Medical Affairs (MA) is coming into its own as the essential communications hub of life sciences companies. As such, Medical Affairs faces an ongoing challenge: How to optimize sharing of information to healthcare professionals (HCPs) and consumers.
By implementing digital solutions that foster connections and improve workflows, Medical Affairs teams can reduce their workload while enhancing information dissemination.
The Role of Medical Affairs as Information Hub
A combination of communications expertise and subject matter knowledge helps MA teams bridge the gap between research and development and commercial efforts, write researchers Anupma Dhanda Farrington, Anne Grete Frostrup, and Palle Dahl in Pharmaceutical Medicine.
Medical Affairs (MA) teams are uniquely poised to serve as the information center of a life sciences organization. “Medical Affairs and Communications professionals, including Medical Science Liaisons (MSL), typically hold advanced degrees enabling them to translate complex clinical, evidence-based insights into a digestible narrative along with views on changes to the current standards of care and any regulatory considerations,” writes Colin Aldridge, a director at healthcare investment firm TripleTree.
Their subject matter expertise, combined with their daily efforts to manage communications, place MA teams in an ideal position to share information with diverse audiences. Medical Affairs teams also possess the skills to take the perspective of these varying audiences, understanding what information each audience needs and tailoring communications to that audience.
Top Challenges in Information Sharing
“The primary deliverable for the local MA team remains to be translation and contextualization of the clinical value of medicines to the relevant stakeholders in the health care ecosystem,” write Farrington, Frostrup, and Dahl. Medical Affairs teams that focus on this goal find that it comes with challenges, however.
The challenges MA teams face in translating, contextualizing, and sharing information to relevant audiences and stakeholders include:
- Understanding the perspectives of specific stakeholders or audience members. For example, what information do HCPs need? And when given information about a particular therapy or treatment, what information do HCPs actually access and use?
- How are HCPs conversing with patients when sharing information?
- When scientific data, disease awareness, or product-related information are shared, is this information presented in terms and formats useful to the intended audiences? How can this usefulness be tracked or measured?
Answering these questions effectively can have significant benefits both for life sciences organizations and for the patient populations they serve. In a 2021 study published in BMC Nursing, Abukari Kwame and Pammla M. Petrucka found that “patient-centered communication is fundamental to ensuring optimal health outcomes,” noting that “care must be individualized and responsive to patient health concerns, beliefs, and contextual variables.”
Achieving patient-centered communication proves challenging for HCPs, write Kwame and Petrucka, as institutional, environmental, personal, social, and communication-related barriers can arise.
Medical Affairs teams that understand these barriers can choose the right digital tools to address them. By empowering HCPs with intuitive, self-service digital solutions for access to essential healthcare information, Medical Affairs teams meet their goal of disseminating information effectively while also enabling HCPs to improve patient-centered care outcomes.
Digital Solutions to Disseminate Medical Information Effectively
Anju’s iCare MAX offers a robust self-service information portal designed for easy use by healthcare professionals and consumers. iCare MAX integrates seamlessly with IRMS MAX, allowing Medical Affairs teams to share documents and information easily with iCare MAX users.
iCare MAX makes information dissemination easier by:
- Providing intuitive, quick self-directed search tools to help users find the information they need quickly.
- Offering desktop, tablet, and mobile device compatibility so information is accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection.
- Supporting data gathering and analysis so Medical Affairs teams can see which documents are viewed and downloaded and by whom, offering greater insight into users’ needs.
- Integrating fully with the IRMS MAX environment, enhancing Medical Affairs’ efforts to function as a single source of truth within an organization.
- Allowing portal features to be tailored to your organization’s unique brand.
Digital solutions like iCare MAX make information dissemination easier. Medical Affairs teams no longer need to recreate documents from scratch or upload them into a separate system to share them with healthcare professionals or consumers. Integrating iCare MAX with IRMS MAX creates a single source of essential information and ensures a balance between accessibility and privacy to meet regulatory compliance demands.
Digital solutions are essential to any information dissemination strategy. As information is created, stored, and analyzed in digital formats, tools that offer easy access by digital means become essential.
Many HCPs and consumers also expect to be able to access information digitally, and they expect to access it in ways that fit their immediate needs, writes Eddie G.M. Power in a 2023 article in Pharmaceutical Medicine. Common expectations include receiving information in modular fashion, exploring stand-alone content with explanations built in where needed, and accessing content from any device.
By implementing digital solutions that share information seamlessly with other systems and with audiences, Medical Affairs teams can boost stakeholder engagement. Through these tools, MA teams become better equipped to meet the challenges of serving as a life sciences organization’s central communications hub.
Images used under license by Shutterstock.com.
Authored by John Ferguson, VP of Product Management for Medical Affairs
John Ferguson, VP of Product Management for Medical Affairs at Anju Software, boasts over 15 years of experience, holding various titles such as business analyst and director. In his role, he oversees project management and software implementation for global pharmaceutical companies, ensuring seamless integration and optimal performance. With a background in finance and an MBA from DePaul University, John’s dedication to continuous improvement drives innovation and success in the medical affairs sector. Connect with John on LinkedIn to explore his achievements further.