AI Foundations for Medical Affairs
Through this course you will recognize terms such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), deep learning, and neural networks to arrive at best decisions and insights needed for success.
Through this course you will recognize terms such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), deep learning, and neural networks to arrive at best decisions and insights needed for success.
As a result of the global COVID-19 outbreak, field teams are no longer able to visit HCPs face-to-face. In order to overcome this challenge and continue to engage their HCPs, Field Medical teams are required to do so virtually via online video platforms. Although practical, this method of communication requires a different set of skills compared with face-to-face interactions, and comes with its own challenges. During this Webinar, we will explore the skills and challenges around effective remote engagement and share hints and tips to help you access, engage and follow-up with HCPs remotely
(a) targeting a predefined set of focus questions
(b) presenting alternate views on a particular issue that is of concern to the Medical Affairs community and attempting to resolve the issue
(c) identifying priorities for new areas of industry standards and guidance
(d) initiating the appropriate collaborations and building community around a theme of interest.
By: Lilly Stairs1; Annick de Bruin, MBA2; Diane Maloney, JD3a; Peyton Howell, MHA4; Roslyn F. Schneider, MD, MSc5; Leonard A. Valentino, MD6
1Founder & Principal, Patient Authentic; 2Director, Research Services, Center for Information & Study on Clinical Research Participation (CISCRP); 3Associate Director of Policy, US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), MAPS Patient Centricity Focus Area Working Group member; 4Chief Commercial & Strategy Officer, Parexel International; 5Principal, RozMD Patient Affairs Consulting, MAPS Patient Centricity Focus Area Working Group member; 6President and CEO, National Hemophilia Foundation (NHF), Professor, Rush University, MAPS Patient Centricity Focus Area Working Group member
aThis article reflects the views of the author and should not be construed to represent FDA’s views or policies.
Introduction
Patient centricity was a key theme that emerged in several of the plenary presentations and workshops at the March 2020 Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) Annual Meeting in Miami, Florida, and is reflective of broader strategic goals in the biopharmaceutical industry. As MAPS Board Member Danie du Plessis noted in his presentation on the Value of Medical Affairs, Medical Affairs professionals are well positioned to ensure that the voice of the patient is heard in their organizations, and true patient partnership is part of the overarching strategic vision.
Two events at the Annual Meeting specifically focused on this theme and provided not only a cross-functional perspective on the current state of patient centricity in our industry but also practical examples for Medical Affairs professionals to implement patient-focused approaches in their everyday work. The sessions sparked considerable interest, and attendance was particularly high at the plenary session, with over 450 MAPS participants attending live and virtually.
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The events were spearheaded by MAPS Patient Centricity Focus Area Working Group Co-Leads, Tricia Gooljarsingh, PhD (Momenta Pharmaceuticals) and Jamie Kistler, PhD (Parexel International), with support from Isabelle Bocher-Pianka (Ipsen). The Working Group, comprising Medical Affairs professionals, as well as representatives from nonprofit patient advocacy organizations, regulatory agencies (US Food and Drug Administration [FDA]), and patient-focused consultancies, was established 2 years ago to provide a platform to advance the patient centricity agenda in the MAPS organization and share best practices for pharmaceutical engagement with patients.
This article provides highlights from the plenary session, which included a multidisciplinary panel of speakers with broad and deep expertise on the topic. The cross-functional approach reflected the collaboration that is foundational for true patient engagement and partnership in the pharmaceutical industry. The faculty members represented a range of organizations and interests, but all share a passion for improving patient engagement and empowering Medical Affairs professionals with the information and tools necessary to “move the needle” in our industry. A more comprehensive manuscript is in development with the goal of expanding on the information provided in the plenary session and extending the reach of these valuable insights and perspectives to a broader audience (including patients, Medical Affairs professionals, and healthcare providers). This article will feature interviews with the speakers to provide further depth and insights, including case studies and examples of current best practices.
The plenary session was moderated by Dr Len Valentino, President and CEO of the NHF, who introduced the session with the mantra “not for patients without patients.” Len provided an overview of the agenda and learning objectives
As both a clinician and a leading patient advocate, Len brought his own insights and experience to the discussion as to why patient centricity and collaboration among multiple stakeholders is so critical.
“All of us are here because our products or devices are used by patients. We need to understand what is most important to patients in our drug and device development, and collaboration is key to get this information. Not just collaborating internally with commercial organizations, HEOR, Clinical Operations, and Clinical Development but with the most important stakeholder—the patient. The patient voice should be part of all those programs and weaved through each stage of the drug development plan.”
He added that Medical Affairs is uniquely qualified to influence or directly drive patient centricity as “many of us are clinicians, and therefore our background has always been focused on the patient and patient care.”
In the opening presentation, Annick provided insights from a biennial global research study conducted by CISCRP that included 12,450 respondents, of whom 3600 were actual clinical study volunteers. The 2019 CISCRP Perceptions and Insights Study monitored trends in perceptions in clinical research among the general public and collected information about clinical trial experiences.1
Interestingly, perceptions around clinical trials have not changed substantially since the initial study in 2013, and, while people consider research to be very important, this often does not translate to active participation in clinical trials. This remains a key issue for the research community.
Annick shared insights from the data regarding what channels are most effective in overcoming barriers. A patient’s relationship with their doctor was found to have the greatest impact on willingness to participate. Technology and decentralization of studies also provide opportunities to reduce patient burden and involve more patients in clinical trials. For example, travel time to clinics was reported as a major burden impacting participation, especially among young people (Figure 1).
Annick concluded with the advice, “No one size fits all. Everybody wants different options to make sure clinical trial participation fits into their lives with minimal disruption.”
Annick’s perspective on the current state of patient and public involvement and awareness of clinical trials was followed by a very personal insight into the key success factors in engaging with patients. Lilly Stairs was diagnosed with 3 autoimmune conditions—Crohn’s disease, psoriatic arthritis, and psoriasis—all within a 6-month period, and her experience inspired her to become a patient advocate and engage with other patients, patient advocacy organizations, and pharmaceutical industry partners to affect change.
In her presentation, Lilly emphasized the need for the pharmaceutical industry to learn from other consumer-facing industries. In particular, she highlighted that we need to ensure a clear understanding of the end user’s needs, something she feels we have not traditionally done consistently in healthcare. She also stressed the importance of engaging with all patients and not just advocates.
“While it’s important to talk to the advocates who are able to give you high-level strategic input, it is also really critical to engage with the everyday patient who will have valuable insights and feedback. Patients are ready to engage around their healthcare. They are excited and eager to share their thoughts and experiences to move the needle and create a better tomorrow for all patients.”
Her presentation included the key principles of how we should engage with patients (Figure 2).
The importance of metrics was emphasized throughout the presentation, as well as demonstrating the value of patient advocacy to the business. Lilly provided examples in which patient advocacy work has resulted in a clear measurable impact.
“During my tenure as Head of Patient Advocacy at Clara Health, I was asked to look at a pre-screener for a lupus clinical study that was struggling to complete enrollment. It was so confusing and complex that patients were not getting through the screening stage. By working with autoimmune patients to improve the screener alongside other patient-centric tactics, recruitment speed was increased by 400%, saving a trial on the brink of shutting down.”
This presentation provided a unique opportunity to gain an insight into the work that the FDA is doing around patient centricity. Diane emphasized that patient engagement is important across all organizations in the FDA, from the Commissioner’s Office to the Product Centers, and they collaborate and meet regularly on cross-cutting patient issues (Figure 3).
She stressed that the FDA fully recognizes that patients are experts on what it is like to live with their conditions and are “uniquely positioned to inform understanding of the therapeutic context for drug development and evaluation.”
One key patient engagement activity within the FDA is the Patient Focused Drug Development (PFDD) initiative. In total, the FDA has convened 24 PFDD meetings on specific disease areas, which are attended by a cross section of stakeholders, including patients, advocates, researchers, drug developers, and healthcare professionals. The goal of these sessions is to listen to patients’ perspectives on their disease, symptoms, and treatment options. A key learning from these meetings is that many patients want to be as active as possible in the work to develop and evaluate new treatments. FDA also actively participates in PFDD meetings led by patient organizations focusing on many disease areas.
She encouraged anyone who hasn’t attended a PFDD meeting to try to do so as it provides a valuable insight into a key way in which the FDA engages patients in the drug development process. The meetings can be attended remotely, and summaries are available on the FDA website.
Diane spoke passionately about the commitment of everyone in the FDA to put patients at the heart of everything they do. She said, “We do what we do because we want safe and effective products for patients, and we want them available in a timely way.”
Peyton did not mince her words about why it is so important for the biopharmaceutical industry to drive a customer-centric approach to drug development.
“Even before the impact of COVID-19, there was real urgency to make clinical trials more patient centric. There are currently 40,000 clinical trials recruiting in the US, and 80% are delayed due to recruitment problems. 85% of clinical trials fail to retain enough patients.”
In her presentation, Peyton focused on Patient Centric Protocol Optimization (PCPO), which is one of the key areas in which her organization has seen encouraging results. PCPO is a framework to solicit feedback from patients and study sites to ensure that patient needs are met. This approach can include patient surveys, web listening, and patient burden analysis. A case study on PCPO was included in the related MAPS workshop presentation presented by Jamie Kistler and Tricia Gooljarsingh.
“This process has revealed that a lot of previous assumptions were wrong. We used to obtain feedback from site nurses as opposed to patients themselves, and our assumptions around patient burden and preferences were often incorrect.”
She also emphasized the increasing importance of decentralized trials and shared an example of a decentralized trial patient journey (Figure 4). While every journey is different depending on the patient and the therapy area, what is similar is the need to start engaging with patients early. She also highlighted the importance of using mobile options and other technology in decentralized trials. COVID-19 has been a catalyst to support innovation in the application of decentralized clinical trial tactics such as telemedicine visits and home nursing.
Looking ahead, she urged that there is still a lot more that can be done and asked everyone in the room to have a voice. “This community can really play a key role in driving forward the innovations to make trials more patient centric.”
Looking ahead, Peyton is excited about the following opportunities:
As the final speaker, Roz emphasized that in this multidisciplinary collaboration, Medical Affairs is uniquely positioned to drive organizational change where patient centricity resides at the core. “We can all embrace the concept of patients as one of our most critical stakeholders, but that doesn’t mean people see its relevance to what they do every day. To advance a cultural shift, it needs to start with the organization’s ‘why,’ and this needs to align with the different functional groups.”
She recommended creating “sharing platforms” where information and insights from the various patient-related activities taking place across an organization are shared and utilized to inform the overall patient engagement strategy. She urges that this intelligence should not just come from thought leaders and healthcare providers but from a wider network, including umbrella organizations, industry coalitions, health authorities, etc. The “cycle of learning” is further supported by demonstration projects so key learnings can be shared with these external networks in a non-competitive way.
Roz stressed the importance of leadership endorsement saying, “It won’t happen unless you have significant leadership endorsement at every level across the company. If you don’t have that endorsement, patient engagement will be the first thing that’s dropped, so you need to ensure what you are doing is core to the business.”
Concluding on metrics, she referenced some important tools that can be used by Medical Affairs professionals and cross-functional partners (these are included along with other key resources in the related MAPS Annual Meeting workshop available on-demand at https://community.medicalaffairs.org/on-demand-conferences):
Concluding the plenary session, Dr Len Valentino noted, “Having listened to the presentations today, what comes across loud and clear is the importance of understanding the patient journey and involving the patient early in the process. Medical Affairs can create the narrative that tells the story of the patient that allows all the other functions to do their jobs better by focusing on what is important to the patient.”
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge Tricia Gooljarsingh, PhD (Momenta Pharmaceuticals), Jamie L. Kistler, PhD (Parexel International), and Isabelle Bocher-Pianka (Ipsen) for their contributions to the concept, design, and content development for the MAPS Annual Meeting patient centricity plenary session and workshop and this accompanying Elevate article. They would also like to recognize the significant effort made to ensure that those unable to attend in person due to COVID-19 travel restrictions could participate remotely and engage in discussions. Editorial support for this article was provided by Patricia Barnfather (Barnfather Communications, Ltd) and Diane Neer (Parexel International).
Reference
The scientific communication platform (SCP) forms the core for all communications about a product and serves as the repository of available evidence and statements to support Medical Affairs strategy. View this Webinar on Converting Challenges Into Opportunities While Building Your SCP to learn about the following:
Ralph Rewers, Sr Director, Global Field Medical Excellence at AbbVie, shares how Field Medical professionals are in a position to impact thousands of patients. At the MAPS 2020 Global Annual Meeting, Dr. Rewers encourages Field Medical professionals to step into the shoes of the individuals they’re speaking with to better understand their beliefs and behaviors, so organizations can better tailor medical communications to how they receive scientific data.
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Download the Presentation
Members may also download a PDF copy of the slides from the Field Medical program from the MAPS 2020 Global Annual Meeting as well as a recording of the session in the Community Portal. Not a member and wish to access the slides? Membership is only $250 USD per year ($425 for a 2-year subscription) and includes access to all new live Webinars, all on-demand Webinars (over 50 Webinars and growing each month), discussion forums to share best practices and questions with over 4,000 Medical Affairs professionals from across the globe, copies of past meeting presentations, white papers, standards & guidance tools and templates, and much, much more. Click here for membership details or to sign up: https://medicalaffairs.org/membership/
Bill Strickland, AVP, US Field Medical at Allergan, speaks on “demystifying artificial intelligence” at the MAPS 2020 Global Annual Meeting in Miami, and how AI can enhance daily life in this new frontier for Medical Affairs professionals. Dr. Strickland also touches on patient centricity and his leadership philosophy.
If the video above does not play, or to view full screen, CLICK HERE to open in a new window.
Download the Presentation
Members may also download a PDF copy of the slides as well as a recording of the session in the Community Portal. Not a member and wish to access the slides? Membership is only $250 USD per year ($425 for a 2-year subscription) and includes access to all new live Webinars, all on-demand Webinars (over 50 Webinars and growing each month), discussion forums to share best practices and questions with over 4,000 Medical Affairs professionals from across the globe, copies of past meeting presentations, white papers, standards & guidance tools and templates, and much, much more. Click here for membership details or to sign up: https://medicalaffairs.org/membership/
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Fireside Chat with Mary Alice Dwyer and Shaji Kalathil
Healthcare has the potential to be radically transformed by digital technology and we believe that the most competitive pharmaceutical companies in the coming decade will leverage data and digital technologies to drive differentiating services and will be in the forefront of pushing the boundaries of digital innovation in healthcare. These leaders will generate and analyze vast volumes of research and real-world data to discover transformational medicines and will excel at communicating scientific evidence to stakeholders. They will help physicians navigate in a far more sophisticated and complex healthcare ecosystem and help them make difficult decisions that are the right decisions for patients. Medical Affairs teams can become a strategic force for pharmaceutical companies in this journey with their deep scientific knowledge, disease understanding, and the healthcare technology advancements that aid in the betterment of the entire medical industry.
Mary Alice Dwyer, MAPS Executive Leadership Committee member and Lead of the Digital Focus Area Working Group, Principal Consultant, Medical Innovation and Insights and former Vice President, Global Medical Excellence and Patient Centricity, Global Medical Affairs, AstraZeneca and Shaji Kalathil, Executive Director, Global Head of IT for Medical Affairs, Bristol-Myers Squibb discuss how advancements in transformative technologies are driving a new wave of digital innovation opportunities for healthcare.
“There is a tremendous opportunity for Medical Affairs to be leaders in advancing digital innovation and truly change how they engage Health Care Providers and patients. Through the strategic implementation of digital innovation, Medical Affairs can embrace technology that will transform not only what we deliver, but how we engage with HCPs and patients. Exploring technologies like AI and ML and other innovative tools will further define the impact Medical Affairs can have.” –Mary Alice Dwyer
“These are exciting times in the pharmaceutical industry with fast- paced digital innovation and the potential to transform the Medical Affairs customer engagement model and data generation capabilities with disruptive technologies, artificial intelligence and advanced analytics. I also envision significant advancements in “beyond the product” digital solutions and services for complex therapies in the future that will improve patient outcomes and Medical Affairs becoming the custodian of these services.” –Shaji Kalathil
How do you foresee the evolution of the Medical Affairs customer engagement model in the future and the impact of digital innovation in healthcare?
Mary Alice:
Medical Affairs leaders continue to expand their role in “customer” engagement, whether the customer is the health care provider (HCP) or the patient. While Medical Affairs has always been responsible for Thought Leader or KOL engagement, it is often viewed from the perspective of what information Medical Affairs could provide to the HCP. As teams begin to explore digital solutions and new ways of engaging, it opens the opportunity to think from the “customer” point of view. This new perspective enables Medical Affairs to approach information exchange from a “customer experience perspective”. Digital Innovation in healthcare enables Medical to engage in scientific exchange in new and unique ways and deliver what the “customer” wants, when and how they’d like to receive it. Ultimately, Medical Affairs needs to anticipate what the HCP or patient needs, so their experience is optimized. We need to plan for a truly personalized approach to our scientific engagement.
The expectation to deliver information in new and innovative ways has been set by the customer and is a high bar for Medical Affairs to achieve. Our customers (HCPs and patients) experience seamless information access in their daily lives and expect that same experience in their professional and healthcare interactions. People expect to search for answers when it is convenient for them, they like multiple sources of information, and they want answers quickly. A key challenge for Medical Affairs is to be easily accessible and be the trusted source of information.
Shaji:
I am really thrilled about the possibilities for transforming the Medical Affairs customer engagement model with digital technologies. We now have an influx of innovations in the pharma industry, especially in Oncology, making incredible strides toward better and safer treatments for patients. Science is delivering a large amount of knowledge that will help us understand diseases that have until now been beyond our reach. Today, technology is giving us tools to capture vast amounts of patient data and genetic information, which will fuel an unprecedented expansion of biomedical research. This will continue to shift pharmaceutical innovation into higher gear especially with the foray into new scientific innovations such as cell therapy. Medical Affairs is in a prime position to advance the understanding of these highly complex therapies for the healthcare community and support patient centric outcomes. The power of digital technologies, big data and artificial intelligence can be strong drivers to achieve this goal and we need to seize this opportunity.
There are three key areas with great opportunities to apply healthcare technology advancements and transform the Medical Affairs customer engagement model.
1.Delivering exceptional customer experience focused on science through a deeper understanding of medical insights, physician journey, preferences and needs from all digital touchpoints, AI-powered engine to predict best engagement plans & actions, real time digital interaction tools and beyond the product digital services & solutions.
2.Seamless connection of our digital medical information assets with external digital channels for healthcare professionals (EMR solutions, Patient Care Management Solutions, Physician Digital Networks etc.) to communicate highly scientific medical information at the point of care in real time.
3.Use of artificial intelligence models and machine learning technologies to enrich and expand the utility of real world evidence, and generate faster, more precise insights.
There seems to be great interest on the topic of customer insights generation by Medical Affairs to shape strategy and impactful customer engagement. Can you share your perspectives?
Mary Alice:
Medical Affairs has a tremendous opportunity to impact how our organizations understand the healthcare landscape as well as the HCP and the patient’s perspective. We are in a unique position to engage decision makers, understand the clinical healthcare environment and patient experience. Digital innovation in healthcare would further our ability to not only capture these insights, but to also analyze and identify trends. The insights that Medical Affairs team gathers can improve the understanding of how the medicine is being used and the potential need for further data. These insights can improve clinical programs and launches. Technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, will enable us to gather, analyze and interpret these insights. The growing importance of Medical Affair’s role with Real World Data further cements the need for digital tools to manage this amount of data. For Medical Affairs to shape strategy and impact customer engagement we must capture, analyze and incorporate robust insights. Digital tools will be critical to enable this capability.
How do you think digital innovation can advance the medical insights capabilities?
Shaji:
Digital innovation in healthcare can play an impactful role in transforming the medical insights capability in two areas – the way our customer facing teams in Medical Affairs collect medical insights as well as the approach to analyze the unstructured insights to understand emerging trends on unmet medical needs, and clinical practice. The first part is pure technology automation with the opportunity to create an exceptional digital user experience for the medical insights collection and collaboration processes. The second part of analyzing medical insights for uncovering trends is a classic use case to leverage artificial intelligence capabilities – We can use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to synthesize these insights and understand emerging trends that will speed up the analysis and help drive timely, proactive actions, and impact strategy. The fast paced innovation in the NLP space will help us position this approach to add more business value in the future.
Together these solutions can create a powerful “digital medical insights engine” that will influence Medical Affairs customer engagement strategy and strategic decisions in Commercial and Clinical Development.
If you look towards the future (5-10 years) what areas of Medical Affairs would you see as completely transformed by the digital innovation of healthcare and how will you describe the business impact of this transformation?
Mary Alice:
I believe all parts of Medical Affairs have the opportunity to transform, both by improving operational efficiency and through delivering a more tailored “customer-focused” engagement. I believe these innovations will improve our communications and engagements. One of the most immediate opportunities is in Medical Information and exploring a move to on-demand information provision. Also, the area of promotional material review is an area that is ready for utilization of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
If I look 5 to 10 years into the future, Medical Affairs will have made great progress, including getting the right infrastructure in place. Important areas such as having a customer master, the ability to tag data and information and having an external web presence will be customary. We’ll be exploring virtual reality and augmented reality in education and training. We’ll be perfecting opportunities in areas like digital publications. We will be increasing the automation of routine functions that enable the highly trained Medical Affairs staff to focus on scientific opportunity. Medical Affairs will be utilizing digital to create websites that create unique opportunities to engage HCPs and patients. Medical Affairs will be a trusted source of information, providing education and optimizing knowledge transfer.
What are the most promising innovations you are seeing in the technology landscape that can transform Medical Affairs?
Shaji:
There is no better time than now to embrace disruptive digital technologies in the pharma industry. I am most excited about three technology trends with the potential to transform Medical Affairs digital capabilities and help improve patient outcomes.
1. Advanced digital customer engagement technologies that can deliver personalized experiences and innovative services for the healthcare professionals based on their needs and preferences in real time will have a profound impact on accelerating their understanding of safe and appropriate use of our medicines and the underlying science.
2. The pace of advancements in AI and specifically natural language processing/understanding (NLP/NLU) will dramatically increase. We are going to see some major breakthrough innovations in the NLP/NLU space in the coming years that will surprise everyone and mimic the advancements in image recognition/deep learning, powering the driverless car revolution. This will also have positive implications on how we use the voice technologies to enhance personalized services for customers. We will transition to an “AI-fueled” customer engagement model in Medical Affairs with more matured customer intelligence datasets that will leverage next generation digital tools. This will help the Medical Affairs colleagues in engaging with their customers more effectively by better understanding their needs and by providing access to the most relevant scientific data at the right time.
3. Patient data analytics will become key to clinical decision support, quality measure performance, improved patient care and demonstrating value. We will need to position scientific exchange with the ability to combine, analyze, and interpret disparate data sets to support the interactions with stakeholders and ultimately to improve patient outcomes. This will involve use of real-world evidence, electronic medical records, curated sets of aggregated data on various disease types and novel sources of data, such as genomics in combination with innovative ways of mining and interpreting that data.
There is a lot of buzz about the possibilities with artificial intelligence in pharma. How do you envision the digital innovation of healthcare impacting Medical Affairs with advancements in artificial intelligence?
Mary Alice:
Medical Affairs is consistently being expected to work with growing amounts of data, whether this data comes from insights, Real World Data, or working with the “data lake”. Artificial Intelligence is critical for analyzing large data sets and it will be important for Medical Affairs to have the capability to utilize these tools. I believe these technologies will transform how we understand the clinical environment and decision making, how we deliver information, and engage HCPs, Payers and Patients. These technologies will enable us to improve our ability to deliver a more tailored approach to everyone we interact with because we are basing those interactions on evidence.
Shaji:
Artificial Intelligence has great potential to drive up productivity and enhance several core aspects of the pharma business from disease diagnosis and drug discovery to more effective scientific exchange with healthcare professionals. Specifically there are opportunities in Medical Affairs to leverage natural language processing and machine learning AI capabilities for analyzing trends from medical insights, generating insights for precision treatment & improved patient outcomes with real world evidence, engaging with the healthcare professionals using voice technologies, and helping the customer facing medical teams to present the most value-added scientific information based on customer needs and preferences. Advancements in machine learning and high quality customer data for Medical Affairs can lead us to “Scientific Engagement Advisor” digital solutions akin to the ”Next Best Action” concept in Financial Services and “Recommendation Engines” concept in Retail/Streaming Media. This will help predict effective customer engagement strategies to empower the MSLs (medical scientific liaisons) based on previous engagement experiences, medical insights and all customer data points. The importance of having good quality data to drive your AI solutions should not be underestimated, especially given the fact that the customer data for Medical Affairs is largely in unstructured format. I am very optimistic about these uses cases for Medical Affairs that should redefine positive customer experience and ultimately help the patients.
We should be mindful about the tendency to blindly chase after shiny technology objects without really connecting them to real business problems. Often times this is highly visible in the artificial intelligence space with exuberant claims on possibilities and the result is a major gap between visionary/lofty discussions on on the digital innovation of healthcare and actual delivery of digital solutions for customers and patients on the frontlines. We need to be very cautious about falling into this “innovation bubble trap” and rather should focus on driving impactful ideas to reality with a fail fast approach.
We are seeing an increasing number of technology innovators focusing on healthcare. How do you foresee this external innovation fueling Medical Affairs in driving transformative digital capabilities?
Shaji:
There are considerable opportunities to build more effective partnerships with pure play technology companies that will address complex problems in healthcare. We need to think in terms of bringing each other’s strengths to the table and co-creating digital solutions. Pharma has a unique understanding of the challenges physicians and patients are facing and can help guide these partners. At the same time these digital technology partners can offer new technology capabilities that will help us reimagine the type of solutions we can deliver to our customers and patients. Digital therapeutics is an area where we are seeing success, and there are advancements in improving diagnoses, adherence, disease awareness, and self-management of conditions. Creating strong, co-development partnerships with core technology companies and healthcare technology startups does not happen in a flash. It is important to define a common value proposition with these type of partnerships and we need to look through the lens of co-developing solutions, not just funding startups. These mutually beneficial partnerships can drive a culture of innovation in larger pharma organizations as well.
We also need to closely watch and adapt digital innovations from other industries with similar business capabilities such as
What are the most important factors leaders like you should take into consideration for success in driving digital innovation of healthcare for Medical affairs?
Mary Alice:
To ensure success in driving the digital innovation of healthcare, many factors need to be in place. Leaders need to be ready to build the right capabilities and this might involve changes in structure. These new capabilities can be built by bringing in external resources, working with internal resources or training current staff. One critical question for the future will be how Medical Affairs will build the expertise to incorporate digital innovation in how we do our daily jobs. I don’t think we can go this alone. We’ll need to partner across the enterprise to leverage unique expertise (eg IT, data analytics, etc). Many Medical Affairs teams are bringing in non-traditional Medical Affairs capabilities by hiring employees with background in areas such as data science. Roles with this expertise bring a unique skill and by embedding these roles in the Med Affairs team and encouraging partnerships an innovative environment is created. Many Medical Affairs teams are also partnering with their internal data and analytics team. This partnership is uncovering new opportunities, especially as companies establish huge sources of data across the enterprise.
A critical area that is often overlooked is the need to free up time for the Medical Affairs leaders and their teams to explore how this new innovation will change how they deliver their accountabilities. Digital innovation in healthcare is a transformational change and how it impacts the team and their work needs to be considered. Another area that requires the investment of time is considering how the team will engage senior leaders to get traction and funding on their projects. These are important aspects that must be considered if Medical Affairs is to be successful in driving digital innovation.
Shaji:
The most important focus with any digital innovation journey should be on driving differentiation and competitive advantage. We need to think beyond the “easy to chase digital innovation concepts” and elevate the innovation thinking process to truly transformative ideas that will address our biggest business problems and significantly improve customer experience. Essentially, we should dial up the emphasis on transformational innovation. In order to accomplish this, the leaders should create an entrepreneurial environment for ideation and development of these ideas. This will require a deeper dive into the core business value drivers for Medical Affairs with the right talent to understand the innovative technologies and an “artistic approach” to imagining the possibilities, often connecting the dots between multiple business value drivers and the disruptive potential of the latest technologies. A deep-rooted culture based incentive system (leaders encouraging to take big leaps forward and providing sponsorship for experimentation with cover for expected failures) is also necessary to drive this shift.
Driving digital transformation in Medical Affairs also requires a broader enterprise mindset compared to other functions. Since Medical Affairs is very closely connected to R&D and Commercial, it is important to visualize the concepts of digital innovation in healthcare through an enterprise lens and have an “outside in” perspective (such as customer experience alignment with touchpoints beyond Medical Affairs) for solutions targeted for customers and patients.
Finally, we will need to educate the executive leadership team on how technology is impacting their business, engage them in imagining the possibilities, and make them strong digital advocates by bringing them along the innovation journey.
At the conclusion of this session, participants should better understand digital trends seen within Medical Affairs today as well as be aware of why HCP expectations are changing and how to evolve with them to provide better customer experiences.
A Look at Customer Experiences Inside and Outside of the Industry and What It Means for Medical Affairs
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