Garth Sundem

Welcome to this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series, Elevate. I’m your host Garth Sundem, Communications Director at MAPS. And today we’re speaking about the future of Medical Affairs 2030 with Ariel Katz, co-founder and CEO of H1. This episode is sponsored by H1, whose platform helps life sciences companies, hospitals, academic medical centers, and health systems, connect with providers, find clinical research, locate industry experts, and benchmark their organizations. So, before we get into the specifics of what Medical Affairs is gonna look like nine years from now, I I’d like to start talking about why Medical Affairs is changing. So what is driving this pace of change societally or technologically? Why are we going so fast right now?

Ariel Katz

I’ll share my perspective. Well, thanks for having me, having me here. Excited to be here today with you. So I think there are a lot of macro changes that are happening COVID, obviously, but even before COVID happened, this was happening COVID COVID helped. And so the question is, why am I why is medical Fair’s growing so quickly? The perspective that I have is a few different reasons. One is science and medicines becoming more complex. 20 years ago, Medical Affairs was not as prominent as today, medicine and science was not as complex or hard for physicians and payers to understand the days of Lipitor and humera, blockbuster drugs, it’s no longer the future. And today, that’s not true combination therapies, immuno oncology gene therapies, all these new technologies, that it is more complex for all the stakeholders throughout the healthcare ecosystem, from payers, to providers to systems to understand what that medicine is how that impacts the health system, and what’s the best clinical practice for their patients. The job of Medical Affairs is to educate them, and disseminate that knowledge that could change clinical practice for the better patients. When medicine was simple. It’s pretty simple. When medicine becomes more complex, more complex, and need more people educating you need more clinical studies, you need more peer reviewed literature, you need more conversations, you need to educate more people. And Medical Affairs is growing to support that change, support the more complex medicine and medicines on the becoming more precise and more complex. And I believe Medical Affairs is there to educate and fill that gap about the latest therapy and the best clinical practice that’s existing. So that’s I think that’s one of the bigger macro trends that I’ve seen.

Garth Sundem

Well, so as Medical Affairs, you know, becomes more essential in conveying the information of how to treat patients with with complex, you know, treatments targeting ever smaller diseases, is Medical Affairs having to adjust its practices as well, to to meet that demand.

Ariel Katz

Definitely. I mean, I remember the first year that maps had a conference, and the hot buzzword was social media, OSHA. And everyone was trying to realize how do I engage patient advocacy groups in social media, how to engage physicians in social media that was taught in the town, and we’re all changing with new technologies, new way to access the end user, then stakeholder. There’s new ways of medical first things to adapt the way that they’re communicating. It’s all about education and communication. And we’re seeing that change new stakeholders, there’s new stakeholders that exist parents, advocacy groups, nurses, all Office coordinators, everyone.

Garth Sundem

Well, let’s unpack that, because I think you’ve got about four topics in there. Let’s go to social media first, because you know, you said maps first conference, the big buzzword was social media, I still hear the big buzzword being social media, but you speak about it as if, as if it’s solved. So where are we with, with generating insights from social media?

Ariel Katz

I think there’s two things that people were interested in. One was finding digital opinion leaders, those are top healthcare professionals that have a follow a large following on social media, that they have a broad reach. And then the other one is understanding what’s being spoken about on social media to drive your Medical Affairs strategies. And I would say both of those are on the precipice of being like business, as usual unsolved. And you’re seeing a lot of solutions out there today, which five years ago were like, in its infancy. And so companies like h1 and other companies have developed solutions to answer those problems for Medical Affairs teams. And so I know I’m talking as if they’re solved. But in five years, they’re not gonna be talking about it, because it’s going to be solid solved. Like I see it happening today where the technology and it’s all available now to be used as a matter of adoption of it, and everyone’s bought into that, the need for it.

Garth Sundem

Well, so then in five years Since we’re talking about Medical Affairs in the future, what won’t be solved? What’s coming next?

Ariel Katz

So when I think about Medical Affairs, there’s three pillars in my head. It’s like, well, what are my medical strategies? What should I educate healthcare professionals on? Who are the stakeholders that I’m educating? And is my education working? Or what what’s missing? And I think we’ve been focused a lot about who are the stakeholders? And how do I educate them on the latest therapies? I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to understand what is the impact of Medical Affairs and I look at this year’s upcoming conference in 2022, a lot of it is about impact of Medical Affairs, it feels like the same busyness that I felt about social media a few years ago, impact of Medical Affairs is going to be it’s going to be solved, solved, there’s going to be a compliant way to understand is your communication education actually educating the right stakeholders and changing clinical practice for the better of the patients? And then need to understand what are the what are the educational gaps that exist in the healthcare ecosystem for providers? Does it provider know when to use and flimsy in combination with Keytruda? Yep. I don’t know what if I told you 50% of oncologist in the US don’t understand it. That’s interesting. And guarantee Merck is going to try and educate those doctors about it. And so I think there’s a lot of gap and and knowledge around that for medical care. So I think that’s going to be more of the I’m seeing that become the new trend. How do you think about the impact of Medical Affairs in a compliant way? Well,

Garth Sundem

That’s interesting, you know, identifying gaps, it seems like the old model of Medical Affairs was a little bit reactive, where Medical Affairs would wait to be asked a question, and then it would go out and try to answer that question. And are you saying that in the future of Medical Affairs, it may be more proactive? Where Medical Affairs is looking out into the information ecosystem? And identifying those gaps, even before they’re asked?

Ariel Katz

Yeah, and the way I view Medical Affairs changing, and if you speak to speak to any C suite at any top 20 pharma company, they’re going to say these words, but maybe these exact words are different words. Medical Affairs was a data dissemination engine. Yeah. phase two clinical trial, you disseminate the data, Medical Affairs is becoming a data generation engine for their business. And so if you think about what example MSL insights, drives, changes in studies, drive changes in strategy or tribes changes and a lot of things, MSL insights, understanding what the gaps are, it’s going to become that data generation engine to drive company level strategy. And so I think everyone sees that happening in a compliant way. I think everyone sees that happening. And we see that happening, too. What do you think about what we’re being asked by by some of our clients?

Garth Sundem

Well, let’s go back to impact then. So if Medical Affairs is becoming a data generation function, you know, is I think people have been trying to measure impact, and they’ve been looking at things like how our data dissemination is changing opinion, or, you know, even even even metrics like, you know, share of scientific voice and things like that. But that’s still mostly a communication metric, right? We’re metrics. So if Medical Affairs is changing to a data generation function, how are we going to show the impact of that?

Ariel Katz

So let’s go through like, so. Yeah, I think share scientific voice is also like the 90s. Not literally like, it’s like, no longer. It’s not the future. But talking about 2030 2030. Now, it’s like the 2010s. That’s measuring if your outreach is working, yeah, proxy, some of the actual thing. So if you talk about a case study, just make up something, we’ll make something together. Keytruda is best use for patients that are 85 to 95, that are experiencing non small cell lung cancer. And the way it should be used in the community is in combination with chemotherapy. That’s it. So that’s a thing. And we think that’s the Merck thinks that’s the best practice. So first of all you want to know on you want understand how many oncologists don’t understand that and are using it incorrectly. And you can do that by looking at real world data, so that you know who to who to chat with, you then chat with those people. And then you want to see if your education is working. You and you can do pre approvals as well. But you want to know like you should do this pre approval. If you don’t know if your education is working, and that you’re seeing proper diagnoses, you’re seeing proper treatment for that therapy, and you could track that looking at medical claims data, looking at all these different things, not looking at prescriptions, about prescriptions, but you can do it in a compliant way and we’re seeing the market and lots of companies start to ask these questions.

Garth Sundem

With that is so that is so interesting, you know, to be able to know who needs your information, not just sort of like the public profile of someone who, you know, is an oncology opinion leader. But someone who, perhaps you can see is not using a product perfectly

Ariel Katz

and doesn’t understand it. Imagine if I told you I could tell you every oncologist that asked the question, when’s a good time to use? Keytruda? My patients? Yeah, yeah, I can tell you that exact question. And who asked that? That’s interesting. Did you meet they they haven’t, they are lacking knowledge. And I would if I was at a pharma company, I would go and send my MSL to chat with them.

Garth Sundem

And you’re right, that that’s such a complex use of a targeted medicine in a complicated ecosystem. All right, well, let’s let’s go back to I think impact segues into strategy. And, you know, you were saying that Medical Affairs used to be a very tactical function to, you know, we were the function that would put the scientific word out. But we were pretty much given the scientific word, and told what to do with it. Do you see that role of Medical Affairs changing? Are we are is Medical Affairs becoming more of a strategic partner?

Ariel Katz

It is, like, we see that most of the companies, we work with over 100 life science companies, and almost all them see that smaller ones are a bit different. But other ones, almost all them see that change is actually incredible. I mean, we haven’t I haven’t been in this world for so long. But just in the time that I’ve been here, things have changed. And you want to know, one of the main reasons why access people like talking to Medical Affairs, that stakeholders, it’s different than our colleagues on the commercial side. MSOs have much better access than some other folks do. Because they have a peer to peer relationship. And we’re seeing them generate information and data to drive strategy. And so we’re seeing that change happen.

Garth Sundem

So what does Medical Affairs do with this opportunity? You know, where where is Medical Affairs headed nine years from now, if you’re almost eight years from now, as we talk at the end of this year, for? Where are we headed eight years from now?

Ariel Katz

Like eight years ago, is all around like, does Medical Affairs have a seat at the table? Yeah, right. There. They’re like we’re there. And so it’s a question of like, what is medical first moved to that seat at the table? And what decisions are they helping drive? And what we’re observing, being helped driven is, what are phase four studies that they should be running? What how to think about trial design, how to think about patient experience, how to think about provider experience, as a provider, think about therapy, nobody else has access that information besides for Medical Affairs, especially pre approval, or crazy questions as questions are the most with some of the most important questions when you think about your therapy and what you’re developing? And so those are some questions. We’re seeing Medical Affairs, voice at the table and, and start to bring, that’s where you get the data generation component of Medical Affairs.

Garth Sundem

So pre approval. Now, that’s not a traditional role for Medical Affairs, is it? You know, I think, traditionally, it’s been post approval and teaching people how to use unapproved drug better. What is the role for Medical Affairs pre approval,

Ariel Katz

Where we’re at some of the larger pharma companies, we’re seeing 20 30% Medical Affairs teams when there’s a product to start to phase three study. That was never the never was the case before. It’s all around education, and educating them about the study, trying to understand trial design, trying to understand the patient experience, trying to understand why they’re not recruiting patients. Yes, recruit patients and medical MSLs are the best people to try to send who would be a good trial list. We’ve been an investigator trying to unlike working with your clinical counterparts. We’re seeing those discussions happen across the board, medical and clinical aligning to help drive strategy around this.

Garth Sundem

Well, that is a that is quite a vision for 2030. I hope we have an excuse to catch up before then. But if we don’t, let’s catch up in 2030. And see how many of these predictions are true.

Ariel Katz

Now with the mountain stones and digital stones, digital stone, digital stone, so I could re record this to my kids and 23rd and see how wrong I was.

Garth Sundem

And, boy, the more recordings our kids have of us to play back showing us that we’re wrong. Believe me, I know it well. So thanks very much for joining us today. To learn more about how your organization can partner with each one to unlock key insights and opportunities for industry engagement. To create a healthier future, visit H1.co which by the way, I think is the shortest URL I’ve ever mentioned H1.co And don’t forget to subscribe we hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series, Elevate.