Over 560 Medical Affairs professionals. One global community. Advancing the profession from the heart of Europe.

Key Takeaways: 

  • 567 Medical Affairs professionals from across the EMEA region and beyond convened in Zürich for three days of education, collaboration, and strategic dialogue. 
  • Vernon Bainton (Undoctored Truth Alliance) opened the main program with a call to arms on healthcare misinformation; Dr.
  • Shreeram Aradhye (President of Development & CMO, Novartis) anchored Day Two with a fireside chat on science, leadership, and the strategic future of the profession. Sessions, debates, workshops, and MasterClasses addressed the profession’s most pressing challenges — from AI integration and impact measurement to regulatory alignment and the future of scientific communication. 
  • The Circle Convention Center provided a fitting backdrop: a world-class venue at the intersection of innovation and international connectivity.

Opening Sessions That Set the Tone

The main program opened Monday morning with two sessions that together framed the meeting’s central challenge: in a world of accelerating misinformation and scientific complexity, Medical Affairs must do more than generate evidence — it must lead. 

Opening Keynote — The Truth Imperative: Why Medical Affairs Must Lead Action Against Healthcare Misinformation 

Vernon Bainton, Co-Founder of the Undoctored Truth Alliance, opened the main conference program with a challenge that has moved from the periphery of Medical Affairs to its center: the healthcare misinformation crisis.  

As patients, caregivers, and clinicians increasingly navigate a landscape saturated with misleading health content, Bainton argued that Medical Affairs professionals — positioned at the intersection of science, trust, and stakeholder engagement — carry a unique responsibility to act. Not merely to correct the record reactively, but to lead proactively: building the credibility, the channels, and the relationships that make accurate science more compelling than the noise surrounding it.  

The session set a demanding tone for the days that followed, asking each attendee to consider their individual role in protecting the integrity of medical information. 

Fireside Chat — A Conversation with Dr. Shreeram Aradhye, President of Development & Chief Medical Officer, Novartis 

Dr. Shreeram Aradhye, President of Development and Chief Medical Officer at Novartis, anchored Tuesday morning’s opening with a fireside chat that brought the view from the highest levels of pharmaceutical leadership directly into the room.  

Speaking from one of the world’s foremost research-based pharmaceutical companies — headquartered steps away in Basel — Dr. Aradhye offered a rare and candid perspective on how drug development strategy, regulatory navigation, and the evolving role of Medical Affairs intersect at the point of greatest consequence: getting transformative therapies to patients.  

His conversation reinforced a theme running throughout the meeting: that Medical Affairs is not a downstream function, but a core architect of how science translates into outcomes — and that the leaders who will define the profession’s next decade are precisely those in the room. 

Learning Built for Every Stage of a Career

Across three days, attendees engaged with an ambitious program of concurrent sessions, structured debates, workshops, and pre-conference MasterClasses in Insights, Integrated Medical Communications, and Launch Excellence. Every session was anchored in the MAPS Medical Affairs Competency Framework, ensuring content was not only timely but directly applicable to the skills professionals need to advance their organizations and careers. 

Key themes and takeaways from across the concurrent program included: 

  • Medical communications are evolving from a delivery function into a core strategic partner — with scientific literature increasing rapidly, the ability to reach the right audience, in the right channel, with the right message is now a competitive differentiator. 
  • AI adoption in Medical Affairs is advancing, but the gap between piloting and embedding remains wide. Organizations need practical frameworks — not just tools — to move from experimentation to workflow integration. 
  • The traditional separation of Medical Affairs, Regulatory, and Pharmacovigilance is a strategic liability. An integrated benefit-risk model enables richer submissions, more credible HCP engagement, and proactive — rather than reactive — safety intelligence. 
  • Compliance in medical communications is increasingly navigated, not avoided. As the toolkit expands (real-world evidence, digital platforms, pre-approval communications), the competitive advantage belongs to those who understand where the boundaries lie and how to operate them responsibly. 
  • The medical conference model is overdue for reinvention. With tightening budgets, reduced sponsorship, and proliferating digital channels, Medical Affairs teams must define clear objectives and ROI frameworks for how they invest — now and over the next decade. 
  • The next generation of HCPs does not consume scientific information the way their predecessors did. Medical Affairs content strategies must evolve to meet clinicians shaped by short-form digital media — without sacrificing scientific rigor or regulatory compliance. 
  • Measuring medical impact is no longer aspirational — it is expected. The Medical Impact Horizon Framework offers a structured, practical path from activity tracking to meaningful outcome demonstration, and teams at every level of maturity can begin applying it immediately. 

A Community That Shows Up for Each Other

Beyond the formal program, Zürich delivered what every MAPS meeting ultimately delivers: the conversations that happen between sessions, across exhibit hall tables, and well into the evening reception. For a profession that depends on trusted relationships — with physicians, with payers, with regulators, with patients — there is something irreplaceable about 567 professionals from 24 countries finding common ground in the same room. 

From early-career professionals attending their first MAPS EMEA event to CMOs and global heads shaping the field’s direction, the meeting created space for genuine exchange at every level.  

The connections formed in Zürich will shape strategies, inform decisions, and strengthen teams across the region for the year ahead. 

The Momentum Continues

MAPS came to Zürich carrying the momentum of a record-breaking Americas Annual Meeting in Denver — 1,550 professionals, the largest gathering in the organization’s ten-year history. The EMEA meeting added 567 more to a growing global community unified by a single mission: elevating Medical Affairs as a strategic force in healthcare. 

To every attendee, speaker, sponsor, exhibitor, volunteer, and team member who made the 2026 EMEA Annual Meeting what it was: thank you. The work that began in Zürich — the conversations, the collaborations, the commitments — belongs to this community. And this community continues to grow. 

We look forward to seeing you at the next MAPS event. 

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