This is the third White Paper in a series of collaborations between MAPS and Within3 that collects the expertise of Medical Affairs leaders to describe the process, promise, and perils of Insights Management. The first paper, titled “The Value and Strategic Implementation of Insights Management,” detailed the components and execution of a successful Insights Management program. The second paper “Identifying and Addressing Pain Points in the Insights Management Process,” offered advice for those not following the recommendations in the first paper. The current paper takes the next step, namely looking at how companies have implemented Insights Management in simple to mature ways, providing a vision for building the Insights Management process that best suits your organization.

To gain insights into insights, the authors conducted a series of polls and roundtables, the results of which are included in Appendix A, but which generally show an unsettled landscape that can be summarized as follows:

No industry-wide standards exist, perceived challenges abound and, while a few companies feel as if they are doing Insights well, most are still cobbling together makeshift systems to keep insights from grinding to a halt completely.

One thing on which everyone agrees is the critical importance of Insights to Medical Affairs and to the business as a whole, which can be summarized as follows:

If a business wants to change clinical behavior, they need to know the current clinical behavior and what is needed to change clinical behavior in line with new medicines. Insights generate this knowledge.

Now the question becomes how to bridge the “unsettled landscape” and the “critical importance?” The answer can be seen in the evolution of the insights process.