Our Team

Bijel Dholakia
Managing Director

Afya Insights 

Bijel Dholakia, Managing Director at Afya Insights

Bijel has over 20 years of research experience in the healthcare sector helping a wide range of medtech clients including Fortune 500 companies looking for growth opportunities with their new or next generation medical technologies, mid-sized companies poised to disrupt the healthcare landscape and small start-ups trying to discover their path to market success.  

She has conducted over 250+ custom market and technology focused research projects designed to help clients understand their medical marketplace to differentiate their product development, marketing and commercialization efforts. Bijel is also a highly experienced healthcare moderator and has led innovation and ideation workshops. 

Prior to forming Afya Insights, Bijel was Vice President in the Healthcare Practice at ORC International, a global market research and business intelligence company. She also worked for Sanofi and Pfizer as a Principal Medical Information Specialist and Sales Representative Trainer.

Bijel holds an MSc in Information Science from City University London and a BSc in Human Sciences from University College London. 


Afya Collaborators

Bijel collaborates with trusted research partners and subject matter experts based on specific client engagement needs. 

Bijel is great as an investigator with a sense for marketing as well as medical technology. She is detail-conscious, hard- working and communicates her insights skillfully.
— BOB REITER PRINCIPAL AT ROBERT REITTER MARKET RESEARCH

Client Testimonials

I’ve known Bijel for over 10 years and she has delivered wide ranging market research and clinical data analysis for my project teams. She recently collaborated on a large market opportunity assessment to help my company shortlist therapeutic indications to pursue for commercialization.  At my prior company, she worked closely with our multidisciplinary product innovation team for over 8 years and became a key extension to the core team fulfilling a wide range of market and clinical literature research needs to further our product development activities which ultimately culminated in our attaining CE Mark approval.  I’ve always known Bijel to be very professional and responsive and willing to support our research requirements whether they be simple or complex.
— Director, Clinical Research, Emerging MedTech Company
I worked with Bijel for over 15 years. She is a strategic thinker when it comes to research and is particular adept at moderating and interviewing to gain deep insights. She spends time up front really digging into a client’s issue to be certain she understands it completely and has the client’s perspective on the situation. She is also good at reading people and she uses this skill while moderating group discussions or individual interviews to carefully navigate personal and group dynamics to get at deeper insights. Her client’s find this valuable and it is one of the reasons she has maintained client relationships that have spanned many years.
— Brian Reuter, Vice President ORC International
I worked with Bijel for over ten years on qualitative research studies for medical technology & other leading healthcare companies. What I appreciated most about working with Bijel was her ability to manage the predictable politics of each engagement, maintain harmonious relationships with clients, and deliver or exceed expected results.
— Independent Healthcare Consultant
Bijel Dholakia and I have collaborated on numerous market research projects, having worked together for well over a decade. Bijel is an astute analyst with a meticulous eye for detail. An experienced project leader, she effectively manages group meetings, team project contributions and timelines. She excels at setting realistic project goals and continually strives to exceed client expectations.
— Kimberly Fortier, Principal Fortier Gruidl Associates
I had the opportunity to work with Bijel on a variety of different projects: the first was running online market research for a pipeline project; another was an in-person product preference claim generation project; and a third example was when I used her to facilitate an in-person brainstorming session around innovation. I found Bijel to be very responsive to our changing needs on every project, and extremely flexible with the variety of thinking required. She always met our agreed deadlines and was a pleasure to work with.
— Director of Marketing, Fortune 50 Global MedTech Company
I had the pleasure of working with Bijel for over 10 years at ORC International. She had supported me in a wide range of business development activities. Bijel has a keen understanding of clients’ market intelligence needs, crafting customized and thoughtful research programs designed to answer our clients’ critical business questions. Bijel strives for excellence in research delivery and client satisfaction, and was an asset and direct contributor to my BD successes.
— Stu Cohen, VP Client Development, ORC International
Bijel is great as an investigator with a sense for marketing as well as medical technology. She is detail-conscious, hard- working and communicates her insights skillfully.
— Bob Reiter Principal at Robert Reitter Market Research