Focus Area Working Groups

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In collaboration with our leadership teams, the Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) has conceptualized the Medical Affairs function in 13 general focus areas, leading to the creation of the following 13 Focus Area Working Groups (FAWGs). Each FAWG is a committee of MAPS members with area expertise who collaborate to produce content and training resources, and provide guidance and guidelines to steer the future direction of their specialty within Medical Affairs. Meet our FAWG members and see FAWG activities below.

The goals of the Compliance FAWGs is to create a community that advances our role as fully integrated strategic business partners to promote growth within the life sciences sector worldwide.

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The goals of Digital FAWGs is to support the Medical Affairs organization’s efforts to embrace digital innovation through webinars, training, white papers, and best practice sharing.

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The goals of the Evidence Generation FAWGs is to educate the MAPS membership on contemporary practices for data generation strategies through educational programs and communications.

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The goals of the External Education FAWGs is to provide unbiased education to enhance knowledge, skills and competencies which identifies knowledge or competency and performance gaps.

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The goals of the Field Medical FAWGs is to become the premier global destination of choice and to catalyze our individual personal leadership development and professional career advancement.

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The goals of the Insights FAWGs is to develop an Insights community and to catalyze our individual personal leadership development and professional career advancement.

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The goals of the Medical Communications FAWGs is to develop a community that advances our role as fully integrated strategic business partners and professional career advancement.

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The goals of the Medical Information FAWGs is to expand the value of Medical Information as an exceptional resource of information for providers and patients.

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The Medical Operations FAWG is dedicated to enhancing patient care and outcomes by empowering Medical Affairs through the elevation of Medical Operations professionals. We achieve this through fostering a collaborative community, developing skills, standardizing innovation, strengthening collaborations, and improving operational integration and change management. Our goal is to advance the role and capabilities of Medical Operations professionals and deliver meaningful impact to healthcare organizations and patients alike.

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The goals of the Medical Strategy & Launch Excellence FAWGs is to ensures the highest level of Medical Affairs asset, launch, and organizational strategic plans and planning capabilities.

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The goals of the Medical Technology FAWGs is to develop our MedTech community, individual personal leadership development, and professional career advancement.

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The goals of the Patient Centricity FAWGs is to ensure the current understanding of Patient Centricity as it relates to the function, organizations, and needs of Medical Affairs.

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Enhancing Collaboration: Streamlining Access to Scientific Literature for Medical Affairs Teams

June 25, 2025

In this On-Demand webinar, we explore the recently released MAPS Standards & Guidance (S+G) documents, “Measuring Value and Impact in Medical Affairs” and “Strategic Medical Planning Guide.”

June 17, 2025

May 6, 2025

Medical Affairs gathers insights from both internal and external sources, disseminating them cross-functionally to support a range of applications, including evidence generation planning, content development, HCP engagement, customer targeting, and strategy development. This article highlights key learnings from the ‘Omnichannel Insights – Driving Engagement Strategy’ forum.

April 30, 2025

This article summarizes insights from a 2025 MAPS Roundtable where Medical Affairs leaders discussed emerging trends in digital engagement, focusing on the rise of Digital Opinion Leaders (DOLs) and strategies for Healthcare Professional (HCP) influence mapping. The conversation highlighted how innovative approaches are reshaping disease awareness and stakeholder relationships.

March 20, 2025

Johnson & Johnson’s Medical Affairs team is transforming strategy with data-driven insights, moving beyond traditional approaches to identify key opinion leaders, improve advisory board diversity, and enhance patient journey mapping. With H1’s analytics, they are shifting from quantity to quality in engagements, advancing health equity, and leveraging AI for smarter decision-making.

January 30, 2025

In an era of data-driven medical communications, we're missing a crucial ingredient: storytelling. New research shows our brains are wired to engage with narrative formats - making storytelling not just a 'nice-to-have' but a neurological necessity for effective medical education. Learn how the STORIES framework (Structure, Tailoring, Originality, Rationality, Immediacy, Emotionality, Simplicity) is revolutionizing how we communicate complex medical information to healthcare providers and patients alike. From graphic novels to VR simulations, see how narrative techniques are transforming medical education and patient engagement.

January 5, 2025

Altmetric's top 10 most interesting publications of 2024

November 21, 2024

This article explores key questions on how Medical Affairs teams manage patient engagement across different-sized companies who have variations in focus, resources, and scale.

November 20, 2024

This article based on the Oct 3, 2024 Insights FAWG Forum explores the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to transform Medical Affairs, focusing on medical insights.

August 20, 2024

Getting the most impact from a publication requires being able to define who the audience is and how to reach them, across both journals and online channels, especially in complex/niche cases. In this podcast, we discuss the benefits of taking an analytical approach.

July 24, 2024

Continuing Medical Education (CME) providers have seen their role expand to offer valuable information for future programming and other strategic business decisions. Here is how CME providers are using data to create insights and impact.

July 9, 2024

Digital Science held a roundtable discussion with Medical Affairs leaders in Madrid in May 2024 on the topic of scientific communications strategies assessment and their success measurements for multiple stakeholders.

June 26, 2024

This advanced module to Patient Centricity will provide a solid overview of how the industry approaches compliance and governance in patient engagement. A suggested prerequisite to the course is the "Essential Concepts of Patient Centricity" eLearning module.

June 25, 2024

The MAPS Puerto Rico Roundtable hosted by Real Chemistry in March 2024 discussed the integration of digital platforms, AI, and personalized content to enhance engagement with healthcare providers (HCPs). The panel emphasized the shift towards real-time, tailored information delivery and the importance of leveraging insights from both traditional and digital sources to support effective engagement strategies while ensuring compliance.

May 29, 2024

From the choice of where to publish to the assessment of impact, every decision holds weight in medical research publication. And yet, the metrics that have been traditionally used to guide these decisions offer only a partial view. The result: a hit-or-miss situation when it comes to reaching the target audience—healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients. Can a data-driven approach that incorporates both traditional and the newer alternative metrics hold the key to improved publication planning, impact and thereby better patient outcomes?

May 29, 2024

MAPS has been educating and sharing expertise on genAI since ChatGPT first exploded onto the scene in early 2023. This year, as the dust settles, we focus on sharing the learnings from a year of pilots and projects to help others begin or accelerate their journey.

May 28, 2024

Remind yourself of key themes from the MAPS Madrid meeting with this Day 2 report authored by meeting media partner, the Publication Plan. If you weren’t able to attend this year’s meeting, catch up on what you missed!

May 23, 2024

Remind yourself of key themes from the MAPS Madrid meeting with this Day 1 report authored meeting media partner, the Publication Plan. If you weren’t able to attend this year’s meeting, catch up on what you missed!

April 16, 2024

This e-Learning module will enable learners to define principles of and adopt an integrated approach to orchestrating omnichannel Company-led Education, identify stakeholder segmentation and associated learning journeys for use in content development, use the associated outcomes and insights to deliver and improve omnichannel medical education, while complying with industry regulations as well as company governance and oversight policies.

April 9, 2024

The more the industry evolves, the more compliance teams need to keep pace with this change. The good news is there are 6 actionable steps you can make to stay ahead of the dynamic pressure.

March 20, 2024

Through our lens into real-world issues that affect equitable use of industry innovations, Medical Affairs can drive the transformation of industry from a drug-centric perspective to a patient-centric perspective. This article discusses a few of these opportunities.

March 18, 2024

Omnichannel communication is the strategy of integrating various communication channels, both digital and non-digital, and joining multiple communication touchpoints to provide a seamless, personalized experience, and unified identity across all channels, devices, and touchpoints: the customer (namely HCPs and patients), rather than the product, is at the center.

February 16, 2024

Health literacy is experiencing new challenges, and Medical Affairs is uniquely positioned to lead and partner with others in this space to ensure coordination, credibility and impact.

January 4, 2024

10 reasons digital strategies fail plus ways you and your teams can navigate between the icebergs of these failures on the way to success.

December 1, 2023

It's time to move omnichannel from discussion to reality using the steps: Observe, Plan, Engage and Nurture.

November 30, 2023

This article discusses how to foster innovation within and across the Medical Affairs landscape, empower teams to deliver the best outcomes for patients and revolutionize healthcare delivery.

October 5, 2023

The combined impact of treatment complexity and data availability highlights the value of Medical Affairs departments that have the capability to make clinical sense of new disruptive drugs, devices, real-time monitoring and diagnostics. Here, the MAPS Executive Consortium describes how.

September 26, 2023

A Q&A on how Medical Affairs can align on omnichannel for long-term success

Elevating Medical Education: Fireside Chat with G.A.M.E. and the Alliance Experts

September 13, 2023

In this on-demand webinar, experts from Alliance and G.A.M.E. discuss future-ready Medical Education.

September 7, 2023

The Medical community knows it needs to improve equity in clinical trials, but what really helps when it comes to changing patient and provider perceptions? PlatformQ Health is pleased to share insights into strategies for helping patients become more receptive to trial participation and supporting providers in fostering inclusion.

Rising Stars, Hidden Jewels and Unicorn KOLs - Can We Identify Them and Is It Useful?

June 28, 2023

In this podcast, two data specialists discuss the ways in which Medical Affairs professionals can use this data to discover your next generation of researchers, those influencers whose voices are heard on Twitter, and how your KOLs are interacting with others online.

June 9, 2023

This comprehensive course is tailored to professionals in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries who work in Medical Affairs functions. It addresses the impact of technology and automation on Medical Affairs in the post–COVID-19 era, which has been accelerated by the pandemic.

June 1, 2023

Advisory boards bring together a selection of key opinion leaders to discuss a topic important to a life sciences company. Here is how to use engagement technologies to generate actionable insights from your next ad board.

March 14, 2023

By using the framework of Explore, Educate, Embrace we can shape our approach to Health Equity by incorporating it into our daily work.

March 2, 2023

Streamlining the diagnostic odyssey requires educating medical professionals to recognize “rare encounters” and engage these patients with precision and compassion.

January 26, 2023

With a multibillion dollar investment from Microsoft and already 4 authorship credits on PubMed, ChatGPT is poised to disrupt Medical Affairs.

2023, the year of personalization? Omnichannel principles for Training Strategies

January 13, 2023

This webinar highlights the continued importance of omnichannel engagement for healthcare practitioners and learners and the need to equip our internal teams appropriately.

November 4, 2022

This webinar will discuss how MA colleagues are best positioned to explore the fusion of PE and PED in the post-launch phase, including generation and use of RWD and RW evidence, and will share guidance and information on several industry-supported resources, to enable MA colleagues to implement PE and evidence strategies in their function.

August 2, 2022

Instead of being static representations of an event, insights can become actionable—informing what can be done to improve future events or even larger business decisions.

July 12, 2022

MAPS speaks with Annemarie Clegg, CMO, OPEN Health, about the evolving role of Medical Affairs in providing context for payers, regulators and policy makers whose decisions can dramatically affect which patients can access industry innovations.

June 8, 2022

This webinar provides an overview of the evolution of the Medical Affairs role and contributions to scientific congresses.

April 27, 2022

MAPS speaks with José Borbolla, Global Executive Medical Director at Esai, and Augusto Grinspan, VP Medical Affairs and Head LATAM with Merck KGaA about the evolution of Medical Affairs in Latin America.

April 26, 2022

MAPS speaks with Tim Mikhelashvili, PharmD, CEO & Co-Founder, Amedea Pharma, Inc. and Riaz Abbas, Learning and Performance Lead, JAPAC Medical, Amgen about innovative approaches to Medical Affairs External Education.

April 26, 2022

In this interview recorded at MAPS 2022 Global with Marija Geertsen, MD, MBA, we discuss the role of Medical Affairs in engaging with patients and patient communities.

April 20, 2022

In this interview recorded at MAPS 2022 Global with Monica de Abadal, SVP, Head North America Medical Affairs, Ipsen, we discuss how Medical Affairs benefits patients and society.

April 20, 2022

This podcast, recorded at the MAPS 2022 Global Annual Meeting, addresses the unique position of Medical Affairs in the rare disease space & how our work in this area is essential for patient benefit.

March 14, 2022

How do leaders make their way to Medical Safety & Pharmacovigilance? The routes are diverse but one constant remains true: They are extremely committed to being an independent voice that amplifies their organization’s commitment to Patient Centricity.

MAPS 2022 Global: Putting Patient Engagement at the Center of Development

March 11, 2022

This podcast previews the MAPS 2022 Global Annual Meeting session "How Medical Affairs can best support internal and external collaborations in patient engagement," that details the unique role of Medical Affairs in patient engagement.

March 8, 2022

One of the pandemic's silver linings may well be gains in participation levels and the volume and quality of insights generated by eliminating the constraints of face-to-face interaction.

Developing and Executing an Integrated Medical Communications Strategy and Plan

March 8, 2022

In this podcast, we speak with presenters of the MAPS 2022 Global Annual Meeting session, “Developing and Executing and Integrated Medical Communications Strategy and Plan.”

Real World Evidence Applications and How it Can Change Medicine and Biopharma

February 7, 2022

This podcast focuses on applications of Real World Evidence including FDA criteria for accepting RWE, types of data, RWE study designs and the Totality of Evidence approach.

February 3, 2022

This course uses a faux product to introduce essential concepts of Patient Centricity including a comprehensive description of strategy.

January 11, 2022

Here John Pracyk, MD, PhD, MBA, MAPS President of the Americas Region speaks with some of the top Medical Affairs leaders from Johnson & Johnson as they share their perspective on the impact of Digital on Healthcare.

The Digital Transformation of Medical Journal Publishing

December 6, 2021

This podcast focuses on the journal publishing industry, discussing how medical journal publishing is changing and what changes we might see in the future.

December 1, 2021

Last month, Medical Affairs and clinical experts from six organizations came together to help make clinical trials more accessible to and better understood by people facing vitiligo. You can do this in your therapeutic area.

November 18, 2021

MAPS Insights Focus Area Working Group (FAWG) members define some of the terms associated with the collection and use of insights as a way to start standardizing the lexicon of the function.

October 18, 2021

“Data doesn’t exist until it is published.” Here, MAPS speaks with MedComm FAWG co-leads about innovations and future directions for Medical Communications within Medical Affairs.

Field Medical External Stakeholders: Partnering for Today and Tomorrow - episode 2 Partnering with Patient Advocacy Organizations

October 18, 2021

This MAPS podcast details potential areas for compliant collaboration by MSLs with Patient Advocacy Groups.

October 4, 2021

A Q&A with David Williams, Chief Medical Officer, VISFO

September 9, 2021

Near the end of Jill Donahue's family trip to Greece, an unlicensed tour guide, Charis, showed what communication mastery looks like.

August 25, 2021

MAPS speaks with MyHealthTeams Cofounder and CEO, Eric Peacock, about how health communities can help the biopharmaceutical industry develop new products that truly make a difference in patients’ lives.

July 26, 2021

This MAPS podcast details strategic opportunities of compliant collaborations between Field Medical and Marketing.

July 20, 2021

This session will provide an overview of the foundation of Medical Information, Enhancement Opportunities for Medical Information, and Medical Information Value to the Organization.

July 7, 2021

At the end of this series of podcasts, the participant should be able to discuss the functions and activities of key internal partners and identify potential areas for compliant collaboration by MSLs with key internal partners.

June 28, 2021

In this episode of Partnering for Today and Tomorrow we discuss the functions and activities of key internal partners and how we identify potential areas for compliant collaboration by MSLs with key internal partners.

June 24, 2021

MAPS speaks with External Education FAWG leaders about their Standards and Guidance resource and about recent changes and future directions of External Education.

June 23, 2021

Placing more focus on self-development and knowledge acquisition is imperative for Medical Affairs professionals of tomorrow — making proper coaching crucial for MA leaders.

Partnering for Today and Tomorrow – Episode 14 Regulatory

June 20, 2021

June 16, 2021

June 7, 2021

In this podcast you will understand the core goals and activities that support patient centricity within Medical Information and discuss how Medical Information colleagues can support patient-centric initiatives.

June 3, 2021

mastermind groups represent peer mentoring collectives — with members of various levels of education and professional experience, seeking to solve issues using advice and input from other group members.

June 1, 2021

Adapting to the Virtual Conference Experience P3

May 24, 2021

This MAPS podcast will explain how the in-person conference experience has changed and adapted to the virtual environment and discusses styles and formats that uniquely suit the online virtual conference experience

Partnering for Today and Tomorrow - Episode 12 Compliance

May 17, 2021

Medical Science Liaisons work in a complex ecosystem of internal and external stakeholders, with may of these actions shaped by the rules of compliance. Here the MAPS Field Medical Focus Area Working Group offers an inside look at how you and your MSL team can do our essential work while keeping on the right side of what's right

Adapting to the Virtual Conference Experience P2

May 10, 2021

Partnering for Today and Tomorrow - Episode 11 Clinical Operations

May 4, 2021

This MAPS podcast discusses the functions and activities of key internal partners and Identifies potential areas for compliant collaboration by MSLs.

Adapting to the Virtual Conference Experience P1

April 26, 2021

This MAPS podcast introduces listeners to social listening to gather insights and discusses implementation, value and technologies.

April 19, 2021

"If you ask patient communities their major concerns, it's affordable access," says Alissa Heizler-Mendoza speaking about patient advocacy in Medical Affairs.

March 24, 2021

MAPS speaks with co-leads of the Insights Focus Area Working Group (FAWG) about the current state and future directions for Insights in Medical Affairs.

March 15, 2021

This podcast offers insights surrounding common challenges Medical Affairs organizations face in offering best-in-class digital capabilities.

March 2, 2021

This MAPS podcast discusses common challenges Medical Affairs organizations face in offering best-in-class digital capabilities to its customers.

February 24, 2021

This 6th episode of the MAPS Field Medical podcast series explores Medical Information.

February 16, 2021

This MAPS podcast discusses common challenges Medical Affairs organizations face in offering best-in-class digital capabilities to its customers.

February 1, 2021

This MAPS podcast describes publication plain-language summaries and how patients find them useful.

January 19, 2021

This MAPS podcast explores the value and challenges of publication plain-language (PLS) summaries in the pharmaceutical industry.

November 2, 2020

Medical Affairs thought leaders discuss the function, activities and opportunities for compliant collaboration with key internal partners.

October 15, 2020

This special 75-minute MAPS Global Town Hall focuses on the challenges that are arising from the global Covid-19 pandemic and the emerging opportunity for Medical Affairs to provide strategic leadership.

October 6, 2020

Sawyer is making it her life’s work to focus on the patient—the most important stakeholder in drug development.

October 1, 2020

MAPS speaks with Beat Sümegi, SVP Medical with Sanofi, about major areas of change and the need to help Medical Affairs professionals build new skills to succeed in this world of increased responsibility and opportunity.

September 18, 2020

This MAPS webinar presents an overview of the current and near term Digital Therapeutics landscape and details real-world applications of Digital Therapeutics to illustrate potential in driving transformation of clinical practices to improve patient outcomes.

August 19, 2020

Through this course you will recognize terms such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), deep learning, and neural networks to arrive at best decisions and insights needed for success.

May 7, 2020

Bill Strickland, AVP, US Field Medical at Allergan, speaks on "demystifying artificial intelligence" at the MAPS 2020 Global Annual Meeting in Miami, and how AI can enhance daily life in this new frontier for Medical Affairs professionals. Dr. Strickland also touches on patient centricity and his leadership philosophy.

Will Customer Experiences Shape The Future Of Medical Affairs?

November 6, 2019

At the conclusion of this session, participants should better understand digital trends seen within Medical Affairs today as well as be aware of why HCP expectations are changing and how to evolve with them to provide better customer experiences

October 20, 2019

Evaluate the commonalities and differences in the use, structure and evolution of scientific communications platforms within and between companies; understand how a HealthScience approach can help to integrate insights, communications and evidence generation plans across multiple functions

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