The global pharmaceutical industry is undergoing significant transformation, from a previous focus on sales to become truly customer- and patient-centric. In parallel, both the availability of big data and the technologies needed to create meaning from these data are newly available to Medical Affairs teams. The result is the ability of the Medical Affairs function to help industry understand external healthcare challenges and opportunities via strategic insights capture and management – identifying areas of strategic importance for patient identification, diagnosis, treatment, management, and follow-up.

Through insights capture, analysis and communication, Medical Affairs professionals act as the adaptive mechanism within pharmaceutical and MedTech companies, bringing key data, facts and observations from the healthcare environment back to the organization to create or adjust strategic directions. This paper provides a foundational understanding of insights management, including the definition and value of insights, processes and technologies for insights management, and key challenges in implementation.