customizable, market-ready learning library and learning activation tools that support the development and effectiveness of life sciences industry professionals.
Our promise to our life sciences customers is that we will be a cornerstone of their training excellence. We provide continuously updated, expertly vetted content quickly and cost-effectively. Our vision has always been to empower our customers and their teams to perform with confidence and credibility as they seek to be of the most value to healthcare and patients.
How has CMR Institute evolved over the years to support the life sciences industry in their learning and development (L&D)?
Sixty years covers much change for CMR, our industry, and learners. We continuously evolve to meet our industry’s needs by listening and leading through regulatory shifts, market landscape changes, and commercial operations evolution. In response to our clients and their healthcare customers, we have grown the complexity and depth of our library of resources and created learning tools that respond to learners’ needs and the industry’s regulations. For instance, from an early focus on sales reps and anatomy and physiology, our library now supports value access teams, specialty sales teams, patient access, and reimbursement roles. We have also invested in our learner engagement and delivery capabilities to engage and work with the many systems used by our customers. We have invested in our people to ensure we remain valuable to our customers.
I am pleased to lead an exceptionally talented group of learning professionals and domain experts at CMR who are curious, truly lifelong learners who care about our mission and ensure that our products and services exceed expectations and provide value. Above all, we have had the privilege of learning from our subject-matter expert network, board of directors, and client advisory board, who have helped us see into the future of healthcare and the needs of life sciences professionals. We can then create the tools of tomorrow that help the life sciences industry support its customers and provide the best patient care.
What are the implications of AI and other technologies, and how is CMR leveraging these technologies in L&D?
There are many implications of AI in healthcare and life sciences, and advancements are moving so quickly to impact market readiness, decision-making, efficiencies, patient tools, and analytics, to name just a few. I will answer primarily from the perspective of learning and development (L&D) within life sciences, what we hear about, what we do, and the conversations we lead. Like other verticals, L&D uses AI to automate work tasks, reduce steps within their processes, draft content, generate innovative ideas for pull-through, gather, and consolidate feedback, enable practice, analyze and impact behavior change, and shorten development cycles. There’s work toward tools for greater measurement, interaction simulations, coaching, and real-time feedback that is helping organizations get things done more quickly with their teams.
In the same conversations, while seeing these gains, organizations, and L&D leaders are also establishing their boundaries for the use of AI, really understanding where the risks are and what to be careful about, and implementing their strategies accordingly. Like any new tools within a regulated industry, we must be careful. L&D has vast content to protect, keep up to date and refresh, and ensure compliant use. Introducing AI capabilities in a particular case or process can be impactful and fraught with risk. For instance, ensuring appropriate subject matter expertise in content development and using secure and compliant environments is more critical than ever to mitigate content creation and provision risks.
As more tools are released and widely available outside of the regulated infrastructures of our clients, leaders are seeing risks in their field teams using unapproved sources. Life science leaders will continue to exercise caution regarding how information is gathered and ultimately used by the people carrying their brand out into the world. This is not new with the “invention” of AI, but the proliferation of ready tools brings more risk. How can we harness technology, including AI, to provide education and real-time reinforcement securely and accurately?
How is CMR Institute meeting these customer challenges?
Like all partners in life sciences, for the past few years, we have invested and innovated to use technology to build and improve our customers as they face ever-increasing resource constraints. Using technology, we have reduced process tension and manual and repetitive tasks while preserving excellent quality. We have better opportunities and methods for data analytics and have introduced new products. AI is an essential tool, but our mantra is that it is an assistant. AI does not author our content; it helps us manage and curate our existing content. Professional development, use case testing, and policies for our teams have been important during these explorations as we have increased capacity, capabilities, product and service offerings, and our overall mission footprint for our clients.
One tangible way that we are helping our clients and this industry address challenges is in the introduction of a new product released in December 2024. We are excited to partner with ACTO, a leading technology firm and Agentic AI solutions leader in life sciences, to bring CMR Knowledge Assistant to market.
What is your advice for fresh graduates wanting to enter the life sciences industry for a career?
This industry offers so many possibilities for actual careers, not just a series of jobs one might have. There are a few pieces of advice I would give to anyone about pursuing a career:
First, you will not have learned everything you need for your career while in college, so it is important in your first engagement to be open, keep your head up for the long game, and look for an employer that supports continuous learning. In investigating your first best fit, consider your possible employer’s discussions around onboarding, professional development, providing and reviewing written goals and expectations, coaching, and mentorship opportunities. These are not just words to listen to; ask how these play a role in your first year or two of employment. I cannot emphasize the importance of learning enough. Continuously gathering information and applying this to what genuinely interests you fuels your direction.
Second, you are responsible for your continuous development so that you can develop your career plan. While you want to find an employer who believes your growth is crucial for you and them, your development is your responsibility. Do not wait for that to come to you; be proactive and create opportunities to grow and learn in and outside of your employer, using those opportunities to be of value to your team. Your genuine pursuit of increasing the value of your organization will be recognized.
Third, cultivate a few trusted mentors with whom you can check in and learn. As you set and change courses over time, they can help you assess your assumptions, your learning, and your burgeoning understanding of your career path.
Fourth, use all that you are learning to fine-tune your understanding of the impact you want to make. Demonstrate curiosity and, of course, the capability to pursue that aspiration. Do not let your career happen to you. Create goals, write them down, develop a timeline, and work toward them. Look for your first opportunity to be one that offers you a view of the many directions you might take and then set a course to learn and earn your future.
Bios:
Sharon Lustig is the CEO of CMR Institute. Sharon leverages over twenty years of experience with CMR Institute, complemented by a decade of sales and marketing experience with Coca-Cola and five additional years in education, licensure, and certification management to lead the Institute focusing on innovation and excellence. Through her leadership, Sharon ensures CMR’s vitality and long-term growth by maximizing human and financial resources and setting a clear vision for the company. Sharon earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia. She serves as a Director on the CMR Institute Board of Directors, co-chair of Junior Achievement of Southwest Virginia, and volunteer and member of the PIP Advisory Council of the Life Sciences Trainers and Educators Network (LTEN).
Partha Anbil is a Contributing Writer for the MIT Sloan Career Development Office and an alum of MIT Sloan. Besides being VP of Programs of the MIT Club of Delaware Valley, Partha is a long-time life sciences consulting industry veteran, currently with an NYSE-listed WNS, a digital-led business transformation company, as Senior Vice President and Practice Leader for their Life Sciences practice.
Michael Wong is a Contributing Writer for the MIT Sloan Career Development Office and an Emeritus Co-President and board member of the Harvard Business School Healthcare Alumni Association. Michael is a Part-time Lecturer for the Wharton Communication Program at the University of Pennsylvania and his ideas have been shared in the MIT Sloan Management Review and Harvard Business Review.
