SPEAKERS

Evidence Generation plays a key role in Medical Affairs function. Recent developments in healthcare and technology have put more emphasis on how this can add overall value to the organization. On one hand, Medical Affairs is leading this but will also need to build new capabilities and skills to leverage this in the future.

• Value of Evidence Generation at the local and regional level
• Future trends in EviGen, especially in Real-world settings
• Building capabilities in Medical teams

Patient centricity is much discussed in Pharma but it can seem that defining it carefully and putting it into practice can be challenging. Medical Affairs is in a pivotal position to have a key role in ensuring that the patient voice is heard and more importantly listened to by various stakeholders. This presentation will focus on 2 areas related to patient centricity.

• Pharma engagement with patents and patient associations needs to be carefully orchestrated – this is particularly important in the rare disease area
• Active listening and engaging with patients should yield resources that are useful to them and give insight into the unmet medical need of Pharma
• Healthcare professionals need to be supported to develop skills to engage in shared decision making with patients to make therapy decisions

Medical Affairs, from a strategic partner to a strategic driver – I will describe our glocal operating model, and how it enables us via glocal priorities and approach to increase our strategic contribution to the brand strategy and planning. Glocalization has been an important factor in improving & strengthening our internal “medical community” and its impact on the organization. With examples of glocal initiatives, I will also cover the advantages & learnings from the use of an agile mindset and methodology.

• How can Medical Affairs obtain a leading role in cross-functional pharma & become a strong decision-maker?
• In what ways are Medical Affairs able to contribute to the brand success of your organization?

In an evolving environment, MA should accelerate in moving from the “technical support function” to the “strategic decision maker” exploiting the ability to collaborate with multiple stakeholders both to generate qualitative and quantitative data, to include the perspective of different stakeholders in the data meaning. An example of a multi-stakeholders’ project on cardiovascular disease to increase HCPs and patient engagement while leading strategic decisions for other departments.

• MA may contribute to filling the GAP between guidelines recommendations and both doctor clinical practice and patient needs-perception
• Generating data is key to be credible in filling this GAP while fuelling our communication and doctor-patient engagements
• Having the capacity to cross collaborate, understand and being credible with different external (HCPs, patients and Institutions) and internal stakeholders (commercial, Market access, R&D, Regulatory and Public affairs) MA should represent a key decision maker shaping company strategy

Medical Affairs is a critical function in Pharma because it is a unique point of contact with external customers like HCPs and patients and brings critical impact to payers, regulators and reimbursement decision makers.

One of the Medical Affairs’ most critical tasks is to reach out to HCPs and provide them with scientific and accurate information on medicines in order to allow informed decisions on patients’ care with the final aim to improve patient outcomes. In addition, by bringing external customers’ insight into the organization, Medical Affairs allows strategy tuning and development of specific tactics.

As a consequence of the COVID pandemic, some changes accelerated: the time of interaction with customers is shorter, they have a strong preference to receive scientific and accurate information that can enlarge their knowledge of our medicines, and the need for a customer personalised approach is becoming critical to successfully engage.

Medical Affairs needs to rethink its capacity and capabilities to strategically continue to be a critical function within the organization.