Veeva : How Digital is Helping Medical Affairs Show Its Value

The medical affairs function, increasingly aided by digital technology, is becoming the linchpin of better connections between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals (HCPs). Not only is it bringing the voice of the patient into R&D and commercial functions to optimize pipeline expansion efforts, it's also helping pharma companies establish strong, trusting connections with a growing number of key opinion leaders (KOL).

Veeva's European Commercial & Medical Summit looked at setting up field medical teams for success, achieving customer-centered scientific engagement, and unlocking the insights gleaned from these conversations and other interactions, such as medical congresses. Here are some of the key takeaways from the event.

Building the foundations for high-impact field medical teams

HCPs expect interactions with medical science liaisons (MSLs) to be peer-to-peer discussions, but medical affairs teams need to go beyond scientific knowledge that can build trust and demonstrate the value of their work to customers and their own leaders. Authenticity is the key to showing value, building effective teams, and optimizing connections with HCPs, said John McKenna, global field medical excellence lead at Astellas, and Walter Sheloff, medical affairs academy lead at Pfizer. MSL training programs should instill the right behaviors and values from the start. "We need to give them the skills they need in order to be curious," McKenna said.

Digital technology has already led to improvements in medical affairs outreach. From April 2020 to June 2021, medical users globally scheduled 214,000 virtual meetings with HCP clients, and these meetings lasted 40% longer than traditional meetings, producing roughly 8 million additional minutes of engagement.

Push initiatives are also reaching a more receptive audience. Email open rates in Medical were 47% between April 2020 and June 2021, compared to 36% in Commercial, with more than three million personalized approved medical emails tracked. At the same time, 33 million interactions were logged in Medical CRM, which is fast becoming the digital backbone and a single source of truth for medical affairs activity.

Although digital technology permits a huge amount of information to be shared, field excellence demands careful filtering and customer interaction to ensure that the right message is conveyed through the best channel at the best time, which is the essence of omnichannel engagement. "We cannot be data dumpers," McKenna emphasized.

As data and analytics improve, they will offer greater insights into HCPs' needs, accelerating the move to more personalized interactions. However, there will still need to be face-to-face communications with certain demographic groups and in certain regions. Best practices will depend on individual needs and preferences, which must be prioritized to drive strategic planning and cross-functional collaboration, Sheloff commented.

But medical affairs professionals will also need to measure the impact of their efforts and incorporate it into the strategy, both within and outside of their companies. In the future, this will likely become easier as analytics enables more patient outcomes data to be linked to field medical efforts, Sheloff said. (Watch the session, Achieving Field Medical Excellence)

Achieving customer-centered scientific engagement

As Nick Warwick, chief medical officer at ADVANZ Pharma, sees it, the medical affairs role now requires a holistic approach that combines insights from the broadest levels down to the level of the individual patient and product. Product knowledge is essential, as is an understanding of each product's value proposition and the data underpinning it, he said. Medical affairs must understand the patient journey and drug management pathways, but with a clear overview of industry priorities and pricing, reimbursement, and funding models.

"Fostering credible and long-lasting relationships is critical - our role is one of science-based, credible partnership with healthcare professionals, organizations and agencies," Warwick said. "Our skills, competencies, behavior, and even the language we use must reflect that role."

ADVANZ is putting these concepts into practice, growing its business model beyond its roots in legacy generic therapies to specialty therapies for distribution to hospitals in the U.K. and Europe. This new business depends on specialist-initiated communications that require more sophisticated medical affairs messaging, and has added complexity to R&D, regulatory compliance, and commercialization efforts.

Warwick observed that digital technology is helping medical affairs departments to provide greater value to HCPs by capitalizing on industry shifts to customer-centricity, data-based insights, and impact-led outcomes. ADVANZ is currently focusing its efforts on identifying external experts so that it can leverage their insights and integrate CRM technology to enable seamless two-way information and insight flow between company and customers. "We need to distinguish between noise and information, in order to bring about relevant change," he said. (Watch the session, Enhancing the Value of Medical Affairs With Digital)

Unlocking new insights from medical congresses

International medical congresses have always been a source of cutting-edge medical insights. Margaret Doyle, global medical affairs leader in hematology at Janssen, believes that social media has made their role even more important in understanding how thought leader insights shape their engagement.

Understanding and leveraging the most impactful medical congress insights requires careful planning well in advance of the event and allows medical affairs to identify and engage the key thought leaders and emerging experts. Aided by the adoption of Veeva Link, Janssen now focuses on using insights from congresses on key datasets, areas of greatest interest, and those of biggest unmet medical needs. Janssen's medical affairs teams, as a result, now have more informed and impactful engagements with thought leaders.

Twitter has become an increasingly important social media platform for discussing topics of high interest around global congresses, Doyle said. Currently, social media users spend an average of two hours a day on this channel. Doyle's team monitors events leading up to each congress closely, to anticipate questions that speakers are likely to receive as well as the audience reaction. This facilitates more focused and insight-driven preparation.

Pre-congress engagement also allows the team to see how submitted abstracts are being perceived in the community and amongst congress panelists and speakers, as well as how this perception evolves before the event. During the event, Doyle and her team monitor coverage to get real-time insights and engage with thought leaders on key topics of interest and debate. (Watch the session, Actionable Insights from Medical Congresses)

As the field of medical affairs continues to evolve, technology promises to enable it to have a greater, and measurable, impact on pharma companies and HCPs. In the end, as Summit speakers showed, this trend can only benefit patients by ensuring companies are allied with top experts, and that they are prioritizing efforts based on top of unmet needs.

For more information on how Veeva can enable the digital transformation of your company's medical affairs see Veeva Medical Suite.