The importance of medical insights is well recognized across the pharmaceutical industry as a key driver for informing and shaping strategy and tactics. To gain a better understanding of this pivotal Medical Affairs activity, the Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) conducted two membership surveys specifically addressing insights. The surveys highlighted a wide variation in how companies approach medical insights, without any obvious areas of best practice or common frameworks in use despite the current recognition of the importance and relevance of medical insights. The survey results indicate the need to identify a common framework across Medical Affairs for insight-related activities (i.e., insights or information generation, curation, collation, reporting, and utilization). Establishing such a framework is necessary to optimize medical insights’ impact and value in a broader organizational strategy.

This paper explores how moving from a fragmented approach focused on individual Medical Affairs channels (e.g., MSLs or Medical Information) to a more holistic, multi-channel, integrated approach to insights will create value for the organization, as well as for patients and the medical and scientific community.