Medical affairs leaders have a front-row seat to many of the new innovations underway within the life sciences industry. But they also are on the frontline of working through the scientific communication hurdles of bringing the newest treatments or devices to market.
To find success, medical affairs leaders need to seek out new data sources, competencies, and technology solutions to bring greater transparency and collaboration to scientific communications.
Precision medicine is transforming medical affairs
The life sciences industry’s investment in medical and scientific affairs has steadily increased in part due to the growing emphasis on precision medicine.
Precision medicine is reshaping the healthcare industry as it helps bring about patient-centric care. However, precision medicine with its often complex and individualized treatment options makes scientific communication between medical affairs and healthcare providers even more important.
Leading life sciences companies are reinventing their executional capabilities to deliver on the promise of precision medicine and data and analytics must serve as the foundation for medical affairs.
Data is king in the era of value-based care
As patient care becomes more complex, it’s critical that medical affairs teams, along with their commercial counterparts, employ improved strategies to understand and effectively meet the changing expectations of the treating community.
While it’s not possible to predict trends in medical affairs with 100% accuracy, it’s a safe bet that data will continue to be the most important resource that organizations must leverage to inform their medical strategies.
To meet the promise of value-based care, a care model that rewards providers for assisting patients in reducing the effects and incidence of chronic disease and living healthier lives, improved and expanded data sets will be necessary.
Medical affairs leaders need to reimagine how strategic insights are defined and generated in the era of value-based care.
Combing data from a variety of sources can drive insights that reflect the physician’s experience and behavior, and improved analytics will be critical in the development of tailored engagement initiatives. These new insights will forever improve the partnership between industry and physicians by combining clinical studies, real-world evidence, expert profiling, and stakeholder engagement.
As data is used more intelligently, the role of medical affairs as trusted partners to the medical community will evolve.
The new role of medical affairs
As it looks to the future, the medical affairs industry is actively defining new paths to success. Organizations must understand how their peers are addressing challenges today and how to elevate medical affairs to a leadership role.
Gone are the days of simple ad hoc transactional encounters with external experts. Instead, medical affairs need to cultivate informed expert relationships that are supplemented by tangible metrics and KPIs.
Additionally, when it comes to innovative therapies, medical affairs need to rethink the scientific exchange beyond traditional experts. Now, the scientific exchange should encompass care teams, advocates, and allied health leaders who can add a valuable perspective and help shape the commercialization strategies for a treatment or device.
A refined approach that relies on data and analytics provides medical affairs the opportunity to establish valued relationships with a broader range of medical stakeholders.
Leveraging technology to transform expert relationships
To truly demonstrate organizational value, medical affairs must use innovative technologies and approaches to generate real-time intelligence to engage scientific experts in key therapeutic areas and disease states. This will ensure that goals and objectives are accurately aligned and able to evolve over time.
In this information age, competitive advantage is defined not by the accumulation of data, but by the ability to understand it. Sophisticated data strategies that deliver actionable intelligence should be valued much like the lighthouse that provides a signal when the horizon and stars are obscured by the dense shroud of fog.
Learn more
Curious about how to leverage data and analytics to inform your medical affairs strategy?
Book a demo to learn more about how our Monocl Expert Suite, coupled with our healthcare commercial intelligence, can help you build strong and meaningful relationships with medical affairs and clinical experts around the world.
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