The views, statements, and opinions expressed in this article are our own and do not represent those of our employers. The strategies and tactics described herein would be subject to multi-functional review and approval prior to implementation by an organization.
Objective Measurement of Medical Affairs Impact on Strategic Imperatives With Share of Scientific Voice
Central to the role of Medical Affairs is the interpretation, synthesis, and integration of data to inform the scientific narrative and to effectively communicate this information to key opinion leaders (KOLs), healthcare professionals (HCPs), payers, and policymakers in an effort to inform patient care and improve patient outcomes. (1) The scientific narrative underpins the communication strategy of a product’s launch and long-time plan and is built on medical strategic imperatives. Strategic imperatives may include required foundational knowledge, defined and addressable unmet needs and value related to the product’s attributes and its therapeutic area (TA) (2), and, critically, guide all medical communication and engagement activities. Implementing and improving a medical communication strategy requires an objective understanding or tracking of how effective it is. This requires an objective measure of impact. Guidance for the role of Medical Affairs in product strategy and its contribution to launch excellence and development of strategic imperatives has been covered in previous MAPS white papers. (2) (3) This article addresses the metrics that Medical Affairs can use to measure how effectively they communicate on their strategic imperatives, with a specific focus on Share of Scientific Voice (SoSV).
For a Medical Affairs communication strategy to be effective, there should be at least one, and no more than eight, major strategic imperatives. Strategic imperatives should be precise, concise, singular, and measurable and structured in a single sentence or phrase that captures only the essential elements of the concept. (3)
An example set of purposefully general strategic imperatives for a product could be as follows:
• The product’s unique mechanism of action more directly targets the underlying disease
• The product significantly reduces exacerbations requiring hospitalization compared to existing biologic therapies
• Less frequent dosing has been demonstrated to improve adherence and quality of life
In line with its key responsibility of effectively communicating the scientific narrative to key stakeholders, there has long been a need for an objective measurement of Medical Affairs efforts. Recently, new metrics have emerged that enable Medical Affairs teams to measure their effectiveness across strategic imperatives. One of these is SoSV. SoSV measures the number of disseminations for a product and its strategic imperatives across all scientific evidence, compared to its competitors. It can be applied to an entire scientific database, journals, conferences, and authors. SoSV is a scientific-focused measure and is therefore measured on scientific disseminations, namely, publications and scientific conference abstracts (presentations and posters). With KOLs and the scientific community being priority audiences for Medical Affairs, as they also lead the broader clinical HCP community, SoSV is an emerging metric for effective communication of strategic imperatives. With the increasing use of social media and digital communications, Share of Digital Voice (SoDV) enables teams to measure effective amplification of scientific disseminations. We will first focus on SoSV, before turning to SoDV (see Figure 1 and section on Share of Digital Voice).
SoSV can be measured across all scientific evidence globally, in a country (or countries or region[s]), in specific journals or conferences, as well as for a group of KOLs or individual KOLs. Weighted SoSV incorporates the SCIMago journal and other impact factors, which can help teams further understand the effectiveness of their efforts and enable them to set and track progress on key performance indicators (KPIs) over time.
Key benefits of measuring SoSV:
- The ability to assess current SoSV and set more precise KPIs based on previous launches and/or patterns and benchmarks within an indication
- Tracking the results of your ongoing communication efforts on your strategic imperatives
- Across all scientific disseminations
- Across a specific group of KOLs
- For individual KOLs: Assess what share you are gaining
- Gathering insights from the scientific/KOL landscape to identify gaps and generate data, disseminate evidence with greater acumen and with more optimal placement, and engage the most relevant KOLs and to refine strategy and improve effectiveness and impact
Let’s look at an example in atopic dermatitis (AD). Your specific strategic imperative may be to communicate on real-world evidence of your product in AD. SoSV enables you to measure this across all scientific disseminations worldwide, by using the search term that covers real-world evidence activities (and synonyms). As shown in figure 2 with an example set of products, SoSV enables you to see your impact on the strategic imperative and to view the evolution of your team’s impact over time.
You may also assess SoSV for your imperatives across KOLs and at the individual KOL level. Figure 3 shows SoSV for an individual KOL in AD, assessing the share of their scientific activities for 67 disseminations (conference abstracts and publications) over the 3-year period from 2020 to 2023, across a selected sample of products: dupilumab, nemolizumab, abrocitinib, upadacitinib, baricitinib, tralokinumab, and lebrikizumab. A further analysis on the strategic imperative of quality of life improvement identified 18 disseminations, of which 14 were on dupilumab and 3 were on abrocitinib. This ongoing, granular analysis enables the team to understand the level to which KOLs are engaged on strategic topics for each product. This facilitates not only an important assessment of Medical Affairs performance but also provides insights on which leaders may be appropriate to participate in future activities.
Share of Digital Voice
Sharing of scientific data, clinical experience (including patient cases), and opinion online is becoming increasingly common in many countries. For instance, 62% of US plastic surgeons have active professional social media accounts (4), and many other specialties—such as cardiology and endocrinology—have high use rates of professional social media accounts. SoDV has become a highly relevant measure for communication of strategic imperatives, as social media and digital channels are amplifying the science and clinical experience of the scientific narrative and building awareness and educating HCPs including patient community, as well as, though often less widely, other stakeholders such as payers.
You can track and analyze the relative SoDV for your product and strategic imperatives vs competitors across the universe of only activities.
SoDV measures the following:
The share that all HCPs and individuals talk online about:
- A product
- An indication
- A company vs other companies
- A range of topics enabling measurement of strategic imperatives
SoDV also enables you to understand the percentage share of where mentions and conversations take place (forums, blogs, journals, social media, etc).
Getting Started and Integrating SoSV Into Your Medical Strategic Plan
Medical Affairs teams usually start their journey with SoSV by measuring their “baseline” and reviewing competitors’ SoSV in an effort to set more precise KPIs. This stage involves an assessment of the overall SoSV for their product in their indication, then measuring their SoSV for each individual strategic imperative. A prelaunch product may not yet have any disseminations (or SoSV) for their strategic imperatives. In this case, reviewing the SoSV for previous launches enables teams to set relevant targets and accordingly helps them to more accurately plan the number and types of KOLs they need to identify and engage, the range of activities they should plan, and also the structure and size of their Medical team, including the number of medical science liaisons (MSLs). With regard to planning Medical teams, as regions within countries can be mapped according to the levels of SoSV driven by KOL/contributor locations, sizing of Field Medical teams can be directly informed by SoSV analyses.
For illustrative purposes, an example set of 12-month target KPIs for SoSV could be as follows:
- Increase product’s SoSV from 25% to 35%
- Maintain the current SoSV for the top 10 KOLs
- Lead SoSV for at least 3 of the 5 strategic medical imperatives
Figure 4 displays a high-level view of planning, implementation, tracking, and refinement using SoSV, with a focus on how SoSV guides KOL engagement, evidence generation, and dissemination activities.
Tracking SoSV at monthly and/or quarterly intervals allows the team to evaluate the effectiveness of their activities overall, with individuals, and across KOLs to assess and understand their impact and that of their competitors. Emerging experts on particular strategic imperatives can be identified, and granular profiling and analytics data enable more precise planning based on topics of interest, activity preferences, and collaboration networks. Objective measurement and ongoing insights, starting with a baseline measure and historical data, allow you to track and optimize the impact of Medical Affairs.
Like any measurement, the calculations of SoSV are only as accurate as the strength and quality of the data that are used to calculate them. It is very important that a complete dataset is used; otherwise the results may be inaccurate and lead to erroneous decision-making. By measuring across all international, national, and smaller conferences/hospital grand round abstracts, not just journal publications, a more comprehensive pool of evidence is assured, thereby affording greater confidence in the data that are derived. In the same way that we power our clinical trials statistically, with sufficient numbers of patients to detect a significant difference between products if there is one, a complete scientific picture helps to derive not only all the data but the right data to make decisions more confidently.
Limitations
Medical Affairs teams may include more internal operational elements as strategic imperatives. SoSV and SoDV are not able to measure these internal objectives, such as successful training on disease burden or a product’s mechanism of action. However, as many teams are focusing strategic imperatives on elements that are relevant to their external communication and engagement plan, SoSV and SoDV are objective and strategic metrics to track impact on key pillars of the Medical Affairs strategic plan.
In relation to SoDV, it is worthwhile to mention that communication of data and opinion that are shared in digital forums may not be peer-reviewed, they are in scientific journals, and therefore should be subject to more scrutiny before using them for objective measurement and decision-making.
Conclusion
A key component of the Medical strategic plan is the development of strategic imperatives that serve as guidance for the Medical Affairs team to develop and execute activities based on unmet needs. SoSV and SoDV are objective and strategic measures of Medical Affairs effectiveness that inform the communication and engagement plan in an ongoing way. Together with other ways of assessing impact of Medical Affairs activities, such as qualitative surveys and insights generated through field interactions, this enables more accurate planning and course correction to help Medical teams to communicate the scientific narrative to KOLs and HCPs as effectively as possible and optimize clinical care and patient outcomes.
References
1. Communicating the Value of Medical Affairs. Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) White Paper. May 2020.
2. Medical Affairs Launch Excellence: Best Practices for Medical Affairs. Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) White Paper. 2020.
3. Medical Affairs Launch Excellence Guide and Templates. Best Practices for Medical Affairs. Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS). 2020.
4. Economides JM, Fan KL, Pittman TA. An Analysis of Plastic Surgeons’ Social Media Use and Perceptions. Review Aesthet Surg. 2019;39(7):794- 802. doi: 10.1093/asj/sjy209
