Explore the pitfalls of career transitions, and how to overcome them; look at the key foundations required to make a successful career transition; hear real-life stories, and learn actionable tips, from others who have navigated complex career transitions; explore why health & wellbeing should be a priority on your transition agenda
The amount of data we are currently generating is astronomical. According to one often-quoted article on Forbes.com, some 90 percent of the data in the world was generated over the past two years alone. [1]
Today’s world is defined by data, with 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created everyday – and that pace is only accelerating as the Internet of Things (IoT) expands. No surprise then that Mike Devoy, Chief Medical Officer, Head of Medical Affairs & Pharmacovigilance at Bayer, predicts that the time is right for digital to transform our thinking about healthcare.
“I believe digital is going to become more and more important and, over time, it will transform how healthcare is delivered and also how drugs are researched and discovered. We’ve seen the explosion in data coming from the intensified use of wearable devices, sensors and so on, but now we have the computer power and the technology to start to really understand that information and turn it into relevant action.”
Moreover, Medical Affairs stands at the very epicenter of this digital revolution in healthcare, given the function’s scientific credentials and its potential to define, gather and interpret data to generate the insights that will deliver meaningful outcomes for the entire spectrum of healthcare stakeholders – but especially patients and healthcare professionals.
Sources:1: Bernard Marr, “How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read,” Forbes, May 21, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/#228be95b60ba.
“In Medical Affairs, we have a unique role because we have a deep understanding of our products and knowledge of diseases. We should be looking to fit the new knowledge and insights that we can collect from Real-World Evidence (RWE) into delivering even better solutions for patients and the healthcare system. And, because we are in daily contact with healthcare professionals, patient associations and other stakeholders, we should be the ones who play a critical role in transforming that into something that actually meets the needs and provides services and solutions for end-users. By connecting what’s coming out of our R&D, the strategy behind the products from a commercial point of view, we could build this into an overall, integrated patient care vision.”
Dr Devoy sees scope for applying digital innovation across a range of areas but suggests that R&D, patient outcomes, and safety are the three to focus on initially. There is significant potential for how we conduct clinical trials: for example, using artificial intelligence (AI) within R&D as part of the drug discovery process, and also helping to better characterize and stratify disease and the according patient populations for study.
“If you look at a disease such as heart failure, we still have a pretty simple way of categorizing patients based on clinical examination, imaging investigation and some clinical tests. But almost certainly there are more different types of heart failure in terms of the underlying pathophysiology. So, if we can apply digital learning and artificial intelligence to better stratify these areas and therefore to personalize treatments, then I think we will overcome a lot of hurdles to improving patient care.”
Cost is already a major issue in healthcare and digital has the potential to help unlock cost-savings for healthcare systems and wider society, as well as for industry.
Digitally integrating electronic medical records (EMR), both to identify patients and then also to follow up and stay connected with them is another considerable area of potential.
“I think there are already examples starting to happen that could dramatically reduce the cost of particularly large outcome studies which you have to do in areas like cardiovascular. There are significant gains that can be achieved by applying technology to make the studies more efficient, more precise, simpler to conduct, and so able to be conducted more quickly and more cheaply.”
Digitally integrating electronic medical records (EMR), both to identify patients and then also to follow up and stay connected with them is another considerable area of potential. “We should be looking at diagnostic technology and EMR to detect and diagnose disease much earlier and enable informed decision-making – that will allow us to intervene with prevention before people become physically sick at the stage they might currently be diagnosed.”
Adherence and product safety are two further areas of great promise for digital.
“For as long as I’ve been in the industry, something we’ve talked about but struggled with is finding ways that we can help patients adhere to the treatment that they’ve been prescribed, so that we actually deliver better outcomes. The use of sensors, wearables and other applications may offer such a solution for enhancing treatment adherence. I also believe that we can help better understand the benefit-risk of our products using AI and big data approaches to identify safety signals and issues with products earlier.”
However, the fact that the technology is so new and accompanied by such a weight of expectation inevitably implies some formidable challenges.
“We read every day about how digital is transforming everything we do – be that personal finance, or interactions with retail – so I think the expectation from society is that healthcare will also transform in that way. But, clearly, healthcare has quite rightly some additional challenges relating to the sensitivity of people’s health data and taking the right care of that. So, we need to work with regulators, governments, patients and physicians to make sure that these solutions are accessible, trusted, compliant and fitted to people’s expectations.
As companies, we need to adapt to working and developing and being successful in a digital environment. So, that will mean hiring and developing new talent with the right skills in areas like data science and data privacy. But, also, we are not just competing with other healthcare companies, now, but numerous other technology companies and other industries for those skill sets. It’s not just hiring new people, but also developing capabilities, making our current employees more savvy about working with digital – how those technologies could be applied, what the potential options are.
One area where Medical Affairs in most companies is usually taking a lead is understanding, communicating and generating real-world evidence. That is going to put increasing demands on Medical Affairs organizations to be able to access and analyze large data sets. To turn this into useful and meaningful evidence that can inform both the decisions of our organizations but also inform other stakeholders such as regulators, physicians and patients.”
At Bayer, digital is already driving new business models and the organization is cultivating a new digital culture across its various businesses. “Digital will change our business models and how we relate to patients and healthcare professionals – it’s a high priority for us and we have created a strategic framework as well as a digital agenda to help us become future-ready. We really want to make digital technologies an integral part of our overall business acumen, value chain, lifecycle management and decision-making, and we’re looking at that as a critical aspect of our overall business. We also recognise that a lot of the innovation and expertise is going to come from outside and from different areas, from different sorts of companies.
“One thing I believe we’ve done very successfully is build up an approach for actively seeking external collaboration. ”Among the initiatives is a global program called Grants4Apps, established in 2013, where Bayer reaches out to companies that are in the early stages of developing in the digital health and care space. Bayer acts as incubator and offers mentoring support and access to Bayer expertise and knowledge to help them develop their business models and solutions. Meanwhile, the Grants4Apps Dealmaker program is a unique opportunity to acquire Bayer as a customer and is tailored for mature teams, startups and companies that have a solution ready to go for identified challenges.
We also partner with research institutions across the world and, where it makes sense, with various technology companies that are also entering the healthcare space. You look at who are the partners that are meaningful to your stakeholders – like patients and healthcare professionals – and how do you do something with that partner that creates more value. We strive to enhance our ecosystem (for example with subsidiaries in San Francisco and Boston) and constantly monitor the external environment trying to link business challenges and evidence needs to potential technological solutions.”
Nevertheless, to harness the potential of RWE – both from EMR and sensors and devices – companies such as Bayer will need to make sure they have the ability to handle large volumes of data, that the data is of the right quality and data privacy is respected, and that they have the right skills and methodological approach to succeed in this space. “I think we need to make sure that we operate to a high standard of scientific integrity and quality because there are certainly risks if you don’t. And you need to bring in different skill sets in areas that will allow you to collect, analyse and interpret that data.” Bayer has been working hard to find people with skills in areas of big data analysis, including data scientists and epidemiologists.
In conclusion, Dr Devoy emphasizes that all of these changes imply a significant mindset shift on the part of MA professionals, who will be moving from their traditional support role to much more of a strategic focus. This will involve the function engaging much earlier in the value chain.
“Medical Affairs will get involved in the early project discussions [helping] research colleagues think about the best approach in terms of patient target groups, disease, models, linking to external expertise and knowledge. He also envisages Medical building a strategy aligned with global and key countries where the function will conceive or build a medical strategy aligned with the overall plan, both in terms of data generation and communication.
“In some key topics, such as real-world evidence, Medical is very much the function that takes the lead role in working with all the internal and external stakeholders to create the strategy and then execute it across the organization. You see it in very tangible things in terms of resource deployment, which has changed very significantly over the last five years.”
Going forward, Dr Devoy sees Medical as being the trusted partner between businesses and key external stakeholders – patient bodies, physicians and regulators – articulating the value companies are providing to healthcare systems and to patients. MA potentially has a unique understanding of how that value can be created and delivered, and a key role in developing the evidence and solutions around that value in collaboration with internal and external partners such as R&D colleagues, digital providers, physician groups and patient advocates.
“As patients become more empowered to make healthcare choices, it’s more important than ever for healthcare companies to create compelling and satisfying experiences. Digital solutions and innovation have never been more at the forefront of healthcare and are an important part of Bayer’s long-term strategy. These solutions can drive down costs or boost efficiency, build connections to patients and dramatically improve patient outcomes.”
Dr Michael Devoy is the Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and Pharmacovigilance for the Pharmaceuticals Division at Bayer AG. He is also the Chief Medical Officer of Bayer AG. He joined the former Schering AG in 2005 as Senior Vice President of Global Medical Development and was appointed to his current position in 2014.
Dr Devoy studied Medicine and Pharmacology at University College London and graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (MB, BS). He is a member of the Royal College of Physicians in London. He has extensive experience across Clinical Development and International Medical Affairs. His career in the pharmaceutical industry began when he joined Glaxo Group Research in Clinical Pharmacology.
“Probably the most important leadership experience came in my early career, when I became a Medical Director of a country – in that case Australia – where I had to operate with a greater degree of independence, lead quite a large team at the time, and balance all the diverse demands of the different stakeholders that interact with you: patients, physicians, researchers, regulators and internal colleagues in the business. I learned a great deal there about my leadership style: what my values were and what my drivers were, particularly through facing difficult issues and talking, reflecting on what we were trying to achieve; why and how you’re going to do that; and staying true to yourself in managing through those difficult topics.
“In terms of the sums, we had some financial challenges. I had to find a way of making my organization more efficient and responsive, and that was an important – and also, at the time – difficult experience. I then took on more senior global roles and an important step there (which I think applies to a lot of leaders in pharma and Medical Affairs) is managing globally dispersed teams with colleagues in lots of different time zones and countries. This involved balancing people with different cultural expectations, different perspectives on what good leadership looks like and how things should be communicated, how things should be managed, and managing and leading in that set-up.
“I’ve learned something from every leader I’ve had, in terms of how I’ve evolved and grown. In my leadership approach, one important learning I had with a leader was when one day I went to ask if I could do something and they said: ‘You should not be coming to ask my permission.
Come when you need my forgiveness.’ That was at a relatively early stage in my career and I think that gave me a perspective to take more personal responsibility and accountability for addressing situations and finding solutions. Not that it always went to plan, so I think then you accept you also have to take the responsibility for your decisions.
“Also, I had the privilege to work with leaders who modeled the best behaviors in terms of what ultimately is our priority in this industry, which is ensuring that the patients we serve receive the best treatments and optimum care and that we make sure that the trust they put in us as pharmaceutical healthcare companies is fulfilled. I would say that I learned equally from leaders who came from the commercial side of pharma and those who came from a scientific and medical side – all those different individuals have brought aspects to how my style of leadership has evolved.
“You don’t need to be the friend of your leader but, it’s important that you respect and understand their roles and actions and that they understand what you’re doing and how you’re doing it and what your vision is, and how that fits with the overall bigger picture.”
As technology advances inexorably transforming the healthcare landscape, Medical is poised for a more strategic role within pharma – that’s the view of former Chief Medical Officer of Sanofi, Ameet Nathwani. However, nobody with whom he works closely would be surprised to learn that he is not a fan of the term “Medical Affairs”.
“This harks back to an understanding of the way that Medical functions used to work about 15 or 20 years ago, which was much more around supporting the scientific base of the commercial organization. I prefer to just refer to the Medical function as it has evolved and expanded enormously; it’s a much more strategic function now and where it sits in Sanofi, reporting directly to CEO level speaks loudly to the progress made in this regard.”
Underpinning this evolution are a series of distinct trends (see Figure 1) including the digital health revolution, the empowerment of the patient, and a requirement for continuous evidence generation. He explains: “It takes seven to eight years to develop a drug and, in that time, the healthcare system, the digital technologies, the innovation available, the way physicians practice, what the expectations of patients are, may have all fundamentally changed. So the question is: is the biologically innovative drug still relevant to patients and the healthcare system at the end of a long development process? And how do we ensure that digital health technology – the superconvergence of mobile, social, biometrics, genomics and AI – is being capitalized in everything we do? We see integrating digital health as a fundamental role of the Medical organization; from building a drugs-plus type of approach, through to real-world evidence is something the Medical function has to master.”
Another driver of Medical’s current transformation is the requirement for continuous evidence generation. This is the melding of Real World Evidence (RWE), digital health, post-approval evidence and patient insight. “At Sanofi, Medical is in charge of the Real-World Evidence platform. We’ve built it and we, in turn, provide a service to R&D, Medical teams and Market and Patient Access. We should be able to move earlier into development, by leveraging the RWE platform for adaptive registration approaches to new products. With a really effective Real-World Evidence platform, good analytics and a transparent network, you could set up a very comprehensive, continuous observational program that continually helps to refine the benefits and risks of our products in real life as well as uncover new indications.”
Nathwani thinks how we maximize RWE will define the Medical function’s strategic value in the future. “We can’t be regarded as a strategic function if we’re not looking at how we can play a relevant role in the rapidly changing healthcare system. So, as a Medical function, we need to understand and define what the future of Medical should be in anticipation of these changes. How do we re-define ourselves? Where do we get our inspiration from – which other parts of the business or which other businesses do we send our medical teams to for inspiration? For example, are some of our Medical teams spending time at the Consumer Electronics Show, where you can pick up signals on future trends and behaviors of consumers in general – how a view of how these trends could be applied to the health sector? At Sanofi, we spend a lot of time engaging with tech companies to try and get a sense of where they are going and brainstorming on how to apply these to health. The main message is that Medical needs to look at what’s happening broadly in the world of technology, analytics, as well as in the traditional areas of medicine and healthcare, and zealously bring some of those ideas back internally to assess if we can integrate them to help us improve outcomes for patients.”
One of the key challenges for Medical involves clarifying its new remit within the organization. Sanofi has selected nine strategic priorities for the function (see Figure 2), which serve as a roadmap for the transformation within the context of the evolving healthcare landscape. For Nathwani, the clarity this provides is a fundamental first step to making the function more value-driven, from early development right through to the end of the product lifecycle.
“There’s been a reluctance to measure the impact of Medical in the past as there wasn’t a clear definition of what it can achieve. We don’t measure return on investment, as commercial metrics don’t apply. We’ve been through this whole exercise of what we could do and what success looks like and how we measure the value that we bring: have we really made an impact on patients and physicians, have we fundamentally changed healthcare systems, have we introduced a drugs-plus solution that has truly improved outcomes? Do physicians regard the information provided by the Medical organization as credible, is the quality of the dialogue good, has it changed behavior? While complex and not easy to measure, these are the performance measures that we are trying to formulate in each pillar of our activities.”
Much of the work around redefining Medical’s role within the organization goes beyond just structural issues, and there are considerable challenges around culture and changing roles and expectations. “It’s probably the hardest thing to do right now. A first step is having top-down support. Following that, at the grassroots level, is there a clear roadmap or vision, is the platform that we’re trying to build and the vision for Medical truly understood by all stakeholders at all levels, including within the Medical function? There are many individuals in Medical today who have very different experiences and mindsets, some from a time where Medical occupied a more traditional support function role and maybe some of the teams are not fully convinced that we can truly make a difference to the strategic direction of the organization. It’s vital to get the whole organization on board and that comes from having a strong conviction, and a clearly defined roadmap of how to make this happen.”
A key component of a successful transformation will be an expansion of Medical’s capabilities – to allow a company to understand the patient experience, access, and influence a broad array of external healthcare stakeholders, and to act as a liaison between the medical community and the internal research organization.
“We described the required capabilities of the future Medical organization and we are creating the training platforms to accompany that. And we help them to understand the processes by which you transform. It’s not easy at the country level, where the ‘rubber hits the road’, because the pressure of the business and the resources and experience to lead change is much more difficult to obtain. We have taken the long view, so when we hire today, we try to hire for the future. We try to bring in people who have a better understanding of biotechnology, drug development, are strong on analytics and with a solid grounding in medicine, and where possible, a strong interest in the digital side. It’s tough. We also look for people with a very strong patient-centric focus as the energy and passion these individuals bring to our organization is tremendous, and keeps us grounded in our purpose”.
With today’s life science industry now under extreme pressure to deliver superior medical outcomes while simultaneously cutting the cost of drug development, the time is right for Medical organizations to earn their place at the leadership table by creating opportunities to deliver new value for both patients and the healthcare ecosystem. Different companies are at different stages of maturity in terms of their progression towards being a fully-fledged strategic partner. However, the lack of a unified voice is hampering progress, Nathwani suggests.
“Our weakness is the heterogeneity of the role that Medical plays across organizations. We have extremes, from Medical as a well-accepted key strategic partner, right through to other organizations where Medical is probably more in the mainly customer support role. That heterogeneity means that it’s very hard to get alignment. If you look at the R&D organizations across industry, there is more clarity around their value and role. The main R&D leaders regularly meet together in a pre-competitive forum to look at the future direction of R&D and discuss macro trends. We don’t systematically do that across the Medical leaders in industry. There are a few useful platforms, but given the heterogeneity of our roles, the discussions are not consistent and our collective influence and voice is not at the level it could be.”
Nathwani is a strong advocate for Medical Affairs coming together as a community to decide on the future direction of MA. “We need to align on what are the key priorities that we believe Medical should be working towards across industry. For example, can we agree what would be a reasonable way to present the value of Medical internally and externally? Can we agree on what are the areas that Medical should try to drive within organizations – be that digital or drugs-plus or lifecycle management, and so on. Can we agree on the optimal methodologies for collecting and using RWE or utilizing advanced analytics for post-registration studies? What’s our approach on the many industry topics around bioethics?
“For example, in our organization, Medical runs the Sanofi Bioethics Committee, which helps to form company-wide positions on fundamental issues such as data transparency, the way we conduct trials, our approach to patient groups, positions on nanotechnologies or genetic therapies. Medical could be much more instrumental on matters like these if we had a platform across industry which could integrate positions from other companies and gain alignment on them. There’s a lot of areas I think that an organization like MAPS could focus on, to really elevate the Medical organization and its voice in our industry.”
Medical has a window of opportunity to become a strategic function. It needs to make itself relevant to the changing healthcare ecosystem and is well-positioned to do so but it could easily “miss the bus” on this if it carries on as is.
The future of the function is very much in our hands, Nathwani believes. “It depends on what we do next. In fact, I think we’re at a tipping point right now. We either prove our innovative value by adapting to and addressing the external changes happening in healthcare and our industry, or we will continue to remain a mainly support function. There’s a lot to do. If we can, for example, use Real World Evidence platforms to fundamentally change the way we carry out drug development, understand patients and diseases, and leverage these to bring through our biologic innovations faster, more safely and at a reduced cost, that to me will be a remarkable achievement.”
Dubbed by New York Times best-selling author and leadership guru Tasha Eurich as the meta-skill of the 21st century, self-awareness is as desirable as it is elusive, given that a staggering 95 per cent of people think they possess self-awareness, but only about 15 per cent of people really do. Self-aware people are more fulfilled, more creative, successful, more confident, build better relationships, and are more respected and effective leaders with more profitable companies. There’s just one problem: most people don’t see themselves quite as clearly as they could, and it’s rare to get candid, objective feedback from colleagues, employees, and even friends and family.
In her new book, Insight, organizational psychologist Eurich tackles this paradox and offers an explanation for this disconnect. “The reason I call it the meta-skill is that it’s underlying or foundational to all of the skills that are required to succeed in the 21st century – things like emotional intelligence, influence, persuasion, sales. If you are not self-aware, if you do not understand who you are, how others see you and the role you play in the world, you are going to come up short. But for most people, it is easier to choose self-delusion over the cold hard truth.”
Eurich argues that the increasingly “me-focused” society makes it easier to fall into this trap. “Recent generations have grown up in a world obsessed with self-esteem, constantly being reminded of their special qualities, and it is fiendishly difficult to examine objectively who we are and how we’re seen.”
Indeed, psychological research indicates that are we are not very good at evaluating ourselves accurately, frequently overestimating our abilities: for example, the Dunning-Kruger effect results in “illusory superiority” – a condition of cognitive bias whereby a person overestimates their own qualities and abilities, in relation to the same qualities and abilities of others. What’s even more alarming is that those with the least ability are most likely to overrate their ability to the greatest extent.
For Anne Welsh, Executive Coach and founder of Synthesis-in-the-City, the first step for a leader is to have a willingness to be self-reflective and, from being self-reflective, to build greater self-awareness over time. “If we think about the old style of leadership, it was very different from now where leaders are asked to be a lot more relational. Personally, I think that it takes courage to build self-awareness, because if you become more self-aware in one area, if you like, you have to actually open to your shadow as well as the positive aspects of self-awareness. So, I think self-awareness is a leadership journey and it demands courage.”
For Welsh, this journey needs to be a conscious choice. “In some ways, this learning could come from feedback from others, from 360-degree feedback from subordinates, colleagues and supervisors, but also I think you can begin to choose to take ownership, even keeping a reflective journal, to begin to recognize what works well in my relationships with others and especially as a leader. Where do I, maybe, get caught where my own beliefs and mindsets are stopping me actually being able to be relational as a leader?”
Watch Tasha Eurich in the video below to learn how to become more self-aware by making three life adjustments: deciding to learn the truth, getting more feedback, and asking what you can do to make a change in every situation.
In her book Insight, Eurich talks about two types of self-awareness: internal and external. “Internal self-awareness has to do with seeing yourself clearly. It’s an inward understanding of your values, passions, aspirations, ideal environment, patterns, reactions, and impact on others. People who are high in internal self-awareness tend to make choices that are consistent with who they really are, allowing them to lead happier and more satisfying lives. Those without it act in ways that are incompatible with their true success and happiness, like staying in an unfulfilling job or relationship because they don’t know what they want.”
External self-awareness according to Insight is about “understanding yourself from the outside in – that is, knowing how other people see you. Because externally self-aware people can accurately see themselves from others’ perspectives, they are able to build stronger and more trusting relationships. Those low in external self-awareness, on the other hand, are so disconnected with how they come across that they’re often blindsided by feedback from others.”
Eurich names “three building blocks” that must be in place for a leader to drive a self-aware team.
“First, if the team doesn’t have a leader who models the way, the process will be seen as insincere or even dangerous. Second, if there isn’t the psychological safety to tell the truth, the chance of candid feedback is almost zero. But even with all this in place, you need an ongoing process— not unlike Ford CEO Mulally’s BPR (Business Plan Review) to ensure that the exchange of feedback is built into the team’s culture.”
For Welsh, it comes down to reviewing your emotional state and having the awareness and capacity to shift that state when needed. “Internally, consider what sort of state am I in: am I in a state that’s available and do I have the capacity to shift my state? And this is where mindfulness can come in or knowing how do we shift our state at any given moment.
The second self-awareness is about awareness of ourselves in relation to others and that takes quite a lot of sensory awareness as well. So, if we think that leaders maybe have to come from a place of ‘head, heart and gut’ (in the old leadership style, it’s much more head-identified) a leader can have greater sensory awareness and the guts to risk finding out ‘how am I coming across to others?’ So I think there’s a piece about awareness involving how we, as a self, are relating to others and how we’re impacting on the environment.”
Welsh advocates that leaders need to be conscious of their impact and how their message affects employees.” I think it’s picking up on body language, even if you think about a leader giving a presentation, do they talk at the people or are they gauging ‘how is this coming across to the people in the room? Are these people who need me to be more relational or do they just want slides?’ Because so often in presentations that leaders are giving, they’re just talking at the audience, they’re not checking out how this is landing, for instance asking “does this have a resonance with you?” which would be a much more relational way of interacting as a leader – so the leader actually asking questions, not just giving information.”
Welsh also advises that leaders be conscious of the dynamics at play within a team setting. “I love Nancy Kline’s work on Time To Think and if we look at self-awareness in teams, we have to be conscious of the psychological dynamics that go on within a team – noticing, what’s the role that I take on in any team; am I always the one that’s the challenger? Am I the icebreaker? Inviting teams to reflect on what are the dynamics that are going on in this team, alongside what is it that we have to do and what do we need to deliver? Because it might be that somebody gets labelled and gets scapegoated in a team and the other members of the team can feel quite comfortable because it’s not them. So, I think that in a team, helping them to think about what is the role that I maybe take on, even from [family] history – because teams are just like families: often you’ll find that the role that people took on in a family is the role that they’ll take on in a team. This can be useful, and especially it can be useful for the ones who are maybe playing a role that they actually don’t want to play anymore.”
The quality of self-awareness requires self-reflection: the act of setting aside time – ideally every day – to quietly and honestly look at yourself, first as a person and then as a leader. Yet according to Eurich’s research, people who introspected were more stressed, more depressed, less satisfied with their jobs and relationships, less in control of their lives. She is in favor of a considered approach when it comes to self-reflection. “Self-analysis can trap us in a mental hell of our own making. Thinking about ourselves is not the same as knowing ourselves.”
Why questions: “why did I behave that way”, should be changed instead to “what”. “Why-questions trap us in that rearview mirror. What-questions move us forward to our future. As human beings, we are blessed with the ability to understand who we are, what we want to contribute, and the kind of life we want to lead. Remember, our self-awareness unicorns had nothing in common except a belief in the importance of self-awareness and a daily commitment to developing it. That means we can all be unicorns. The search for self-awareness never ever stops.”
Blind spots can be the Achilles heel of leadership. Even the most iconic leaders have blind spots and, the more senior the leader, the less likelihood of receiving honest and accurate feedback from employees. Blind spots can help you maintain your confidence in the face of significant obstacles but, when they inhibit you from seeing the truth or make you blind to important issues, they need to be addressed. It’s not always easy to figure out what your own blind spots are and admitting them can seem like admitting weakness. Surround yourself with people who can help you manage your blind spots or weaknesses. If you don’t have strong analytical skills, recruit someone who can help you. If you tend to get defensive when your views are challenged, find a colleague or mentor who can help you deal with those feelings and process the information presented to you. By bolstering your team with people who help you overcome your blind spots, you’ll be better positioned to compensate for them.
Here are three ways to help you identify and fix your blindspots according to Jenn Fenwick, Career Transition and Onboarding Coach, Rebel Road Coaching & Consulting:
1) Get candid feedback: “Feedback can be a rare commodity as a leader; however, it doesn’t have to be and it can truly be a gift to anyone wanting to develop. Ask those around you what is going well and where there are potential areas for growth. Framing feedback as critical insight to support your future self-development helps to break down the barriers people may have in giving feedback around ‘blindspots’. Create an environment where those around you feel comfortable having open and honest conversations around positives and growth areas. This will lead to an empowered learning environment, further building your credibility as a leader.”
2) Coaching: “Coaching is a hugely valuable tool to growing and developing as a leader. Building stronger awareness around strengths, and also identifying areas for growth, develops great breadth and empowers you as a leader. Having a coach is like holding up a mirror, and truly seeing the real you. There are many things we tell ourselves that hinder us; however, if we get clear on what they are, and have an honest look at ourselves, they lose their power. Working with a coach is a safe space to effectively interpret 360-degree feedback, allowing you to ultimately drive forward positive behavioral change. Knowing yourself has huge power, and a coach can help identify what is getting in the way of you achieving your goals and reaching your potential – so you can overcome it.”
3) Regular self-reflection: “There is huge value in building in time each week to self-reflect on what is going well, and what is not going so well. The process of regularly reflecting means we are taking the time to celebrate our progress, which is motivating, and also identifying areas where we are getting stuck. If we can identify patterns, or potential ‘derailers’, we can look to solutions to overcome these. There is no greater learning, than learning from our mistakes – in fact, we always learn more! Reflecting helps you to develop your skills and review their effectiveness, rather than just carrying on doing things as you have always done them. It is about questioning, in a positive way, what you do and why you do it, and then deciding whether there is a better way of doing it in the future. Understanding our own reactions and behaviors helps us relate better with others, make better choices, and overcome the challenges we face. It’s about confronting your limiting beliefs, giving yourself permission to be vulnerable and shaping a new mindset of being comfortable being uncomfortable. Because unless we challenge the status quo, we can’t change and grow.”
This collaborative webinar discusses available postgraduate courses and insights from alumni into how their qualification helped advance their understanding of pharmaceutical medicine and their career.
Executive stress has come under scrutiny recently, most pointedly in an open letter published by Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, to Elon Musk, in which she appealed to him to change the way he works to be more in line with the science of how humans are most effective.
The letter came hot on the heels of the Tesla chairman and chief executive’s anguished New York Times interview where he broke down multiple times as he recounted the excruciating pressure he was under in what he named “the most difficult and painful year of my career”. Asked if the exhaustion was taking a toll on his physical health, Musk answered: “It’s not been great, actually. I’ve had friends come by who are really concerned.” The public admission subsequently sparked a tumble in Tesla shares.
Huffington decried Musk’s 120-hour weeks and continued with an argument calculated to break through his denial – science. Musk is nothing if not a scientist, so Huffington asked him to look at the science of human overwork and sleep deprivation: “The science is clear. And what it tells us is that there’s simply no way you can make good decisions and achieve your world-changing ambitions while running on empty.”
“To cite just one study, after 17-19 hours without sleep, we begin to experience levels of cognitive impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.05%, just under the threshold for being legally drunk. No business leader would hire people who came to work drunk, so don’t model that behavior for your employees.”
The missive drew a Twitter response from Musk. “You think this is an option. It is not.” Huffington, founder of wellness website Thrive Global, where she published the open letter, refuses to accept that. In fact, she sees a lesson here for us all. “This is not about sleep, or about slowing down, or about asking Elon to chill out under a mango tree,” she said in a statement shared with CNN. “It’s about how we can unlock and sustain our peak performance, and see solutions and opportunities where others can’t.”
The running debate highlights some key points. “Firstly, people who are burnt out are the last to see it and it takes others, family members or friends to point it out to them,” says Lewis Garrad, Business Lead for Employee Experience Research at global consulting firm, Mercer. “Secondly, there’s the question of whether it’s an employer’s responsibility or that of the individual.”
Huffington would argue that burning out is not the price of success. “As all the recent scientific findings show, the opposite is true,” she said, noting people “perform better” when they “take time to refuel and recharge.”
According to Jenn Fenwick, Founder of Rebel Road Executive Coaching, who frequently coaches stressed-out executives, it comes down to sustainability. “There’s a balance between the duty of care of the employer to support the employee and the responsibility of the individual to manage their own health and wellbeing. Frankly, in my experience, leaders are frequently left out at sea, especially during extremely stress-inducing times like transitioning into more senior positions. The employer is often not forthcoming in terms of providing onboarding support, and employees are left floundering – not sleeping, experiencing severe anxiety due to lack of internal support, lack of clarity around the role, and this ‘all-or-nothing’ approach where the employee forsakes all health and wellbeing activities in order to prove to their employers that they made the right decision in hiring them.”
It’s a considerable cost to the employer. “Many often leave because of burnout. In this one case, it was going to lead to losses of £200,000 if this particular senior Medical leader resigned – not to mention the impact on team morale if she left. As a coach, I’ve had a lot of experience of rescuing situations where leaders are on the point of leaving due to overwhelm. Employers need to provide better support particularly at flashpoints like transitioning to new roles, or during mergers and takeovers where people can suffer due to lack of communication from the top and insecurity surrounding the continuity of their role. But employees also need to learn how to self-care,” says Fenwick.
While well-managed wellness programs are beneficial in redressing the onset of workplace stress and burnout, they often target the wrong cohort. “You’ll often see the highest uptake in these wellness programs are among those that least need them – the people who are typically health-conscious anyway and are into health and fitness. The likely burnout candidates may not take up these initiatives and this is where we need to have a more personalized approach to the issue of burnout. Are there other stressors at play within the overall culture? Are there other stressors at play, which are impacting on employees’ stress levels, like financial concerns? Tailored programs – for example, financial security programs – may be appropriate in this instance so it’s vital to acknowledge that one-size does not fit all. We need a very tailored approach to the issue,” says Garrad.
Christina Maslach, creator of the Maslach Burnout Inventory and author of The Truth About Burnout, has identified six “mismatches” that make a person more likely to burn out – and only one of these factors is too much work. “It is a common belief that there is just one dimension to job stress, work overload. Indeed, overload is often considered to be a synonym for stress. But in our burnout model, overload is only one of six mismatches in the workplace. And it’s not always the most critical, especially it things are going well in some of the other areas.” (2) Maslach cites five other triggers than can lead to burnout, including lack of control, insufficient reward, lack of community, absence of fairness, and conflict in values.
The health and safety precautions applied to an employee’s physical health apply equally to their mental health. Jeffrey Pfeffer is professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. In his most recent book, Dying for a Paycheck, he writes:
“The workplace profoundly affects human health and mortality, and too many workplaces are harmful to people’s health – people are literally dying for a paycheck.”
Pfeffer cites extensive examples from across the globe of the negative effects toxic work practices have had on people – to the point, in some cases, of pushing them to suicide. Other examples given include serious health effects such as collapsing from fatigue, developing a dependency on anti-depressants, or substance abuse. (3)
“For men, prolonged exposure to work-related stress has been linked to an increased likelihood of lung, colon, rectal, and stomach cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Moreover, we are increasingly understanding the mechanisms linking stress to disease.”
Pfeffer namechecks a few positive cases throughout the book. He cites companies such as Southwest Airlines, Toyota, and SAS Institute for their resistance to layoffs, and Patagonia and Aetna for progressive policies regarding healthcare insurance and work-life balance.
His response to corporate wellness programs as a salve to reduce burnout is that they are largely ineffectual, mainly because they focus on the wrong things. “We know, from extensive research summarized in Dying for a Paycheck that individual behaviors such as overeating, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and drug abuse are related to the stress, including workplace-induced stress, that individuals experience. So instead of trying to get people to engage in healthier individual behaviors, workplace wellbeing initiatives would be more effective if they focused on preventing the stress-inducing aspects of work environments that cause the unhealthy individual behaviors in the first place. Simply put, companies need to build cultures of health – and that begins by creating work environments that help people thrive both physically and psychologically. Not on trying to remediate the harm that toxic workplaces inflict through limited-intervention ‘programs’.” (4)
The solution is simply the flip side of his data: it’s providing more job control, reducing work-family conflict, being fair to employees and providing social support at work. It’s also avoiding lay-offs; Pfeffer quotes evidence that while layoffs “increase fear and stress, they do not lead to higher profits, productivity, stock price, innovation or quality.”
For Danie du Plessis, it’s time to bring workplace stress out into the open. The Executive Vice President of Medical Affairs at Kyowa Kirin, du Plessis has a strong background in coaching and mentoring, with a heavy emphasis on employee health and wellbeing.
He explains: “In the UK, there has recently been a huge emphasis on mental well-being in the workplace, including support from the House of Windsor. This is great and can unfortunately also have a downside of not seeing the bigger picture and how many factors influence an individual’s resilience. Both individuals and employers have responsibilities. Employees need to take time to understand their own purpose in life, in the first instance, and how that relates to the work they are doing and their career aspirations (a great coaching/mentoring conversation). They need to be aware how they manage problems, emotions and their own physical well-being, and be prepared to change their own behavior if the status quo does not serve them well. This will increase their resilience and fulfillment. It is quite amazing how often resilience becomes a key conversation in coaching and mentoring. Sadly, many people are scared to be open at work and discuss this with their managers.”
According to du Plessis, employers need to create a safe space for employees to be themselves at work and be vocal about the fact that it is OK to be human. “Offering access to different programs that inform the journey of growth towards managed resilience is the ideal – either in-house or through third parties. I believe this should be the norm for all companies and organizations, while one should appreciate that different size companies will have different offerings. What is in it for the company? Resilient employees perform better and retain their aligned passion for the purpose of the company, which is why they joined in the first place. It becomes easier to really be present (which links again with mindfulness and mental well-being). This takes the term ‘presenteeism’, coined by Professor Cary Cooper, a psychologist specializing in organizational management at Manchester University in the UK one step further. And by default, absenteeism decreases which reduces workload on co-workers. Having a reputation of caring about employees can in no perceivable way harm any organization.”
Prioritizing your employees over the short-term goals of your company can be the best strategy in the long run, according to Simon Sinek, author of Leaders Eat Last.
“The irony is when our top priority is to take care of our people, our people will take care of the numbers. People-focused companies outperform numbers-focused companies over the long-term dramatically.”
When organizations take care of their employees to such an extent, they make them feel safe. And according to Simon Sinek, the natural response to feeling safe is to offer trust and cooperation.
“Charlie Kim, who is the CEO of a company called Next Jump, a tech company in New York City, makes the point that if you had hard times in your family, would you ever consider laying off one of your children? We would never do it. Then why do we consider laying off people within our organizations? Charlie implemented a policy of lifetime employment. If you get a job at Next Jump, you cannot get fired for performance issues. In fact, if you have issues, they will coach you and they will give you support, just like you would if one of your children came home with a C from school.”
Ben Whitter, Founder and CEO of World Employee Experience Institute, suggests that both employees and employers have a role in creating the conditions for burnout to occur. “The thing about some companies, and the tenure figures from Silicon Valley bear this one out, is that they can create a fantastic workplace experience, but in return, they expect EVERYTHING an employee’s got to give, which is very intense and challenging to sustain over the long-term. The increasing numbers of people opting to work freelance within the gig economy is an indicator that people want to take back control of their life and work to hours that suit them. Companies are responding with various flexible working arrangements, and also the four-day week is growing in popularity, to deliver stronger productivity that can be sustained by the employer and employees. Work and life are converging at a rate we haven’t seen before, and everyone needs to get ready for radically new ways of working within the economy.
Employees are no longer resources to be exploited and commanded, they are now allies in a shared mission to co-create experiences that deliver better results. For Whitter, the future of work and HR is human and this human touch is where we need to get to. “A quote I love from Trudy Purchase (an Employee Experience Award Winning Learning & Development Manager) is: ‘“Don’t judge the quality of an employer by how they treat you on your best day. Instead, judge them by how they treat you on your worst day.’ And in return for that humanity you get a whole lot more: discretionary effort, loyalty, creativity, innovation, because if you treat me like this, I’ll give you everything I have. It certainly beats free snacks or fußball tables.”
Read Huffington’s entire letter HERE
References:
1: Why Companies Should Care About Employee Health and Wellness,
https://spectrumwellness.ie/resources/companies-care-employee-health-and-wellness/.
2. “The Six Causes of Professional Burnout and How to Avoid Them,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2015/05/13/the-6-causes-of-professional-burnout-and-how-to-avoid-them/#7953ffcf1dde.
3. “One the brink: Burnout in the workplace,” https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/lifestyle/healthandlife/on-the-brink-burnout-in-the-workplace-857855.html.
4. Jeffrey Pfeffer on his new book Dying for a Paycheck, https://www.personalbrandingblog.com/jeffrey-pfeffer-new-book-dying-
By Cezary Statuch, MD, VP, Medical, International Markets, Biogen
Like many things in life, when managing your career timing is everything, and being in the right place at the right time is important. Knowing whether it is the right time for you to move on is not always easy. The pharma and biotech industries are an attractive place to pursue your professional dreams, and some markets are in great demand for medical affairs talent–so the phone rings more often than ever with calls from headhunters. Unfortunately, at times of high demand for talent the recruiters are less likely concerned if you have completed your career cycle, and if your skill set fits what they are after you will have to deal with serious temptations. Here are a few tips on how to manage your career planning and how to get ready for your next job.
By Alan McDougall, MD, VP, Head of Medical Affairs, Asia-Oceania Region, Astellas
Interviews are stressful but you can reduce your adrenaline levels through proper preparation. Medical Affairs has transformed in the last decade and there are a number of key competencies which are sought after and which you should attempt to demonstrate through each and every contact you have with both the recruiter and your prospective employers. Below is a not exhaustive list of the most desirable competencies and behaviours.
Communication
The ability to communicate clearly and effectively and through a variety of channels is essential for anyone working in medical affairs. Having a high level of knowledge but an inability to share it or teach it effectively is of little value. Communication also includes using appropriate body language, listening skills and the ability to provide feedback. Make sure every verbal or written contact you have with the company or the recruiter is carefully thought through and proof-read in the case of written contacts.
Passion and enthusiasm
Employers want to hire someone who demonstrates a passion to work at their company, sometimes described as being “hungry” for the role. Having the right attitude is often more important than knowledge, because attitude is very hard to train but knowledge can be learned. Carefully word your cover letter and individualise your CV for each job to stress key experiences or skills that are mentioned in the advertisement and job description (JD). Spend time browsing through the company’s corporate website and come armed with pre-prepared questions which are thoughtful and specific to the role and the company. If possible, ask about a recent company press release and the implications (if any) for the role for which you are applying.
Technical skills
Medical affairs positions require certain technical skills that are usually listed in the job advertisement or JD. You should already possess many of the skills the company is looking for, at least to some degree. You may not yet be an expert in all of them but there should be a solid foundation upon which you can build. Typically, at interview, these technical competencies will be assessed (presentation skills, therapeutic area knowledge etc.). Take note of the JD, advert and recruiter’s comments and use every contact opportunity to mention where your current technical skills fit the role being offered.
Work ethic
It should go without saying that employers expect you to be at work on time, do what you were hired to do, meet targets and deadlines and work to the best of your ability. Sadly, we have all worked with colleagues who do not always meet these basic requirements. Make sure you are early for interviews, meet all deadlines when replying to emails, phone messages etc. and do everything you can to give your prospective manager confidence in your own work ethic. You have only a few contact opportunities with your potential next company and so make sure each one says something positive about you and your personal standards.
Flexibility
More than ever before, employees need to react quickly to changing business conditions. Agile companies and agile teams are currently popular subjects in articles written by business thought leaders. Employers need employees who can quickly adapt to change. Come to interview with examples of how you demonstrated your own agility – perhaps covering another role on top of your own, taking on a project about which you had no little or no previous experience and delivering a successful outcome or dealing positively with an unpredictable environmental change.
Resilience
We all typically get challenging but (hopefully) achievable goals and deadlines. The key to successful delivery is often being able to work hard and to keep moving forward when you encounter the inevitable and frustrating obstacles that regularly happen in business. Come to interview with examples of how you overcame particularly difficult challenges and show that you did not give up but that you persevered and ultimately met your objectives.
Teamwork
Little in the pharmaceutical industry is achieved by a single individual. Roles in medical affairs are becoming more diverse and specialised and therefore there is an increasing need for reliance on your colleagues to get things done. The ability to get on and work collaboratively with others is therefore a key competency. Using real examples, show how you contributed to successful teamwork under challenging circumstances and how you “did not give up”.
Life-long learner
As product portfolios and market environments change, there is a need to seek out new information, challenge your beliefs and explore new ways of doing things. Long-held “facts” can change when new contradictory evidence emerges. People who are naturally curious with an interest in learning combined with a willingness to share this with others, make great co-workers. At interview, explain what new skills or knowledge you have learned, how you applied this at work and describe the impact that it made.
Problem-solving skills
Managers look for people who are motivated to take on business challenges, ideally with minimal direction. Most of us prefer our employees to “come to us with solutions not problems”. Employees should see when something needs to be done and react accordingly. Come to interview with examples of how you observed an issue at work, took ownership of it and solved it. This can be even more impactful if it wasn’t in your job description in the first place.
Loyalty
Employers want people to stay with them for many years due to their financial investment with the recruitment company and the time spent on interviews and on your on-boarding process. Multiple job moves in a relatively short time period with different companies is usually an alarm bell and indicates a risk that you will not stay long if you are even offered the job. If you unfortunately have had several short-term moves recently, make sure that you come to interview with a clear explanation as to why and what you learned. Try hard not to criticise your current or previous companies or managers as this can come across quite negatively, even if you feel you have every right to do so. Employers always prefer someone running towards the role on offer than someone running away from their current job as the former is a positive choice whereas the latter can be simply escaping to “any port in a storm”.
Conclusion
It is a truism to say that you only have one chance to make a good first impression and so at interview be well prepared and make sure you have done your homework well in advance. Tell the employer why you really want this job and make sure your passion and enthusiasm come to the forefront. Show your agility, resilience and ability to learn, which are all highly valued competencies by employers. Finally, do remember that all contacts with the employer and recruiter, no matter how trivial, are likely to be judged so make them count!
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.
Joseph Eid, MD, SVP, Head of Global Medical Affairs at Bristol Myers Squibb, describes how Medical Affairs can ensure representation of the patient voice in product development, and the positive shift and elevated prominence Medical Affairs is achieving within companies.
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Download the Presentation
Members may also download a PDF copy of Dr. Eid’s panel discussion on The Value of Medical Affairs from the MAPS 2020 Global Annual Meeting as well as a recording of the session in the Community Portal.
View the White Paper
You may also view our latest white paper on the Communicating the Value of Medical Affairs, by clicking here.