Five essential considerations for future-centric medical affairs teams
Living in a world of rapid technological change means we have become accustomed to learning about and “playing” with new advancements. Take generative AI, for example. Its rise to mainstream accessibility means that there are few of us who have not dabbled in ChatGPT or similar. But how many of us are fully harnessing the breadth of digital channels available to achieve exceptional results in medical and scientific affairs? The healthcare industry is evolving fast, and with these advancements comes the need for more informed and strategic approaches to how healthcare professionals (HCPs) and organisations engage with both data and stakeholders, using digital tools and technologies effectively in their strategy development.
Social media has continued to dominate the lives of our patients and HCPs as a top channel for new forms of engagement, and virtual meetings are now truly embedded in our post-COVID times. The days of digital channels being “new” are far behind us, so the days of not considering the full suite when developing strategies should also be in the past… But strangely, they are not. There is a “how” to this, and it’s rooted in gathering the right information, leveraging data, and gaining actionable insights through effective management of digital tools and data communication.
In the early days, social media was seen as part of the marketers’ digital toolkit, but today it is a key channel for all engagement, including for medical affairs. Are you missing out on the fullness of the opportunity? Possibly – but if you are mindful of the gap and take the following steps to fill it, you will be set up for success, whatever direction the industry and technology take us in next.
Start with insights
Regardless of channel, the starting point should always be insights. Medical affairs teams need to use data to guide their approach, ensuring they make the most of their digital strategies. When it comes to digital, consider the following:
- Preferences and behaviours – what are your stakeholders’ channel and content preferences, and how do they behave when it comes to digital engagement within the industry?
- Linguistics – what language nuances, keywords and hashtags do your stakeholders use, search for, or engage with?
- Influencers – who are your stakeholders’ online influencers, and how can you connect with them within the healthcare industry?
- Unmet needs – what are your stakeholders’ unmet needs, what content and resources exist for them, and where are the gaps?
- Timing – when is a good time to engage, and which events might be worth considering (not just big congresses)? This includes launching new products or initiatives.
- Technology and platform – what are the current and future tech-related nuances and emerging technologies you need to be aware of, and how will this shape your approach in strategy development and management to enhance impact while ensuring all communications are relevant?
You can use these insights across all your engagement channels, from digital tools to MSL to congress. For example, knowing an HCP is searching for a particular term online can help direct the conversation your MSL might have or the materials you may need to prepare to support your MSL discussions.
For medical affairs, this also means adopting a more dedicated approach to the data collected in the pharmaceutical industry. Understanding how to get to the salient, actionable insights also needs to be part of the day job – and not something that is left to other teams. New tools and platforms are available that can help you monitor the process efficiently and use the information gathered to drive better decisions in strategy development. It’s essential to explore innovative solutions that support these initiatives while keeping the content relevant and clinically sound for stakeholders, ensuring your company remains competitive in the market.
Remember, it is not about you
The other foundational element to great digital scientific exchange is the understanding that it is not about you or what you want to talk about. Pharma companies have traditionally broadcast about themselves – this approach no longer works in today’s healthcare environment. To be truly successful online, you must understand your stakeholders (see insights above) and develop your scientific engagement around them, their unmet needs, and their preferences relative to your goals. It is about how you can help them and meet their needs as well as those of their patients.
For example, much of social media still focuses on companies rather than delivering content that supports stakeholders or provides value to them. Case in point – how many in pharma share that they are attending a congress? That is broadcasting low-value content. Your stakeholders would probably rather hear about something useful – such as the latest scientific trial data or any related webinars they will be sharing with congress highlights (hint: if it is HCP-only, you can put the content behind a sign-in/verification screen). Or perhaps if you are attending the congress, you can share meet-up details with your HCPs attending via social media?
In the digital world, stakeholders can choose what they engage with – and where they do so. If you want to succeed, you have to deliver what they want to hear – not what you want to talk about. A great way to do this is to ask them! How many of you have involved stakeholders in co-creating your engagement plans?
Create the experience
One of the hot phrases when it comes to omnichannel is “customer experience”. Seamless, personalised, integrated experience. While technology now enables us to deliver personalised engagement in real time, the principles behind doing this successfully remain the same. Whilst the term “customer experience” might feel more marketing orientated, the concepts are just as applicable to medical engagement.
Building these online experiences again requires insights and stakeholder centricity. It also requires a different approach to content. However, this is also strictly speaking not new – modular content has been around for years. The difference is that modern omnichannel only really works if you have a huge library of content modules that enable a personalised experience.
The beauty of modular content, though, is that you get more value for your money. A single piece of information can now be packaged into a wide variety of modules, from a video to a GIF to an interactive quiz. This also brings more value to the global-local dynamic in pharma. There is far less need for countries to develop mainly their own content; rather, they should increasingly be able to select the modules that best suit their local stakeholders from a central library.
When you then plan your engagements, you need to think about where the stakeholder might journey to – what are the different potential routes they may take, and what content will you need to ensure that journey not only provides value but also flows seamlessly? Modern journeys involve many “what ifs” and triggers (e.g., what if the HCP does not open the email?).
For medical affairs, this also has implications for the approval process. There needs to be a shift toward greater dynamism and agility, as well as the approval of content for use in a more flexible, modular way. This might mean introducing new processes or bringing in new technology, such as generative AI, to support the process.
Measure and optimise
Digital can be assessed in real time to understand what is and isn’t working. Traditionally, pharma teams might have looked at market research data on a quarterly basis – today, checking your data should be a weekly occurrence, or daily+ if you are running a campaign on social media around a congress or event. Don’t react on impulse; be mindful of what the patterns are telling you, iterate, and keep watching.
When you plan your initial journey, you will need your data to rapidly validate it – did you get the “what ifs” right? What activity and content needs adapting? This also means you need to identify the right things to measure upfront.
In our digital world, there is so much we can measure – the secret today is knowing what to measure and then also what to do with the outcomes. Measuring the number of people who signed up for a medical webinar is only useful if you can do something with the data. How many signed up is fairly useless on its own. However, being able to tie how many signed up from a particular activity (e.g., email A or Twitter post B) provides insights that one activity worked better than the other, for example. The action you might then take is to increase one and decrease the other, or to bring in your MSLs.
Remember the importance of your foundations
As your teams get excited – or worried – about the latest technology, remind them to build from the ground up. Moving on to the next shiny thing will not bring the results you hope for until the foundations are solid, but once you have these, you can incrementally trial the addition of more digital (including social) channels and technologies, to build an innovative ecosystem led by insights to deliver the content that is most valuable to your stakeholders, where and when they need it, with the challenges addressed in the process.
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