We help innovators advancing solutions for unmet medical needs understand their external environment
We work with pharma commercial leads in charge of pipeline therapies, innovators with new medical devices, and life science execs looking to expand their portfolio into new indications or defend against upcoming threats.
By addressing existing questions, testing hypotheses, and bringing fresh perspectives to discover unknown unknowns, we leave you better informed than before the project, with an outlined direction and recommended next steps to support your strategy and planning.
Depending on the project parameters and needs, we combine Competitive Intelligence (Primary and Secondary), Expert Interviews, Financial Analysis, Scientific Literature Reviews, Market Research (Qualitative and Quantitative), and Workshops. We collaborate to sequence the techniques thoughtfully and in a complementary way to deliver our projects.
Our client’s typical problems
Our clients’ needs are underpinned by several core questions: what are our customers (Payers, Physicians, and Patients) and competitors doing? How are they reacting to the macro factors (regulation, reimbursement, health, and lifestyle) in the space in which their therapy or medical device operates, and what should they do next to account for this?
Finding your company’s next blockbuster
Business development teams must stay on top of numerous therapy areas, with quicker developments, more competitors, and impactful regulatory, reimbursement or other macro factors.
We swiftly bring client teams up to speed with our established methodology, ensuring they are well-prepared to acquire the best therapies and avoid potentially costly mistakes.
Providing early
feedback on new products/concepts
Too often, companies get to a stage of development where negative external feedback is ignored because “too much” has been invested in a product, and the team has to make it work.
We inform innovative companies on the feasibility and desire for new therapies or medical devices, enabling them to correct them earlier in the development pathway.
Your product is not performing as hoped in a market
Competing in life science markets is more challenging than ever, with governments, payers, patients, and physicians expecting more for less.
We bring a fresh perspective when engaging stakeholders to identify new exploitable opportunities and to better understand how to avoid or mitigate threats, enabling us to update your therapy or device strategy.
Your performance and processes need benchmarking
Understanding how your competitors operate is crucial. It helps you avoid their mistakes and identifies gaps in their thinking and strategy, enabling you to make informed decisions and take and maintain a lead in your space.
We help companies leap beyond the undifferentiated middle, assessing their output, processes, and structure against competitors to develop a new path forward.
Many life science consultancies overcomplicate using jargon and unnecessary complexity.
We focus on simplicity, clarity and transparent evidence to deliver excellent results.
Early in my career, I learned the importance of deeply understanding client needs, the value of knowledge sharing in both directions, and the benefit of working closely together throughout the project. These lessons have shaped our phased, cooperative problem-solving methodology.
We hit home runs for your team when we get to collaborate closely, for us to learn your situation, challenges and constraints, and you openly share knowledge, expertise and your opinion on what is needed to achieve your goals.
There is nothing mysterious or complex about our methodology, we use a combination of well established research techniques, executed by experienced consultants, to create evidence based recommendations.
A typical project is comprised of a combination of desk and primary research phases. These can include competitive intelligence, scientific literature review, and/or analysis of financial data, expert interviews, and/or quantitative/qualitative market research with a larger pool of respondents (HCPs, patients or other stakeholders).
These core steps are supplemented with workshops and internal interviews, to build an evidence-based understanding of your market and, more importantly, projections of how it may evolve.
Throughout a project, we share inputs, discuss findings, and brainstorm ideas for final reports and other outputs together. This approach combines our deep expertise in the delivery of life science consulting projects with your understanding of your team and leadership’s preferences for the visualization and organization of findings and what is needed to influence them to take the correct course of action.
Typical Project Stuctures
Sivan Consulting’s story
After five years working for several boutiques, I (Simon Vanstone) set out to work independently and created Sivan Consulting—however, my previous career and academic background influence how the business is currently operated.
Following a Physics and Pharmacy PhD, which helped me develop a rigorous, analytical approach to problem-solving, I launched my consulting career with an accelerated trajectory, leading complex, bespoke projects after just six months. Mistakes were inevitable but became vital learning points and helped refine my skill set. Eager to develop further, I focused on gaining as much exposure to new projects, different clients, and teammates as possible, supplemented with self-directed learning in the life science industry to expand my expertise constantly.
I moved to independent consulting at the start of 2023, just as the consulting sector began to slow down, and most big pharma changed organisationally (poor timing with hindsight). Luckily, I had several contracts with close connections, which enabled me to get on my feet and provided a runway to support business development and networking activities.
Over the last two years, I have often worked with other trusted, specialized independent consultants, freelancers, agencies, and consultancies to deliver client projects. I’m lucky to be supported by several part-time freelance specialists for running specific parts of the business.
In April of 2024, I made the exciting announcement of being joined by my father, who would bring his 30 years of supply chain experience to launch Sivan Consulting’s supply chain practice.
We enjoy the unique rhythms of working for ourselves, dedicating time and focus to individual clients for fixed projects or programs, having a deep life outside of work, and not being forced to make decisions like a classic politically and financially driven consultancy.
At Sivan Consulting, we believe in quality over quantity. We are selective about the projects we take on, often turning down more than we accept. This approach allows us to focus intensely on each project, ensuring the best outcomes for our clients.
Our commitment to excellence extends beyond project work. Between projects, we focus on enhancing our explicit and tacit knowledge across the life sciences. We stay up to date on trends and major developments in therapy areas, regulation, reimbursement, and scientific advancements. We also invest in mastering effective visualization techniques and information communication. This continuous learning is a cornerstone of our approach, enabling us to bring a T-shaped experience to our clients.
Simon Vanstone, Independent Consultant and Founder of Sivan Consulting
Contact Us
Use this form to setup an introductory discussion.
We love speaking to and educating those developing innovative products on how they can understand their environment, whether it’s guidance for them to execute in-house or to discuss how external support could look.
Communicating with us is easy. You can book a call directly into my calendar here: Link, use the contact form to the right to request an email back, or connect with Simon or Brandon on LinkedIn.
Contact Form
Frequently Asked Questions
These are some of the common questions we recieve from clients before starting a project. To make your assessment if we’re the right partner we have provided general answers, although for a deeper discussion do get in touch!
What makes you different versus other consultancies?
We’re not focused on being different; we’re focused on you, your problems/challenges, and delivering value
Do you have expertise in Disease X or Market Y?
A common question, but one we often answer with our own question: What is important about having worked in that disease for the success of the project?
Understanding this helps us bring out our most relevant expertise for your goals which we can relate to give you confidence we can address your problems, (or identify if we’re not the right consultancy to deliver and we’ll happily recommend you to a trusted other organisation/individual).
We have a methodology honed over 80 consulting projects to quickly get up to speed on a new therapy area, bringing t-shaped exprience from across the lifesciences space to analyse higher-level dynamics, combined with the scientific and commercial skill to get into the nuances of any disease.
If TA experience is essential we have expertise in over 35 diseases, and we can partner with other independent or small consultancies to bring specific expertise on to the project team.
We’re talking to other consultancies with a large team, as an independent consultant will you be able to deliver in a competitive time scale?
In most instances yes, we have a trusted network of experienced independent consultants that we have previously collaborated with and can contact to create a project team.
Often the bulk of other consultancies’ teams will be formed by large numbers of junior staff, or supported by lower quality offshore teams, who will require more guidance and learning on the job, with the senior people spending fairly limited time involved.
Our teams’ higher level of experience, use of well established methodologies, and intelligent use of time saving tools means we can deliver in a comparable time to larger consultancies, often to a higher standard and at a lower cost.
Ultimately some projects may have too much too do, in too short of a time, and we’ll advise you on this in discovery discussions or after recieving an RFP. We can of course help with recommendations on a suitable larger organisation from our network to support you if needed.
You talked about time saving tools, do you use AI?
Yes we do, like just about every other business we’re excited about the potential of AI and testing how it can help us.
We use it for select uses in routine project delivery tasks including secondary research, transcription of expert interviews, ideation, and brainstorming.
This is one of the reasons that our consultants can independently deliver a project that several years ago would have needed 2-3 associate consultants helping with research and reporting.
We’re constantly testing new ways of integrating AI tools into our work flow to help improve the quality of our outputs.
Importantly we’ll never put client information into any open AI tool that is using data for training of its LLM