Medical Affairs – The Future Strategists Of The Pharma Industry?

Medical Affairs – informing strategic decisions across the life cycle of a medicine

‘Medical is no longer a reactive function but has to become pro-active’.

In the past, Medical Affairs was often perceived as a supportive function to commercial, however, as the pipeline of pharmaceutical companies change to become more specialist, the Medical role is becoming increasingly important.

One interviewee had a vision for the medical team to become equal partners to the Marketing function in the development of strategic plans. This can be enabled through digital skills, leadership and business acumen and getting the whole Medical Affairs team working in the same direction with the right skills and capabilities. Some companies are approaching this through ad hoc training based on individual needs, others with an internal competency framework, but there is a clear need for expert partners to stretch and challenge the Medical Affairs team capabilities of the future. An additional theme was the need for Medical to use their insights to engage in and develop patient journeys. The message from the interviewees was clear – a robust approach to upskilling Medical teams in this rapidly evolving world is key to ensure teams are fit for the future. In addition, training to support the development of Medical Directors of the future also needs to start early given the breadth of role and expectation of organisations.

Medical Affairs Focus: Strategy is strategy whether led medically or commercially. We need our Medics to be the strategic leaders in an organisation and to earn this right through their strategic leadership and insight.

The role of Medical Affairs as leaders

As a result of such transformation, today’s Medical leaders need a broad understanding of many different areas, with the ability to have both a medical and business mindset. Translating the unmet need into a strategic approach and operating in a complex and diverse landscape both internally and externally are now key to being a successful Medical Affairs professional at any level. From day one, new Medical Affairs entrants to the pharmaceutical Industry will be expected to deliver across multiple teams in a collaborative and insightful way. Driving collaboration, leading others in a non-hierarchical way and having the ability to Medical Affairs Focus: Some companies are looking to ensure the role of Medical Affairs is focused on pipeline and additional indications rather than in-market products. Asking the question’ where must Medical be and who else could do this?’ has led to this approach. Medical Affairs Focus: Strategy is strategy whether led medically or commercially. We need our Medics to be the strategic leaders in an organisation and to earn this right through their strategic leadership and insight uptakestrategies.com 6 communicate the value of medicines to a wide range of stakeholders was seen as critical in our interviews.

Medical and Access will be the business leaders in the future with sales / marketing as support function. Medics need to be upskilled with business acumen and leadership’

Challenges of the Medical Affairs role transformation

One of the challenges of this transformation is the need for Medical Affairs to do more with much less time and to demonstrate the value created by Medical Affairs. This was a consistent feature within the interviews. Unlike commercial success, which can be measured through profit and loss, the success of Medical Affairs is largely measured qualitatively, making it more challenging for Medical to prove the value they add.

There are various suggestions both in the literature and from our research which inform potential ways of measuring and communicating the value that Medical Affairs can bring. One paper suggests ROI means ‘Return on Intelligence’ i.e., successes are measured by increases in knowledge6. The same paper also suggests ‘Share of Scientific Voice,’ a quantifiable measure of how a scientific message resonates across a scientific community over time, is another valuable metric for Medical Affairs6.

The Key Performance Indicator conversation was the most polarising in our interviews from those who felt that KPIs are less relevant when an organisation embraced the Medical role and what only it could deliver vs. those who routinely build comprehensive KPIs and dashboards to ensure they could clearly articulate the value that Medical Affairs could bring internally and externally. This is an area where there is clearly no consensus on a correct approach, and it may well need to be tailored to the organisational situation and role of Medical within each company.

In addition, Medical Affairs teams are now required to be innovators, bringing creativity and developing new ways to do both traditional and new activities with healthcare professionals. Companies are looking to support the team in a variety of ways such as deploying LEAN, 6 Sigma and AGILE capabilities to the Medical toolbox to further elevate the customer / patient to the forefront of thinking and to develop new ways of delivering value more quickly. This also supports moving from a reactive position to one of strategic leadership along with clearly articulating the value-add from their work.

What is the vision for a successful Medical Affairs function?

It is an exciting opportunity for anyone in a Medical Affairs team now or in the future to consider what ‘great’ Medical Affairs will mean. The list of potential roles in Table 1 demonstrates the breadth and depth that Medical Affairs professionals will need to build along with strong leadership all underpinned with a strategic approach. However, it appears that whilst there are similarities in approach across the 7 Medical Affairs – the future strategists of the pharma industry? companies involved in the interviews, there are also differences in scope, role and the potential evolution of Medical Affairs. Nevertheless, it was clear that it will not be enough to be ‘great’ at one element such as scientific knowledge and communication. In addition, business acumen to navigate an organisation and the decision making within that organisation is also key.

All of this work will require innovation as much will be ground-breaking. Channelling evidence generation in the world of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data through an understanding of science, data capabilities and stakeholder needs is a great example of this. Reimaging and personalising stakeholder engagement is another one. Patient centricity is another area which in some companies are being led by Medical. Curiosity, openness, and implementation of new techniques such as AGILE will ensure customer needs are at the forefront and encourage co-creation with those customers at all points on the journey.

One interviewee flagged the increasing gap between the head office and field Medical roles with the recommendation to clearly define what success looks like and build both competencies and training separately. Others were less vocal on the differences between field and head office roles with individuals moving successfully and seamlessly between the two roles if well supported and adaptable.

Key enablers of this change?

So, what did the senior medics we interviewed see as the enablers of this change?

It was clear that this will not necessarily be an easy journey, but it is critical. Such organisational change management requires a consistent and clear vision along with senior stakeholder endorsement and wide employee support and engagement.

Creating Medical 2.0

Collaboration with Medical Affairs, both internally and externally, is key for success. When it comes to Commercial and Medical teams, there is often an apparent lack of collaboration and a ‘them’ and ‘us’ approach is taken. Marketing’s perceived lack of compliance is often seen as the cause, however, if all parties can focus on the unmet need of the patient and customer and work within a compliance framework then there are many examples where the sum of the parts is magnified uptakestrategies.com 8 by a collaborative approach. Working together to build aligned customer and patient journeys across multi-disciplinary teams is a great way to start breaking down barriers. Being creative in bringing input and insights from other new entrants to healthcare, e.g. Google and IBM but also Medable, Teladoc and Livonogo7, to add to the internal knowledge is another area of value-add to consider. Additionally, partnerships can help to deeply understand the unmet needs of patients and customers. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies will not have all the answers and need to creatively consider who else has the insights and data to support understanding unmet needs. Again, Medical Affairs teams are well placed to consider and bridge these gaps.

Lastly another great example is co-creating customer engagement models. With the move to digitalisation and personalisation, customers want a single approach from a company that is tailored to their preferences. Despite these customer expectations, it will be challenging to get to a pull model, thus leadership and role modelling the behaviours that demonstrate this approach are crucial to help companies evolve and deliver.

Conclusion & recommendations

There is a strong consensus in the literature, validated by our interviews, about the evolved role of Medical Affairs in the pharmaceutical and biotech Industry. Through this research we learned there is a strong need to redefine the roles of Medical Affairs and the capabilities required, and for this to be underpinned with specific medical capability frameworks and development programmes to bring through the pharma strategy and ‘super-medics’ that the future industry needs. The value-add of ‘super-medics’ has the potential to be a game changer, with companies who invest in their medical team from recruitment onwards seeing significant reward in the leadership, strategy, innovation and outcomes delivered for patients and the stakeholders with whom they need to interact.

If you would like support with Medical Affairs capabilities training, please do get in touch with Uptake Strategies to discuss how we may help you. hello@uptakestrategies.com