Six MBA students from the Melbourne Business School have helped an Australian medical company to advance its groundbreaking work in diagnosing and managing epilepsy.
Seer Medical develops and manufactures medical devices fitted on to patients at the organisation’s clinics and worn for long-term monitoring and medical diagnosis.
Strategic Adviser at Seer Medical Damien Kenny began a research project last year to gather data on similar organisations around the world and inform a global strategy for the business.
Seer Medical works with Three Chairs Consulting on its strategy and governance and was after new ways to make its care even more accessible to people who require seizure investigation.
Melanie Bois, Director of Three Chairs Consulting and Melbourne Business School MBA alum, suggested an internship where she would coach full-time MBA candidates through a real-world learning experience that Seer Medical would provide.
“We were looking to validate our business model assumptions, decide on which overseas markets to enter, the basis of the market entry, and how to best marshal our resources,” Mr Kenny said.
“We’re a young business, only just beginning to explore possibilities outside of Australia and not yet ready to allocate massive budgets away from our R&D investments to strategy consulting.
“Melanie understood that and suggested that we could bring in capable people that are accessible to work on this, and it didn’t need to be a scary thing – it didn’t need to be a large consultancy.
“Currently, we’re making epilepsy diagnostics much more accessible by substituting a traditional process – in which someone goes into a hospital for a seven day stay at a cost of $10,000 or so to the hospital system – for at-home care that costs closer to $2,000 and is covered by Medicare,” Damien says.
“Waiting times can be up to six months for someone to go into hospital – if they’re able to get into a hospital – and it can even be up to a couple of years in some states. With us they’re in almost straight away. We see more than 5,000 people on an annual basis.
Six MBA students jumped at the chance to work on the eight-week strategy piece – Austin (Tianxiao) Yang, Huong Chu, Aakriti Gupta, Erin Craig, Maximiliano Quimbar and Priyanka Mawjee.
“The MBA candidates quickly gave us the ability to understand the questions we were asking ourselves by bringing data into those conversations, and some common language for the C-suite to use when talking about those issues,” Mr .
“It was very useful in that regard, but also a stepping stone on our way to a better understanding of our strategy and resource allocation needs into the future.”
For full-time MBA student Aakriti Gupta, the highlight of the project was the opportunity to work with an organisation that helped people every day.
“Seer Medical’s technology can revolutionise the lives of countless epilepsy patients,” she said.
“It was an honour to chart their growth strategy and add to the evidence base to be used in its capital raising efforts which will, in turn, widen the company’s reach. The team was a pleasure to work with and they continuously inspired me to grow and learn.”
Maximiliano Quimbar said the project was exciting and insightful.
It allowed me to apply knowledge from multiple subjects – including concepts I had learnt just 48 hours prior to meeting with the team,” Mr Quimbar said.
“It was great to work with Damien as he was very open to ideas and he facilitated communication with senior members of the company who talked with us about their activities, their roles, and their perspectives.”
