Things change fast in the life sciences, and the work of medical affairs teams seems to only grow in importance. As the sphere of expert influence expands into digital and consumer-oriented spaces, key opinion leaders (KOLs) are an increasingly critical part of drug and medical device development.
Medical science liaisons (MSLs) responsible for crafting and executing KOL management strategy dedicate significant time and resources to identifying and engaging external experts. In previous content, we’ve discussed how MSLs can use a range of healthcare commercial intelligence—including claims, reference and affiliation, and social media data—to identify and engage KOLs.
While expert identification and engagement are likely the core functions of your medtech medical affairs or biopharma medical affairs team, a KOL management strategy is most effective when it considers all the experts in a given market or therapy area, as well as those already within your portfolio. The process of KOL mapping can help you navigate the expert landscape and understand the value of individual KOLs by examining their potential impact in context with other experts.
What is KOL mapping?
KOL mapping is the process of understanding who the key opinion leaders are within a specific therapeutic area (including those in your portfolio) and how they influence one another by driving medical trends, guiding clinical practices, and shaping the adoption of new treatments or technologies.
Whereas KOL identification simply aims to reveal experts who offer value to your organization, key opinion leader mapping uncovers the relationships that influence them. By identifying and mapping these expert relationships, you can gain deeper insight into the networks and connections that drive decision-making in healthcare, empowering you to engage with KOLs with the right influence and impact for your new therapy or medical device.
KOL mapping can help you go beyond one-on-one engagement and leverage the most relevant networks to amplify your message, drive awareness, and encourage adoption of your treatment or device.
I’ve written before about the importance of engaging experts who are digital natives—ie, digital opinion leaders (DOLs). In the modern healthcare landscape, ignoring the digital space is just not an option. Effective KOL mapping makes it easier for your team to track experts’ impact across online and real-world networks, ensuring they maintain strong relationships with the most relevant and influential voices, no matter where they’re leading the conversation from.
Using data to map the KOL landscape
The quality of any map is determined by the scope and resolution of the data used to create it. If you want to effectively map your KOL landscape, you’ll need to take a multi-faceted approach and draw on a variety of data sources: claims data, reference and affiliations data, and social media data can help you find the top experts in the most relevant fields, with influence over the right networks, patients, and other healthcare professionals.
Claims data
Diagnostic and procedural claims data generated from healthcare encounters can help you monitor behavior trends over time, identify novel prescribing patterns, and differentiate a KOL’s scientific and clinical activity.
By analyzing claims data among healthcare professionals (HCPs) in the same network or therapy area, you can identify who’s driving the adoption of new therapies, prescribing targeted treatments, or trying novel approaches to care. When paired with reference and affiliations and social media data, you can observe downstream effects of influencers’ behavior on referrals, prescriptions, and organizational decision-making.
Reference and affiliations data
Reference and affiliations data complements procedure and diagnosis claims by providing a detailed view of the professional networks and institutional ties that influence KOLs. Information about a professional’s affiliations with hospitals, academic institutions, and industry organizations give you a more complete view of the healthcare ecosystem and how experts are linked within it.
This data also delivers insights into experts’ publishing, clinical trial, and conference activity. For instance, you might initially overlook the head of a small cardiology practice based on claims volumes alone. But when affiliations data reveal she is routinely published in major journals read by the heart surgeons who rely on your medical device, you might decide she’s worth factoring her into your KOL management strategy.
Social media data
A cross-sectional study published in JAMA Network Open in 2021 found that around 70% of U.S. physicians were active on social media for professional reasons. Many of your ideal key opinion leaders are using platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter), LinkedIn, and other specialized forums for healthcare professionals to engage healthcare consumers, share medical insights, and converse with other HCPs.
By analyzing social media activity, you can identify digital opinion leaders who have a significant online following and are actively engaging in discussions about relevant therapeutic areas. Social media data also helps you measure the reach and engagement of these influencers, understand the content they share, and assess their impact on public and professional opinion.
Furthermore, social media is a great source of information on an expert’s attitudes and beliefs toward certain therapies and devices. Even personal, non-scientific details shared over social media (like hobbies or interests) can be useful when you’re reaching out to a KOL directly.
Connecting the dots
By combining these diverse data sources—claims data for real-world clinical influence, reference and affiliations data for understanding professional networks, and social media data for digital reach—you can create a holistic map of KOLs. This comprehensive approach ensures that you identify the most influential voices and also determine how to engage with them effectively across different channels.
The more you know about the KOLs in your therapy area or market—including those who might not be best suited for partnership with your organization—the more effectively you can leverage their relationships to engage the right experts for maximum impact. Your KOL management strategy should profile each of these KOLs and their connections as fully as possible.
Of course, gathering all this data in one place is a massive undertaking, and MSLs aren’t known for their abundance of free time. For most organizations, partnering with a data vendor is the best way to ensure access to a comprehensive, up-to-date dataset.
Definitive Healthcare’s intelligence solutions provide claims, reference and affiliations data, social network influence insights, and more, all from an intuitive web platform (or integrated within your existing relationship management platform). Want to see it up close?
Sign up for a demo, and start mapping your KOL landscape today.
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