Outsourcing-Pharma recently connected with Brian Ongioni, recently named vice president of product for trial technology provider ClinOne, to discuss his career, and commitment to improving patient experience.
OSP: How did you decide upon a career in life-science technology—is this what you, as a kid, wanted to be when you grew up?
BO: From an early age I was always fixated on Apple; in fact, I went on to work at Apple in Lexington, KY for an NSO (new store opening) which fulfilled a dream of mine. Apple has an obsessive focus on creating products people love to use. You defend and evangelize what you love, and that’s what I wanted to do: be a part of something that people loved and solved the hard things, whatever those things might become.
As I began looking at career options, I was drawn to healthcare and ultimately patients. If there is anything in our modern day that is a big, difficult, complex problem to solve it's modern-day healthcare.
That led me to Epic and I wouldn’t give up my 7+ years there for anything, I learned and grew so much. From there, I wanted to switch to a smaller company with an opportunity to build something people loved.
Enter Medable, where I joined very early on. That only revved the engine in me to continue my patient-centric passion. Epic has “with the patient at the heart,” Medable has “to get effective therapies to patients faster.” Which lead me to my most recent move to ClinOne, whose obsessive focus is rooted in patient experience.
All of these stops have built me into the person I am today, and you can see a trend. For me the patient is everything and I’m on a mission to make patient experience products that people love.
OSP: Please share your career path, and how your previous experience helped lead you to ClinOne.
BO: From my previous roles at Medable and Epic, I bring cross-functional expertise in a variety of disciplines including technical management, project management, product implementation, team building, customer relationship management, and process improvement.
As vice president of technical solutions at Medable, I led the efforts to promote industry adoption of decentralized trials by giving customers a seamless experience to connect patients, sites, and clinical trial teams. I was responsible for strategy, oversight, and execution of all technical customer-facing divisions and operations including engineering and validation as we built a high-performing, cross-functional team from inception to 175+ in three years.
At Epic, I worked as a customer happiness executive leading partnership initiatives with other customer executive teams to ensure success across the continuum of care, and served on the leadership team to cultivate and promote best practices to drive company-wide improvements.
OSP: Can you please tell us some of the things that motivated your decision to hop on board at ClinOne?
BO: Boiling it down to any one thing is difficult. A career change is a very complex and personal decision, and it isn’t something you endeavor lightly.
At the end of the day, my decision to join was because of the opportunity to take my collective experience with technology, the industry, product and engineering, and operations and flex a bit of a different muscle leading product for a solution I see as a game-changer for how patients are supported during clinical trials. The current product impressed me, the people impressed me, and I’m excited to be a part of an incredible group of people writing the next chapter in ClinOne’s history.
OSP: This industry could never be called dull, but it seems like an especially dynamic time to be working in this field. Could you please share your perspective on the state of things, and why you enjoy working in it?
OSP: The industry is anything but dull! One of the things I really enjoy about it, specifically now, is there is so much opportunity to deliver value in a way that is much more creative and tech-enabled than ever before. Even just a couple of years ago, our space was so focused on traditional approaches to research with very slow adoption of change.
Having lived through the last two years, people see there are many ways to achieve desired outcomes. I don’t think there is going to be any one winner in tech for this industry and I think that’s awesome. It allows for innovators to innovate and I’m so excited to be able to create products that meet the patient where they are. ClinOne manifests this in various ways across our platform offering.
OSP: As the brand-new vice president of product for ClinOne, can you share any initial goals, key responsibilities, or other things you’ll be tackling as you get going?
BO: One of my mentors once told me, “double the why, halve the how.” I apply that throughout my life and the beginning weeks of my tenure at ClinOne are no different. I am at a stage where I’m listening, asking lots of questions, and understanding the why behind everything and I can tell you I’m impressed.
As we look forward, my goal is to focus on cultivating a collaborative, empathetic, and innovative product team that solves the hard problems in a way that our end-users find a pleasure to use. Focusing on being side-by-side with those whom we serve will allow a deep understanding of the things that work well and the opportunities we have to continue solving the hard things.
Looking forward, I understand the impact ClinOne’s product will have on the patient experience and technology adoption. I’m excited to form a diverse and inclusive product team focused on delivering technology-enabled value to patients.
OSP: Do you have anything to add?
BO: One of the things I’m most proud of is my relationships, I love building teams and cultivating relationships. At the end of the day, we are all people and I thrive in building teams that are focused on the whole person, not just the work aspect.
