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Hi, I’m Natalie Jones. I'm newly appointed as the senior director of Product Development and Quality Assurance for the VMS teams, which includes Adaptive Health and Healthy Directions. So Charlotte and Bethesda offices and I oversee everything involved in end-to-end product formulation.

00:18 - 00:22
I've been with this company now for over seven years.

00:22 - 00:30
Before this job, I was working for another company, doing product development as a formulator. But I was not the decision maker.

00:30 - 00:33
I was senior product formulation scientist.

00:33 - 00:39
I was doing everything involved in product formulation. I just did not have a team that I was leading.

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So I have a bachelors in Science from Cornell University in Nutritional Science.

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Then I went to Florida State for grad school in clinical nutrition.

00:48 - 00:53
I didn't know what I wanted to be doing. I knew that I did not want to focus specifically on nutrition.

00:53 - 01:00
I found out about my previous company and was thrown into the world of dietary supplements.

01:00 - 01:15
Through my previous company's experience, I learned about how to approach product formulation, what to be looking at, how to review ingredient documentation, and how to bring that whole puzzle together to create an efficacious formula.

01:15 - 01:18
But first I would say we start with ideation.

01:18 - 01:23
So ideas may come from our retail team where they're seeing trends in the industry.

01:23 - 01:37
It may come from an immediate need that, for example, there might be a, a new drug that's out that is targeting this mechanism of action for I'm just going to give an example, healthy body weight and blood sugar.

01:37 - 01:57
Okay. We know that's trending across all populations. How can we create something that's not a drug, but that mimics some of those mechanisms of action and gives people a safe and efficacious product that they can use on a long term basis? Ideas can come across from various streams.

01:57 - 02:07
Looking at different ingredients that fit that need looking at the mechanism of action, the cost, the cost per kilogram, the cost per bottle.

02:07 - 02:28
Are there clinical studies? Once those clinical studies are analyzed, what claims can be made from those studies? How do you combine those claims across the formula? Looking at all the ingredient documentation, what is their carriers? What's the country of origin? Is this a safe ingredient? Looking at to the safety of the different ingredients.

02:28 - 02:31
All of that, you're putting the puzzle together.

02:31 - 02:44
And then once that's done, you work with, we've worked with Biovation, our manufacturer or third party manufacturers to provide them with the formula. Any input that they have on overages or things that should be changed.

02:44 - 03:06
Finding out the quote, initial request for quote, If a pilot needs to be done, working with the manufacturer on that piloting process, the commercialization quote, artwork, working very closely with legal and manufacturer or I'm sorry, marketing on what can be said, how to position the product.

03:06 - 03:45
Sometimes we may have the formula created and then there's a backlog with the piloting process. So it takes time to get from the ideated formula to the proposed finished good, because without the pilot for some complicated formulas, you don't know if the capsules, if it can fit in the capsule or two capsules, can they get all the materials in time? Does the powder flow well? What changes need to be made so that sometimes will delay the process like analyzing the studies, sometimes there might be ten or plus, 10+ studies on a single ingredient.

03:45 - 03:50
So it's, you know, reading and analyzing the studies, figuring out the claims, what can be said.

03:50 - 04:07
And then I would say one thing is that we can improve on is once the product launches, are we checking back in to see how the product is doing? Should it stay in the market, should any changes be made, you know, and other iterations from there.