LDC Top 50 2022

Graham Wylie trained as a doctor before starting his career in pharmaceutical R&D with Pfizer. He joined Healthcare at Home in 2005 to set up their clinical trials division and bought the business a year later to create Medical Research Network.

The Milton Keynes-headquartered company conducts clinical trials in patient’s homes, or other “off-site” locations, across 50 countries and has done more than 80,000 home visits to date. “We’re reinventing the way clinical trials are delivered,” says Wylie. “We’re making healthcare more accessible for patients, clinical trials less burdensome for families and helping to bring new medicines to people faster.”

Q&A

What are the growth opportunities?

Over the past two years, we’ve been fundamental in rescuing multi-million-dollar clinical trials that would have collapsed due to the lack of access to hospitals. The concept of home-based clinical trials has really caught on. People are much more likely to take part in clinical trials if they can do it from their homes, which means we can speed up patient recruitment and retention, and get products to market faster.

How do you make sure your senior leadership team, including yourself, is accessible?

We have a ‘grandparenting policy’ in the company, which I learnt from Pfizer. Any employee, at any time, can talk to their boss’s boss – their ‘grandparent’ in the business. Executives are a service to the business. We’re there to make things work and help people do their jobs.

What’s the most important business lesson you’ve learned?

Engage your people and support this with commitment, loyalty, time, energy, interest and effort. That can turn something mediocre into a success. The most important way of doing that, in my view, is to operate an honest and transparent environment full of what I would call ‘normal’ people. Those who talk to each other in normal ways.