Making medical affairs a strategic advantage

Medical Affairs was once seen as a supportive role, but today a good team can be a strategic advantage.

That’s because medical affairs can help a pharmaceutical company’s commercial division make knowledge-driven decisions faster and more accurately than ever before.

For instance, field medical professionals have to decide where to focus their daily efforts - is time better spent with expert A or expert B?

Answering such questions used to require hours sorting through static profiles and contact lists to identify who spoke where and to update their research interests and those of their co-authors.

Even then results weren’t always reliable.  But now systems which provide a centralised, normalised, continuously updated, data-driven approach are available.

This supports moves towards what we call a ‘Medical Affairs 2.0 approach to engagement preparation’ – this involves field medical teams using data to build a detailed profile of clinical experts.  A range of metrics -  everything from grants and patents through to presentations, publications and treatment guidelines – can be used to create this picture.

To find out more about how MSL teams could use these metrics to inform their decision-making, click here.

For more insight on the Future of Medical Affairs - click here