2024 Benchmark Report: Digital, Advanced Analytics & AI in Medical Affairs

INTRODUCTION

The Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) is pleased to share our 2024 Digital, Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Medical Affairs report. This report is based on findings from 32 leading organizations representing the Pharmaceutical, Biotech, and Medical and Diagnostic Device sectors, and reflects broad leadership thinking about the current and future states of Medical Affairs (MA) AI capability and challenges.

Survey design and analysis: Boston Consulting Group led the preparation, execution and analyses of the GenAI survey and moderated the Ambassador GenAI and Advanced Analytics workshop during the MAPS conference on March 24th, 2024.

Survey respondents: 34 representatives from 32 companies responded to our survey.

Participating companies: Thank you to participants from 3M, Abbott, AbbVie, Amgen, Astellas, AstraZeneca, Baxter, Bayer, bioMérieux, BioNTech, BMS, Eisai, Lilly, Gilead, Ipsen, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Kyowa Kirin, Lundbeck, Mallinckrodt, Merck & Co, Mundipharma, Novartis, Otsuka, Regeneron, Sanofi, Sumitomo Pharma, Takeda, Teva, UCB, Varian, Vertex, and Viatris for your valuable feedback and insights.

The opinions expressed here are those of members of the MAPS Ambassador Alliance and do not necessarily represent the perspectives of their respective companies.

RESPONDENT DEMOGRAPHICS

Represented organizations are fairly equally distributed between segments divided at the 5B, 15B, and 30B USD revenue marks with medium/large companies (>~15B USD in revenue) accounting for ~47% of represented MA professionals. Most ambassadors sampled are in various levels of director roles with global remit.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF INSIGHTS

This report summarizes results of the 2024 Medical Affairs Digital, Advanced Analytics and AI survey, reflecting 34 completed responses. This survey was fielded to inform a discussion at the 2024 MAPS Ambassador workshop on the current and future state of Digital, Advanced Analytics and AI in MA.

Key Insights:

  • Current State of Digital, Advanced Analytics, & AI tools adoption: Most respondents are primarily leveraging traditional rather than advanced analytical tools across the range of MA functions from medical education to regulatory activities. This represents a significant opportunity for digital transformation as Medical Affairs embraces and drives use of Generative AI (GenAI).
  • Expected Impact of Advanced Analytics / GenAI on Medical Affairs: As this progression towards advanced capabilities in data analytics and scientific content creation happens, respondents expect starkest impacts to be on customer insights, evidence generation, and medical communication.
  • Key Challenges in Digital Adoption: In identifying the opportunity to progress towards their own digital objectives and expectations, Medical Leaders highlighted concerns on internal skills, capacity, legal and regulatory challenges, and data access/ availability, among others. Overcoming these challenges will require significant upskilling in AI and analytics, and the ability to nimbly navigate the shifting stakeholder landscape. However, MA Leaders’ perceive positive alignment in support of digital goals and organizational agility with respect to future progression in this area.

BENCHMARK RESULTS

Digital Maturity

At present, MA teams continue to leverage traditional digital approaches while the maturity and use of more advanced tools remains low, especially across communication tools, regulatory activities, and evidence generation. More than half of respondents do not currently utilize automated chatbots for Health Care Professional (HCP) engagement and only half stated deploying social media for patient engagement and personalization support. Regulatory activities also have room for automation and digital transformation. More than half of MA organizations are not leveraging advanced tools for data privacy/ security and medical, legal, and regulatory review (MLR) automation. In the area of evidence generation and education, just ~10% of respondents use GenAI for medical evidence and education purposes. Furthermore, half of MA organizations do not use natural language processing (NLP) for literature review or big data for clinical trial interpretation. This current state represents a significant opportunity for MA to advance and modernize their organizations.

Q1.1: What digital channels and analytical capabilities is your MA organization leveraging, and how frequently is your MA organization using them?
Q1.3: What is the level of maturity of each of the digital channels and analytical capabilities within your MA organization?

Medical Affairs’ Role

Medical teams continue to drive the use of more traditional tools (e.g., emails with HCPs, online medical education) within their own function, but they are also acting as driving forces for movement toward more advanced capabilities (e.g., GenAI for data analysis and scientific content creation). For regulatory capabilities (i.e., MLR automation, data privacy and security, overall regulatory intelligence), however, MA teams collaborate with other business units or 3rd parties.

Q1.2 For each digital channel and analytical capabilities you are leveraging, what is MA’s role?

Priority Stakeholders

Most MA respondents agree that Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) are the highest priority for their increased digital investment (~59% ranking KOLs as their number one priority). HCPs are number one or two priority for 74% of respondents. Patients and payers were also commonly prioritized as a top three priority stakeholder, and only ~15% of leaders would include patients’ advocacy groups in their top three interest groups for focused investment.

Q1.4 Please rank the following stakeholders to show who you plan to prioritize for increased digital investment (financially) over the next 1-2 years?

Areas of Impact

Similarly, at least 8 out of 10 Medical Leaders expect digital, advanced analytics, and AI to have a high impact on customer insights generation, Medical communication, and evidence generation. Leaders almost universally expect AI to have an impact on every MA area of work discussed. Scientific publications are expected to be the least impacted by digital and AI tools.

Q1.5 What areas of work in MA do you expect to be majorly impacted by digital/advanced analytics and AI?

Key Objectives

Specifically with GenAI and Machine Learning (ML), MA Leaders foresee their three major objectives to be around driving more predictive insights (which approximately 1 in 3 of those surveyed rank as their #1 objective), faster evidence and content generation, and more efficient data analysis (each ranking in most leaders’ top three objectives).

Q1.6 What are your top three objectives for using GenAI/ML capabilities?

Key Capabilities

Beyond objectives, most Medical Leaders believe highest priority GenAI and ML use cases include data analysis and insights and scientific content generation. Nearly half of respondents also expect to use Gen AI/ML for real-time medical information. Only ~1 in 5 of those surveyed expect it to be used for compliance and regulatory support, or more personalized customer interactions.

Q1.7 What are the top three GenAI/ML capabilities you expect your MA organization to use?

Return on Investment

Among MA organizations, there is a relatively high level of variation in whether and how teams measure the return on investment for their digital engagement activities. Overall, a low number of organizations measure ROI directly. For example, ~39% of leaders report measuring ROI on HCP engagement directly and an equal number indirectly. Only ~1 in 5 MA teams track ROI on medical education directly and almost half of respondents do not measure ROI on payer engagement at all.

Q1.8 How does your Medical Affairs organization measure the return on investment (ROI) for the following digital engagement activities?

Challenges & Barriers

Medical Leaders perceive multiple internal and external barriers limiting advancement of digital/ AI initiatives. More than 80% of respondents believe that the lack of internal capabilities and capacity within their MA organizations creates challenges for adoption and integration of digital capabilities. Furthermore, they recognize legal and regulatory challenges as a significant barrier to progressing these initiatives. Finally, they often believe that limited data quality and availability, and proper tooling availability limit the opportunity to implement and optimize these solutions. While these challenges can be daunting, there is no perceived lack of leadership endorsement, vendor capability, or stakeholder acceptance to slow efforts to overcome them.

Q2.1-2 Which of the following are internal/external challenges or barriers your Medical Affairs organization faces to have greater adoption of digital/advanced analytics capabilities activities?

Upskilling Needs

Expanding on the concern about internal capabilities, Medical Leaders reported significant skill gaps among their organizations in AI and analytical literacy. Developing these competencies will be crucial for seizing digital opportunities. While many respondents have confidence in their scientific agility and RWD capabilities, they have some concerns about their organizations’ ability to address the shifting stakeholder landscape.

Q2.3 What are the biggest talent gap areas/upskilling needs in your MA organization?

AMBASSADOR DISCUSSION

After the survey, 32 MA professionals came together at the Ambassador Alliance session to discuss opportunities and barriers to drive impact through digital/AI, use-cases and implementation. Here are key takeaways from the discussion including supplemental perspective:

Opportunities in Digital, Advanced Analytics, and AI

The Ambassadors expressed strong interest in a variety of use-cases and explored potential benefits:

  • Possible use cases: There is enthusiasm for many use-cases ranging from MLR review to customer engagement to med info and some companies have started adopting these new, advanced solutions. More broadly, there are also opportunities in areas like advanced analytics, pharmacovigilance, and market/customer insight generation. Deciding which use-cases to pursue will require deliberate discussion on overall strategy and analyses of value and feasibility.

Considerations for Successful Implementation of Digital, Advanced Analytics, and AI Solutions

Internal capabilities were broadly highlighted as a challenge that will need to be addressed through a range of support:

  • Internal vs. external implementation: Ambassadors’ consensus is that MA teams currently do not have the capability and capacity internally to implement these advanced solutions. External vendors will get these efforts off the ground, and over time organizations will transition to in-house capabilities through in-licensing or by building them directly. Companies will have to manage cost, speed, customization, IT infrastructure and data ownership/quantity trade-offs throughout this progression.
  • Cross-functional engagement: The nature of MA functions and the need for external support (and associated cost) make cross-functional collaboration and support within companies crucial for successfully implementing AI and advanced solutions. There is a clear need for an enterprise AI strategy not only to effectively implement solutions, but also to prioritize use cases that are most impactful, find synergies, and allocate resources accordingly.
  • Pace of change/implementation: In deciding whether to pursue change incrementally or with large jumps, MA Leaders have a range of perspectives. Starting small allows MA teams to show return on quick wins which helps build support for bigger initiatives in addition to simply being easier to manage. However, some AI use-cases will result in inherently significant changes to the way people do their work. They will have to be acknowledged and implemented as such. In these cases, communication, coalition building, and change management will be particularly important.

  • Digital/Advanced analytics champions: Given the complexity to operationalize these solutions, internal champions fluent in both digital and medical will be highly valuable in propelling initiatives forward, though finding such people may be challenging.

BEST PRACTICES FOR INTERNAL ADOPTION OF DIGITAL, ADVANCED ANALYTICS, AND AI SOLUTIONS

Process changes are inherently challenging for organizations as they can be disruptive, and new technologies are apt to encounter skeptics. Overcoming these natural concerns and embracing

a changing path to success will be key to advancing digital/AI initiatives.

  • Performance metrics: Measuring impact is an important tool for building support within the organization. Tracking the right metrics (i.e., number of review cycles/ time in the case of MLR review automation), with a baseline for comparison, will be important for implementing and messaging these and follow-on initiatives.
  • Fostering adoption: It is always a challenge to adopt change when it marks a break from what has made companies and individuals successful in the past. Giving people the skills that they need to be successful using new tools and processes and earning by-in from senior leaders could be invaluable in overcoming this friction.

SUMMARY AND KEY INSIGHTS

  • Significant opportunity to enhance Medical Affairs organizations through digitalization of customer engagement, evidence generation, and medical communications: Most MA organizations are still using traditional tools rather than advanced AI technologies. This highlights a significant opportunity for digital transformation and there is high traction for applications including customer insights, evidence generation, and medical communication (i.e. with KOLs and HCPs).
  • Talent gaps, legal and regulatory hurdles, and data availability create digital transformation challenges: Medical Leaders face several internal and external challenges in adopting digital and AI capabilities, including a lack of internal skills, legal and regulatory hurdles, and data availability issues. Overcoming these challenges will require strong governance, cross-organizational support, and substantial upskilling.
  • Need for internal champions, impact tracking, and investment in upskilling to support and advance MA digital and AI strategies: Given the required investment, MA organizations interested in implementing advanced digital/ AI solutions should be thoughtful about how they message and cultivate collaborators within their organizations. Internal champions, impact tracking, and investment in upskilling will be crucial for building organizational alignment to support and advance MA digital/AI strategy.

Special thanks to BCG for their collaboration on this Benchmark Report, and to the MAPS Ambassador Alliance.

The Ambassador Alliance is part of MAPS’ Industry Partnership Program. For more information, visit the Industry Partnership Program page or contact Maria with MAPS at [email protected]