Reaching the new influencers

With payers looking increasingly to  real-world data,  and to differentiation beyond this data through outcomes commitment and the provision of beyond the pill services, there’s never been a better  time for pharmaceutical and medical device companies to rethink and perhaps, transform their Medical Affairs functions.

Medical Affairs already has established relationships and communication channels with the various and expanding stakeholders in the industry. But the nature of these interactions has changed. Complexity of therapies, regulations, transparency, digital and the need to be versed in economic benefit requires new skill sets, capabilities, investments and commitments for needed transformation to occur.

Right now, we’re living through healthcare’s age of accelerations - as evidenced by advances in everything from biotechnology and stem cell research to machine learning and the advent (and approvals) of digital therapeutics. Alongside this there has been exponential growth in the volume of information and data available to decision-makers, and an intensified need for translating this into relevant, trusted and actionable insight.

In this new age, pharmaceutical and device companies, particularly those innovating and paving their way to scientific leadership, are realising that Medical Affairs can be a strategic function for scientific engagement early in drug development and throughout commercialisation, gathering insights to identify clinically meaningful differentiators by engaging with the external community years ahead of launch.

Medical Affairs provides a powerful means of harnessing two key activities: disseminating clinical and medical data while gathering insights from the community to bring back into the organisation. By using different channels ranging from scientific publications and congress meetings to advisory boards and individual engagements, this
two-way scientific exchange becomes the catalyst for the organisation to proactively understand and incorporate unmet medical needs.

We’re already living in a new world, and reaching its new influencers - whether these are payers, population health specialists or patient advocates - requires that leaders be fully engaged with it. The growth in availability and importance of evidence data and information demands that the role taken in this world by medical affairs teams becomes that of explorers, navigators and translators. It demands fluency not just with the science behind evolving treatment landscapes, or with new sources of availability, but with the language of the greatest influencer of all: the patient.

Duncan Arbour is SVP  innovation, Syneos Health Communications Europe