Medical Affairs for Healthcare Ecosystems

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The growing focus on patient outcomes and population health, along with the growing complexity of care, are disrupting how healthcare is delivered, how decisions are made, and how scientific data and drug information are used. These trends also present an opportunity for pharmaceutical companies to develop their Medical Affairs organizations into more strategic stewards of patient outcomes.

By refining the role of Medical Affairs from disease and product specialists to curators and connectors of outcomes-focused information, the Medical Affairs workforce of the future can help today’s extended ecosystem of providers, stakeholders and decision-makers capture, understand and use science to support better decisions—from the boardroom to the bedside.

DOWNLOAD GOOD SCIENCE: THE NEW ROLE OF MEDICAL AFFAIRS IN AN OUTCOMES-FOCUSED WORLD [PDF]

Medical Affairs organizations have an unprecedented opportunity to play a much more strategic role in the delivery of patient outcomes. They need to think more broadly in terms of:

Who are their customers? Medical Affairs organizations need to drive solutions for a much broader network of decision-makers and opinion leaders, including healthcare administrators and population health managers.
What services do they provide? Accenture research has found that more than 40 percent of life sciences companies expect data volumes to increase by at least 50 percent in the coming year. Medical Affairs professionals can act as credible curators and connectors of information to treat information overload and enable better decisions at the point of care.
What skills do they need? Deeper skills in areas such as population health as well as collaboration and judgment skills are needed to achieve broader impact.

The opportunity to refine the Medical Affairs role from disease and product specialists to curators and connectors of information is one of many that will emerge in the coming years. Pharma leaders should continually seek out additional ways in which Medical Affairs can meet customers’ growing expectations and demands. This, in turn, requires that leaders:

	Rally organization-wide support for a new Medical Affairs vision.
	Evaluate their medical strategies, as well as needed roles and resource requirements.

	Invest in skills and technologies that bring the vision to life.
	Measure the effectiveness of Medical Affairs’ efforts to drive continuous improvement.