J&J leaders detail how to think about managing the challenge of broadening the focus of a Medical Affairs career to encompass new and multiple therapeutic areas.
In this edition of Perspectives, MAPS Americas Region President, Dr John Pracyk speaks with J&J leaders about the keys to success in Medical Affairs.
In this edition of Perspectives, MAPS Americas Region President, Dr John Pracyk speaks with J&J leaders on how they transitioned to a career in Medical Affairs.
This MAPS webinar offers strategies for MSL retention and skill development within Medical Affairs.
This case study-based webinar discusses how to connect the dots between internal training and improve patient outcomes, specifically focusing on Medical Affairs teams.
When Robin Winter-Sperry started in the pharmaceutical industry, her mentor, Evelyn was one of the few female managers.
Nothing could stand between Joseph Eid and his dream of becoming a doctor—not even gunfire.
Attending medical school in Lebanon at the height of the country’s lengthy civil war was a risk, but Joseph wanted to complete his studies in his home country. He vividly recalls a period when the war shut down the school and he traveled to the U.S. to spend the time off with family. It was a prudent plan, until a classmate contacted Joseph to let him know classes were starting again and he had to be back for a test on Monday. It was Thursday.
At the time, Lebanon was under military blockade, so he couldn’t fly back to school directly. Instead, he flew to Athens, then Cypress, then bought a ticket for an overnight speedboat to the Lebanese coast.
The boat left at 2 a.m. Sunday night. Just as Lebanon appeared on the horizon, the captain shut off the boat’s lights and told everyone to hit the deck. Then the bombing started. The passengers could hear splashes as the bombs and rockets exploded around the speedboat. Somehow, the boat survived the assault and so did Joseph.
He arrived in Lebanon at 4 a.m.—just four hours before his exam.
Joseph Eid was born in the late sixties, the youngest of four children. At the time, Lebanon was a peaceful and prosperous country—but that was changing. Shortly after he was born, the Six Day War erupted, and a full-blown civil war followed a few years later.
Growing up in a war zone was challenging, to say the least. Going to school was a risk every day, as militant groups often targeted schools. Over the course of the war, his family lost their home to the bombings as well as countless friends and family members.
Joseph’s father was in the army’s mechanized division and accountable for material procurement. After visiting multiple U.S. army installations to procure equipment for the Lebanese army, it became his mission to bring his family to the US to provide them a safer future.
From a young age, both parents taught Joseph and his siblings dedication, discipline, and commitment to education. Joseph recalls a year when he was eight years old that schools were shut down due to the war. When school was back in session, he had to complete two grades in one year to make up for lost time. A couple of years later, after he was awarded scholarships for his academic performance, the principle told him there was no need to take a final exam. Joseph’s parents sent him back to school to write the test anyway. They told him he shouldn’t be treated any differently from other students.
By the time Joseph started medical school, most of his family was living in the US. But Joseph chose to finish his schooling by splitting his time between Lebanon and France when the war situation got worse.
It’s no surprise that Joseph brought that same fearlessness and gritted determination to his medical career.
Joseph took his tests in the US while still in medical school in Lebanon. After receiving his diploma, he completed his residency and fellowship in New York and New Jersey respectively. During the fellowship, he quickly rose in the ranks and was recruited to the faculty before graduating.
At Rutgers, Joseph was interested in more than just advancing his career—he wanted to solve problems and save lives. When he discovered that many sickle cell patients did well under pediatric care but struggled when they reached adulthood, he decided to do what he could to help. He applied to research grants, but after his applications were repeatedly rejected, he opted to open a clinic to help patients instead. He took training on sickle cell treatment and brought back what he learned to the clinic.
It was an extraordinary step that was life-changing for patients—and for Joseph. He proudly shares that most of his patients were able to go back to school and work because of the treatment and care the clinic provided.
Joseph Eid with his young daughter
But Joseph was a victim of his own success. He kept taking on more responsibilities, to the point where he was on call six months of the year. Now a newlywed with a young daughter, he recognized that it might be time to consider a career change so he could spend more time with his family.
In 2004, he decided to move out of academia and into the world of pharma. It was tough to leave, but he established an arrangement that would allow him to still see patients on a part-time, volunteer basis. He felt it was his duty to continue to care for his patients even after he left academia.
What drew Joseph to pharma was the rigor and scale of the work, which was so much greater than what he could hope to achieve in academia. Still, his experience in front-line medical care had ingrained a profound commitment to putting patients first.
“I knew that to deliver in pharma, I had to have the patient in focus,” he says. “That mindset stays with me today. In every meeting, I bring it back to the patient.”
Joseph cut his teeth in pharma at Roche, before moving on to Merck in 2009 as Executive Clinical Director. At Merck, his focus was late development, when the drugs were in phase 1-3 clinical stage. It was as close as he could get to seeing the science reach patients—exactly where he wanted to be.
In 2011, he took on a new role as senior project manager, where he came up with unconventional strategies and an ambitious vision for an anti-PD-1 antibody which revolutionized cancer treatment. After taking on a new role, Joseph’s leadership resulted in a tremendous increase in the size and importance of the Oncology Medical Affairs department within the organization. From 2014 to 2017, it grew from just three members to over 400.
Before long, word spread of his success and he was recruited by BMS to head up their entire Medical Affairs department.
Joseph Eid with his parents
In the first weeks at BMS, he spent his time listening and asking questions. He quickly realized the teams had their priorities confused. They were focusing too much on to do lists and not enough on their purpose.
To inspire the department, Joseph encouraged the teams to share their triumphs with each other. He asked each team to create posters illustrating their work, then he put them on stage behind him at his first town hall. The atmosphere changed immediately. Once they were given a voice and a chance to share their good work, the department was reenergized.
In recognition of the growing importance of medical, Joseph was asked to join the CEO team at BMS. Now, his ongoing role is to continue to improve the team’s engagement. As he leads the organization through the pandemic, patient care continues to be Joseph’s north star.
He believes that the key to success is reminding all 2,200 team members of the purpose of their work.
“People have to have something meaningful they are working toward,” he says.
Here are his top thoughts on leading truly purpose-driven teams.
For Joseph, the key to effective leadership is to remind team members of the remarkable impacts of their work by sharing patient stories and testimonials. Seeing how their drugs provide hope for people who are out of options has a tremendous effect on everyone, from executives in the c-suite to reps carrying the bag.
It is easy to forget that the decisions pharma people make affect the day-to-day lives of patients. Joseph recalls working with a team to write a protocol and becoming frustrated because it had so many “bells and whistles.”
“If you were a patient would you be able to do all that?” Joseph asked the team.
It was exactly the reminder they needed. The team set to work simplifying the protocol to ensure it was practical and easy to follow.
Over the years, Joseph and his teams adopted countless practices that go against the grain. They followed patient blogs to gain insights into what was on their customers’ minds. They engaged with patient groups and physicians. In trials, they often amended an ongoing phase 1 with more patients and indications to accelerate the clinical development rather than add new trials.
His approach is often unconventional, but throughout his career, he has learned that doing things differently pays off.
With COVID-19 transforming the way people everywhere live and work, there is no better time for new approaches. Daunting as it is, Joseph feels prepared to take on challenges resulting from the pandemic.
“Our mission in life is to make our work matter,” he says. “Everything we do touches patients.”
This article is graciously contributed by Excellerate: Patient-Focused Engagement for Pharma.
Topics Discussed in the Town Hall Include:
-Managing Individual Performance Remotely
-Virtual Leadership Mindset & Skills
-Effective Team Engagement in the Virtual Space
-Engagement of KOLs Virtually
SPEAKERS:
Cezary Statuch
VP, Medical, Intercontinental Region
Biogen
Greta James-Chatgilaou
Field Medical Strategy and Execution Director
Biogen
Alan McDougall
VP, Head of Medical Affairs, International Markets and Greater China
Astellas
Qasim Ahmad
Corporate Officer/VP, Head of Japan Medical Affairs, OBU
Novartis
WATCH IT HERE:
If you have difficulty viewing or are unable to view full screen above, please click here.
By: Simon Kyaga1; Keith Morris2; Kiely Flanigan3
1Global Medical Lead, Psychiatry, Servier; 2Executive Managing Director, Scientific and Medical Affairs, Syneos Health; 3Director, Medical Affairs Syneos Health
This article aims to position learning agility as an emergent capability that supports the future-proofing of Medical Affairs strategic planning processes and outputs. In essence, learning agility is a set of skills, competencies, and mindsets that support our capability of “knowing what to do when we don’t know what to do.”1 Our position is that learning agility is a capability that should be developed internally and applied to the development and operationalization of strategic plans. Through the enablement of learning agile behaviors, the approach to strategic plans can be made with an eye toward ongoing reflection and updates. We define four descriptive behaviors (contextual curiosity, vision-driven adaptability, educated risk taking, and accountable learning) that match up to MAPS best practices in strategic plans and then discuss how to apply those learning agility behaviors. We conclude with future recommendations for the development and application of learning agility.
Learning agility, strategic plan, strategic thinking, medical strategy, capabilities enhancement
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to develop Medical Affairs capabilities in learning agility. Not unlike various industry shifts over the years that have impacted the role of Medical Affairs, we’ve experienced a shift in the way Medical Affairs organizations are responding to changes affecting the execution of strategic plans. Field Medical is learning to engage stakeholders virtually and support HCPs in new ways as they engage with their patients through new technologies. Clinical trials adopted new protocols to protect patients and sustain recruitment. Conferences and congresses were postponed. Organizations are seeking flexible resourcing models to manage downturns in business and leveraging downtime to upskill team members. All of these changes have required an openness to change and the development of new skills to learn new ways of achieving our work objectives. We are now not only shifting how we do our Medical Affairs work, but also planning for a “new normal” as we navigate doing business virtually.
Yet, however uniquely disruptive COVID-19 has been, it is still only one more example of the bucket of business disruptions that have affected the skills, knowledge, and capability needs within Medical Affairs work. At the heart of the changes asked of us and our teams is learning agility. As a core capability associated with managing ambiguity and “knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do,” learning agility is particularly relevant and useful in developing adaptive and dynamic Medical Affairs strategic plans that stand the test of change and disruption.1
Learning agility in strategic planning is important because by incorporating learning agility behaviors and mindsets into the development and implementation of Medical strategic plans, teams are better able to pivot and innovate, as needed, to changing internal and external dynamics, while remaining in alignment to the overall medical vision and business objectives.
This article aims to position learning agility as an emergent capability that supports the future-proofing of Medical Affairs strategic planning processes and outputs. Our position is that learning agility is a capability that should be developed internally and applied to the development and operationalization of strategic plans. We then define four descriptive behaviors that map to aspects of Medical Affairs strategic plans and discuss how to apply those learning agility characteristics.
Medical Affairs strategic plans include both intellectual components, such as situational analyses and medical strategies, as well as tactical components, including tactical and operational plans, and assessment and measurement metrics.2 Medical plans are important because they guide decision making across the organization and support the communication and assessment of Medical Affairs’ efforts and impact.
Medical Strategic Planning is an integral part of setting strategic direction and articulating the tactics for driving Medical Affairs value and impact for patient and organizational outcomes. But, how do you create a realistic and viable strategic plan given a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) Medical Affairs ecosystem? What brings Medical strategic plans to life beyond and ensures it gets referenced more than once a year in the annual planning process? How do we make the strategic plan content memorable and keep it top of mind with our key audiences? We suggest that the secret to effective Medical Affairs strategic plans is learning agility.
In a Medical Affairs context, learning agility brings key behaviors and mindsets into the Medical planning, development, and execution processes that ensure the content contains relevancy and resonance for the organization. Although variations exist between companies in terms of influences affecting the strategic planning process (e.g., preferred timing of Medical support of launches, products, therapeutic area considerations, and operational competencies versus strategic positioning priorities), the Medical Affairs strategic planning process reflects multiple stakeholder insights, business objectives alignment, and tangible data for strategic decision making. The strategic plan is not intended as a fixed manual that is reviewed once a year.
There are several descriptive behaviors team members can use in approaching the development, communication, and operationalization of strategic plans to support success:
Each of these behaviors is based on the capabilities needed to design, communicate, and execute on a strategic plan. The descriptiveness of the terms reflects a desire to position these learning agility behaviors as both foundational and aspirational. Learning agile behaviors are both critical for the here and now in performing work, but also for guiding toward the future and inspiring learning and development.
Learning agility is relatively new to the Medical Affairs scene, but it is starting to see more traction as our industry seeks to build capabilities in individuals and teams to navigate and harness the rapidly changing nature of Medical Affairs. Originally used to develop the managerial capabilities of high-potential, high- performing talent, learning agility can be applied not only at the individual level, but also at the team and organizational levels, and is associated with higher levels of organizational performance.3,4 For purposes of this article, we’ll focus on developing learning agility at the individual level and use the following definition:
Learning agility requires both adaptive readiness to change and proactive innovation in times of ambiguity.5 In essence, learning agility activates the value and impact of Medical Affairs strategic planning components (i.e., situational analysis, medical strategy, tactical and operational plans, and assessment and measurement metrics) despite change and shifting expectations internally and externally.
When it comes to Medical Affairs strategic plans, it is no longer sufficient to rely on the intellectual and tactical domains of competence. Successful Medical Affairs strategic plans reflect a collective organizational capability—an integrated representation of knowledge, skill, and mindset—that brings to life within the plan the flexibility to adapt, learn, and pivot toward changing needs. Learning agility is the “how” behind the “what” of Medical Affairs strategic plans.
The integration of learning agility and Medical strategic planning is important to how both strategic and day- to-day operational decisions are made. This is even more important today as Medical Affairs is being asked to communicate and demonstrate its impact and value within competing priorities from more diverse and increasingly challenging internal and external stakeholder needs. In addition, due to COVID-19 disruptions, including closed conferences, Medical Affairs is forced to reconsider how to communicate and how to balance between strategy and tactics in an uncertain environment.
Using the strategic planning framework developed by MAPS, the section below looks at the fundamentals of Medical strategic planning and suggests related learning agility behaviors and mindsets that are instrumental to both intellectual and tactical outcomes. The learning agility behaviors form a kind of permeable flexibility and protection that ensures the strategic plan is created and maintained with maximum adaptiveness (as seen in the above diagram). Learning agility brings strategic plans to life and articulates specific behaviors that support the strategic plan having bigger impact through greater relevancy. A strategic plan must be relevant to have impact and the learning agility behaviors associated with MAPS’ four elements of strategic plans makes them applicable for the teams using them.
In this article, we have identified learning agility as an emergent capability that brings to life and ensures the relevancy of Medical Affairs strategic plans. Specific applications were discussed for each learning agility behavior in context to its associated strategic planning element. The importance of developing the skills and mindsets to navigate change, uncertainty, and disruption are evident, now more than ever with COVID-19, and important to developing the capabilities to harness the future, whatever may come within Medical Affairs.
1. Hallenbeck, G., & Santana, L. (2019). Great leaders are great learners: How to develop learning-agile high potentials. Center for Creative Leadership white paper, 1-16.
2. MAPS Annual Conference (2020). The importance of Medical strategic planning. Conference presentation: Miami, 1-23. Access in the Community Portal.
3. De Meuse, K.P. (2017) Learning agility: Its evolution as a psychological construct and its empirical relationship to leader success. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 69(4), 267–295.
4. McCann, J., Selsky, J., & Lee, J. (2009). Building agility, resilience and performance in turbulent environments. People & Strategy, 32(3).
5. Doeze Jager-van Vliet, SB, Born, MPh, & van der Molen, HT (2019). Using a portfolio-based process to develop agility among employees. Human Resource Development Quarterly, (30), 39–60.
6. Bourgoin, A. & Harvey, J-F. (2018). Professional image under threat: Dealing with learning–credibility tension. Human Relations, 71(12), 1611–1639.
Dr. Qasim Ahmad, Corporate Officer, Head of Medical Affairs, Japan, Novartis
Since joining the pharmaceutical industry (PI) 2 decades ago, I have been lucky to have lived through and experience the exponential growth of medical affairs function, not only in size and ever expanding responsibilities, but also the importance and value it brings to the industry. There are several internal and external factors, contributing in the evolution of medical affairs from a mere support function to becoming a core pillar, and an equal partner with drug development and commercial functions with the PI.
In recent years, we have seen significant and unprecedented advances in biotechnology, delivering novel treatments and data sets, faster than ever before. There is an information overload, which calls for smart and innovative ways to design, analyse, disseminate and communicate the value of evidence, to the right end user (the customers), at the right place and the right time.
Concurrently, health systems across the world are becoming over-burdened, facing considerable sustainability challenges, due financial constraints, ageing, increasing population, changing disease patterns, persisting as well as new communicable diseases (COVID-19) and cost burden of chronic non-communicable diseases, including cancers.
You must also develop command on evolving health care environment and be equipped to meet the challenges associated with growing drug approval complexities and health technology assessment criteria for access. Develop unique competencies and transformative operating models to address these requirements, build capabilities that are ideally suited for medical affairs organization to generate data beyond traditional registration trial safety and efficacy packages, to facilitate evidenced based decisions making based on patient centric, clinically meaningful, health outcomes, access and quality of life real world data (RWD) data sets.
As you think of building your career in medical affairs, keep the above opportunities and challenges in consideration, the following 5 core medical affairs competencies will help nurturing your talent as patient and customer centric medical champions, ready now for future.
1. Enterprise Perspective
Medical Affairs has evolved to be one of the most strategically important and valued functions in a pharmaceutical industry. As successful medical affairs professionals, you need to build the skills and scientific acumen like that of a clinical development expert, while demonstrating the strategic intellect and real life customer oriented mind-set of a commercial leader. You will have to champion cross functional navigation, show enterprise vision, logical and critical thinking, develop broad and long range strategic direction throughout product life cycle and build bridges between unlimited internal touch points as well as external stakeholder.
2. Functional Excellence
In order to demonstrate value, your medical affairs competencies should be geared to exceed internal and external expectations, meeting the demands of above mentioned expanding responsibilities, while acquiring new skills and capabilities. You will need an all-rounder approach, adapting new technologies, digital tools, precision medicine approaches, and introduce novel engagement models. Thus continuously striving for medical and operational excellence, not only in designing and delivering high quality clinical trials based on meaning actionable insights, but also excellence in executing deep scientific exchange with medical experts, incorporating the voice of patient, payer and all stakeholders at launch, and across life cycle strategies.
3. Health System Thinking
In medical affairs, you are perfectly placed to lead, plan and deliver health care solutions and to shape the environment, playing a key role in health systems sustainability. You should build capabilities and competencies to assess health system needs and developing solutions, supporting public health initiatives; disease awareness & educational training programs; research collaborations in area not only limited to company core business (orphan diseases, rare indications, special populations); managed patient access programs and many other patient focused projects, partnering with health system players. You will require special skills for this mind-set shift, and thinking beyond the pill to building trust with the society. This competency is distinctive and vital for future role of medical affairs.
4. External Facing Organization
As part of modern medical affairs organization, you should have involvement and ownership across life cycle of assets, from early development to late stage planning. Either you are in field medical teams, medical advisors or MSLs (medical science liaison) role, you are the eyes and ears of the organization to external world. With external customer base expanding beyond prescribers and policy makers, you well have to learn rule of engagement and proficiency to work with providers, payers, private non-state health actors, patients and patient advocacy groups, as they are all taking central stage in health care decision making. This will be the game changers in reversing the traditional internal fixated industry approach to a strategic patient and customer focused, outward facing organization. Building this core competency by incorporating patient journey, stakeholder need assessment and changing health care limitations in your strategies, will enhance collaborations, speed of innovation, resource waste reduction and improved patient outcomes.
5. Effective Leadership
Modern medical affairs is not a support function, it is about leading from the front as equal partner with commercial, departing from prior passive back seat mind-set and demonstrate value to the organization through proactive leadership, vision and measurable impact. You will have to steer this transformation from current medical advisory role to leadership status, breaking unnecessary internal silos and taking ownership as well as accountability of business deliverable. Creating this new room within the organization will requires your commitment, change agility, interpersonal skills and inspiring leadership to take on completely new responsibilities or replacing those previously championed by other functions.
Conclusion
Traditional sales and commercial models are becoming obsolete, success of future pharmaceutical frameworks relies on vision, foresight and appropriate investment in building medical affairs (MA) talent, ready now for future. With ever changing external landscape, regulations and compliance requirements, the role of medical affairs will continue to grow as the key pillar, vital to achieve organizational objectives. By building these core competencies, you can demonstrate to your leadership, the value medical affairs brings, and its strategic far reaching business impact.
