The pharmaceutical industry is rapidly evolving, and Medical Affairs is at the forefront of this transformation. As a clinician, it is an exciting time to think about the possibilities and how several emerging factors are coming together to help this function become a critical part of the future of drug commercialization.
Late last year, McKinsey & Company published a white paper titled “A Vision for Medical Affairs 2030, Five Priorities for Patient Impact.” It predicts that in a few short years, the changing landscape, coupled with investments in science innovation, will highlight the value that medical affairs brings to drug launches. And I think they are right.
Every day, I see the need for medically trained and scientific experts to dive deeper into available data to help manufacturers understand the right strategy to reach more patients. This has been fueled, in large part, by the rise of real-world evidence (RWE) capabilities, which have scaled and advanced rapidly.
A decade ago, the industry began to see the need to reshape the role of medical affairs. It needs to be a coequal third pillar of pharmaceutical companies alongside research and development and commercialization. This is a reality today, or at least moving in that direction.
The five priorities discussed in the McKinsey report are boosting medical affairs leadership, integrating end-to-end data and analytics, differentiating medical strategies, aligning evidence generation with stakeholder needs and orchestrating medical engagement.
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Author
After leaving the Mayo Clinic, from 1988 to 2007, he held academic, clinical and administrative leadership positions as Chief of Cardiac Surgery, Pediatric Cardiac Surgery and Heart Transplantation at several Academic Hospitals in the…