As widely described in several reports, from time to time Field Medical members face ‘new challenges’ to be handled that could be considered a kind of back to the basics or, as already named – ‘bottom line’ activities. Recent publications have been describing the expected shifts in terms of Medical Affairs activities, related to Field Medical topics, in the upcoming two (i.e., 2025) to seven (i.e.,2030) years. ‘New understandings’, ‘broadening stakeholder exchanges’, ‘rethinking’, ‘new analytic abilities/capabilities’, ‘communication skills in the language of value’, ‘strategic influence’, ‘performance management’, ‘ability to address clinical, humanistic, and economic factors’, ‘empowerment of societal decision-making’ are expressions and/or topics broadly used for this new Medical Affairs era, which ultimately will shape truly differentiated Field Medical teams.
Hence, beyond the ‘traditional’ and quite well-known role of activities performed by Field Medical/MSLs members, the inclusion of new issues related to the decision-making process, access to new technologies, economic, and regulatory trends, the transition from a (most of the time) executional field medical actor to a more strategic planner, is a need, shortening this near future to the present day. Our company is requiring Medical Affairs members to be an active player in the empowerment of societal decisions, related to topics such as access, health equity-diversity-inclusion, clinical guidelines, outcomes, Health Technology Assessment, and patient-centricity.
To be adapted to this ‘new’ reality, a conjoint effort between Field Medical (FM) and Health Systems (HS) teams from MSD Latin America was established; In this article we will describe our ideas to set up baseline KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) and speed up the generation of high-quality contents related to value framework, ensuring the integrity of scientific engagements in a compliant way.
One of the projects that we launched establishes a maximum percentage (10%) of Key Decision Makers (Health Economics organizations and governments, policymakers, and regulators) in their roster. This new paradigm leads the Field Medical teams to interact with new stakeholders, to challenge themselves to new approaches on establishing their two-way conversations, how they are actively listening the needs of these news stakeholders, bringing actionable insights about Health Systems in public and private sector, how they are leveraging their adult learning journey to ensure that they add value to the interactions, increase rapport, and build long term peer to peer relationship.
Some really important points to mention are the challenges that Field Medical is facing with this revamp into Medical Affairs responsibilities and strategic mindset: the first one is to feel empowered and knowledgeable about the main subjects about Health Economics and feel the right level of confidence to have their interactions with Key Decision Makers; the second one is entitled to internal stakeholders to succeed into the field and not cannibalize other company colleagues fields of expertise. With that said, working intentionally and profoundly into roles, responsibilities, and value cross-functional activities are crucial to reach success. The main internal stakeholders we have been partnering with These stakeholders background provides us the relevant details on healthcare systems that will provide the scenarios field teams will work on, elevating the mindset and pathways of decision-making process and how underlying costs of care and individual behaviors may lead to a final decision of incorporating a new medicine or vaccine. It is also relevant to bring up to our main thought of strategic thinking on providing tools for field medical that all these information, knowledge, and scenario will lead us to put together better external facing materials, that right now we are calling as value narratives. Value narratives bring all the most relevant and concise data to provide a fluid storytelling to the key decision makers about our innovations, it takes into consideration the epidemiological and disease burden date, impact on healthcare system, clinical development landscape, humanistic and economic value.
The value narratives come together with a toolbox that we have been building for field teams that encompasses several open opportunities for the medical affairs team to integrate multiple sources into their scientific engagements with key decision makers, leveraging a cohesive medical narrative, in addition to tailored their speech if the audience requires customization on the delivered messages with a comprehensive and ability to maturely interpret contents such as HEOR (Health Economics and Outcomes Research), RWE (Real World Evidence), epidemiological data, burden of disease scenarios, and Phase IIIb/IV data that will leverage patients outcomes as the ultimate goal.
Some of the areas that we are prioritizing for medical affairs are composed of asynchronous training that our medical affairs teams can take on their own pace and customize their adult learning journey as they go, listening priorities that guide which information are the most relevant to collect actionable insights from the external stakeholders, this help our field team to address the complexities about subjects like biomarkers relevance for each tumor, precision medicine and personalization of medicines connected to the strategy to narrow the patient populations, always reinforcing data transparency and bearing in mind that healthcare resources are finite and highly competitive.
Furthermore, actively listening to the key decision makers that field medical interacts with brings to the company the possibility to customize and have a deeper understanding of the stakeholder needs. One of the practical examples are how we will communicate about endpoints and reach for better measurements and patients outcomes moving from metastatic treatment stages to immuno-oncology combinations and early stages treatments (neoadjuvant and adjuvant) that might address curative approaches with patients.
To summarize, our current focus as regional leaders of FM/HS teams is to find out the fine tuning in this really delicate and challenging aspect about how to implement strategic metrics for Medical Affairs actions and activities, balancing between quantitative and qualitative measures that will provide the right information on how the team is performing, how the priorities are being leveraged against the other not so relevant initiatives that MSLs may often take on which derail them from the most important topics, how to allocate resources to increase efficiency, elevate the performance in this new paradigm and new future that will actually impact on patients access and outcomes.
References:
A vision for Medical Affairs 2025 – McKinsey – A vision for medical affairs in 2025 | McKinsey
Evolution of the MSL Function: 2030 – Evolution of the MSL Function: 2030 – THE MSL (themsljournal.com)
The Future of Medical Affairs 2030 – MAPS – THE FUTURE OF MEDICAL AFFAIRS 2030 – Medical Affairs Profession…
About the authors:
Suellen Rodrigues, PharmD MBA MSc
Suellen Rodrigues is PharmD with 18 years of experience in regulatory affairs, especially in pharmacovigilance, and strategic pharmaceutical industry areas.
Since 2016 she has been at Medical Affairs department at MSD, with growing responsibilities, projects and leadership within Women’s Health, Infectious Disease and Oncology. Her current role is Regional Director Value Health System LATAM within the Global Medical Value Capabilities (GMVC) where her passion and focus on public/private patient access and diminish health inequalities can be strategically addressed within internal and external stakeholders’ relations.
Her academic background spans from Clinical Pharmacology, Clinical Trials, HTA (Health Technology Assessment), Project and People Management-Leadership post graduations/specializations to MBA in Government Affairs from FGV with International Extension at UCI in USA, and a Masters in International Public Policy at Queen Mary University of London.
Her engagement in Racial Equity activities encompasses the Global Co-lead position for the company affirmative group called LEAD (League of Employees of African Descent) – League of Employees of African Descent and the Leader for the Racial Equity Working Group in Sindusfarma. Recognized as Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD100) on the Health and Wellness Edition of 2023.
Leonardo Capelli, PhD
Leonardo P. Capelli is currently the Field Medical Lead from Global Medical and Value Capabilities (FM GMVC) at MSD Latin America Hub. In this role, he is responsible for liaises Global Field Medical organization to the Field Medical members in the Latin America region, providing support and alignments in terms of capabilities and responsibilities to local staff in areas as Oncology, Infectious Disease, Vaccines, and General Medicine. ‘Leo’ Capelli is a Biologist with Human Genetics background. Prior to joining Field Medical GMVC LATAM Hub (MSD), Leo was Case Processor in the Pharmacovigilance team and Oncology MSL at Bayer. After transitioning to MSD, Leo spent five years as Oncology MSL and MSL Excellence for Oncology until being assigned to the GMVC Hub in 2020.
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