With personalized medicine at the forefront of healthcare today, Medical Affairs is a logical and essential strategic leader. Medical Affairs is the owner of the scientific narrative and the trusted voice for communicating it to all stakeholders. The function champions health equity in the development and delivery of healthcare innovation, and leads cross-functional engagement of both internal and external diverse participants.

In short, Medical Affairs needs to serve as the proverbial “glue” — building alignment and powering collaboration across research and development and commercial teams.

These important roles for Medical Affairs hold true within any life sciences organization — from the largest, most established companies to emerging biopharma (EBPs). Fortunately for EBPs, effective Medical Affairs work doesn’t depend on size or scale; rather, it requires an organizational commitment to starting early, and investing energy and attention throughout the lifecycle.

In a recent webinar, IQVIA highlighted critical success factors for any EBP seeking to lead as the trusted medical voice in a complex environment — and took a closer look at the need to orchestrate engagement of relevant experts.

Medical Affairs for EBPs: Six strategies for success

What does it take to power an effective Medical Affairs function? Based on the collective experience and expertise of our IQVIA team, we have identified these best practices:

• Collaborate across functions. Medical Affairs must act proactively as a partner to other teams, gathering and aligning the organization around strategic discussions, including a continuously pressure-tested scientific narrative, and coordinated development and communication of evidence.
• Emphasize healthcare centricity. At the core of all its activities, Medical Affairs needs to embed the voice of the varied healthcare participants – patients, providers, payers, and policy makers.
• Have a data-driven mindset. Build robust evidence strategies that consider all stakeholders’ data needs across all sources and throughout the lifecycle.
• Demonstrate outcomes and value. Medical impact is demonstrated across multiple dimensions: execution of engagements/initiatives/tactics, beliefs and perceptions, and healthcare outcomes. Medical Affairs plays a critical role in bringing value to the business and the healthcare ecosystem. That value can be measured in terms of impact.
• Be bold and work smart. To address today’s complexities, Medical Affairs professionals must develop and maintain a blend of skillsets — strategic and operational excellence, as well as the use of analytics and artificial intelligence and machine learning – all of which should serve as the backbone of the day-to-day work. Notably, the ability to identify and engage with diverse experts throughout the product lifecycle.
• Embrace new approaches to expert engagement. As the accelerated data and digital revolution continues to affect engagement models, orchestration of the approach has become of paramount importance. That’s why we featured it prominently in the recent webinar, and will focus on it in the remainder of this blog.

Essential considerations in contemporary expert engagement

As we explored during the webinar, there are a few “must do’s” for Medical Affairs teams today when planning and orchestrating engagement with key leaders:

1. Get more personal. Personalization is what distinguishes omnichannel communication from multichannel communication. As teams evolve toward a more tailored engagement style, they will drive demand for advanced social listening and bite-sized content.
2. Make digital a default. Digital is more than a communication channel; it can be a powerful tool for supporting better outcomes. Start thinking beyond the product and augmenting with digital innovations to ensure optimal outcomes for patients.
3. Aim for precision data and next-generation communication. As the industry moves toward precision medicine, we need precision data. Teams need to continue working to realize value from huge volumes of real-world data, and then leverage such evidence to inform and support engagement. Understand the precise needs of the audiences with whom you engage and tailor your communications accordingly.
4. Prioritize healthcare and patient centricity. The continued shift to value-based care will increase the focus on both population health and patient centricity. Medical Affairs teams will need to shape their engagement initiatives with value in mind.

Develop your plan for expert engagement

For EBPs, effective expert engagement starts with an early, clear strategy that defines the “why” and communicates it to key stakeholders. Experience suggests it’s best not to let “great” get in the way of “good” when crafting a strategy. With that strategy in place, Medical Affairs should begin considering the types of key opinion leaders (KOLs) and their strengths — from clinical expertise to social media influence.

It’s critical to start translating the “why” into messages for the various KOL segments. From there, start creating 18+-month plans for at least 15 to 20 KOLs. Remember: Just because you have identified a KOL does not mean you must engage with them immediately. Finally, build a mechanism for studying initial engagements. What worked? What didn’t? Use those insights to expand the KOL roster strategically over time.

While expert engagement planning must be purposeful and deliver organization-wide impact, it doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. To learn more about how to drive success in your EBP, watch the webinar replay.