Every scientific message has a story. Medical communications must adapt to effectively bring these to life.

Medical communications are in a state of transition. Due to the combined impact of emerging technologies, changing provider preferences, and an evolving post-pandemic world, pharma must navigate new ways to engage providers with relevant, science-driven, digital content. Delivering these materials in the proper format, however, requires a keen understanding of providers’ educational needs, learning science, and creative storytelling. Francis Namouk, managing director of Healthware MedComms, a new medical communications and education division of the Healthware Group, tells us more.

No doctor wakes up in the morning asking what your brand can do for them.

That statement, coined by one of my colleagues at Healthware MedComms, summarises the changing state of communications between pharmaceutical organisations and their healthcare provider (HCP) stakeholders. Triggered both by the industry-wide digital transformation and by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, HCPs’ expectations for the ways they receive information from pharma partners have shifted. Where medical communications have historically centred on brand, providers now desire more tailored, science-driven messaging.

Navigating this shift means reframing the way pharma teams approach provider-focused content. Medical communications must be able to offer useful information to HCPs when questions arise, whether that’s in the clinic with a patient or in a surgical theatre. Operationally, such a change also puts medical affairs teams and medical science liaisons – some of the leading scientific voices within pharma organisations – on the frontlines of provider communications, a responsibility traditionally held by brand and sales representatives.

• Read the full article in pharmaphorum's Deep Dive digital magazine