Key Points

00:50 – Matthew Golden  is the CEO of Lifespot Health and has led quite an interesting and inspirational professional life. He started his career from Pfizer where he worked as a medical rep for 3 years. In this role, he had to educate the doctors about different medicines and believes that it provided a lot of exposure to him. Afterwards, he moved to their Sydney head office for joining a marketing team where he spent 6 years managing cardiovascular drugs successfully by acquiring best market shares. From there, he moved to New York for 4 years, working as a regional director for Eliquis, a TNA inhibitor. Under his leadership, Eliquis became the second largest pharmaceutical medicine acquiring consumers from every nook and corner of the world. Owing to his exceptional record, he was first moved to Belgium for supervising Eastern European region and then was offered the role of head of marketing of Pfizer in Indonesia. After some time, he moved back to Australia and worked as a medicinal consultant for over a year. He started working as a business unit director at NBI where he got interested in medicinal cannabis and there was no looking back. He asserted that if vaporising in Medicinal Cannabis professional ethics were followed rigorously, this is an excellent opportunity for pharmaceutical companies.

8:45 – Matthew expounded upon the need to regularise medicinal cannabis as a part of medical industry so as to regard it as a legitimate therapeutic option for doctors.

11:25 – In response to a question about pricing strategy, he illustrated that there are large number of factors involved in the equation. The economic scale alone could not decide the prices, rather the quality of life provided by medicine actually does the trick. However, he was of the view that if a medicine is safe but is not affordable then its efficacy does not matter at all.

15:29 – As far as the rivalry between cannabis and pharmaceutical industry is concerned, Matthew believes that cannabis should be given a special status in Australian pharmaceutical industry due to its current transitional phase. He was of the view that earlier on, a lot of non-medical people were involved only for financial interests and quick profits. However, as it has evolved gradually into a legal entity, individuals who are really committed to pharmaceutical are now coming to cannabis industry. He asserted strongly that despite decent clinical trials with good standards, it would still take some years to be properly registered as a therapeutic medicine.

19:49 – Matthew vocalised his idea that a consultant needs to be paid as per his experience as compared to the duration of work.

21:26 – Matthew agreed with the notion that cannabis can certainly be a way to bring people back to progressive medicine. He disclosed that as the emerging patterns were shifting away from recreational concept and moving towards its therapeutic effects, clinical trials are utmost significance since they would help in establishing the effects of independent components and their relation with each other to enhance their efficacy.

24:09 – Matthew spoke in favor of specific formulations for specific patients as per their genes and health conditions.

27:34 – Matthew iterated that vaping as an exciting and popular method of taking medicinal cannabis. Although there are 2 high quality units in Australia, he said that patients are not trying as it is not practical and affordable for them. He explained that although there was an absence of proper research in this regard, he takes vaping to be 95% better and safer than other forms of intake. Additionally, the medicinal CBD reaches directly to the blood stream, thereby relieving their pain sooner than later.

33:26 – Matthew described that vaping pods have the best value for money as they have high concentration of medicine and patients could use them for more than one month depending upon their condition including their breakthrough time.

35:30 – Matthew clarified that the specific amount per inhale should be standardised and regulated. Currently, it is assumed that every inhale takes about 2 to 2.4 mg of CBD in 3 seconds, however, it depends largely upon the patient. He elucidated that his team is working on a vaping device which would cut off the supply immediately after the vital amount of dosage reaches the patient.

38:23 – Matthew asserted that depending upon the condition of patient, vaping could be used along with other baseline therapy.

39:32 – He disagreed with the thought that vaping and smoking seem similar from marketing point of view and emphasised upon the convenience of vaping over smoking through examples of different units.

46:44 – Matthew explicitly declared that the vaporising in Medicinal Cannabis industry equipments must be affordable for patients starting therapy. He informed the audience that TGA has already started making the process easier for registration of new vaping companies which would cut down the cost in future. He clarified the necessity of securing the vaping pods, especially the reusable ones, so as to assure patients that it has not been contaminated in any way.

52:10 – Matthew dismissed the notion that disposable vape products could become more popular due to the manufacturing difficulties coupled with environmental concerns.

55:23 – To prove his point, Matthew expounded upon a study that only those stereotypical individuals end up buying recycled vaping products who care about budget control only rather than the quality of product.

56:27 – Matthew demonstrated that although the possible drug testing becomes problematic, THC has its place with the right patients.

58:16 – Matthew categorically stated that the THC is prescribed only to make a breakthrough for chronic pain management where CBD may not function properly.

59:07 – Matthew agreed that the future may see THC and CBD hybrid vapes.

59:52 – Matthew deciphered that only farmers could do adequate research in this regard as compared to other players of cannabis industry.

Links

Lifespot Health: https://lifespot-health.com