Hello MSL Journal Readers!
Welcome to another journal edition, hot off the press and ready for your reading enjoyment! We begin 2024 with a sense of renewal, leaning into changes in our medical affairs industry and knowing how vital it is to show up each day, delivering value to support enhancing patient care and outcomes. Writing this letter to all of you on Leap Day – an official leap year – is not a coincidence! Leap year occurs when an additional day is added to the calendar year to align with the Earth’s orbit, so essentially this is a small adjustment to keep a consistent rhythm for time. And, in keeping with this theme, we each reflect on what activities we are doing, how we do them and what is most important as we start a new year. It is in this mode that we begin to make our own small changes that help us align to our own orbit: our mission, our purpose and key medical strategies!
This issue of The MSL Journal is dedicated to how we stand out from others in field medical, how we show value, and how we advance efforts to reach a higher level of success! Some areas that our contributing authors explore include launch success approaches, enhancing skills such as strategic focus, creativity, influence and leadership as well as emotional intelligence and how we infuse technology into our field activities to create efficiencies and find new meaning through data analytics. As we delve into these areas that align to our desire for value demonstration, I hope these words of wisdom, tips and best practices add to your current methods and expand your opportunities to make a difference for patients who are waiting for better treatments. All that we do to help clinicians and researchers, patient groups and organizations as well as payer groups understand unmet patient needs, novel clinical data and approaches to advance care are at the heart of what medical affairs is tasked with doing each day. It takes so many stakeholders to truly move us to where we want to be, yet with unending perseverance, adaptability, and an unrequited thirst for knowledge, we are well prepared to deliver on goals that may seem lofty at times!
As you begin 2024 and feel Spring coming around, new green emerges after the long winter hibernation and fuels a sense of energy, and I hope your time reading these articles will give you new insights to build into your strategic planning for your particular focus! Keep aiming for excellence and know this is a journey, never a destination really, as we will push for new advances and keep stretching to help patients on their journey to receive optimal care with ever better options today and going into the future. If you have not already looked into change leadership for development, this is an area that can truly enhance how you respond to the changes of today and those we know are coming. Creating resiliency in how we navigate turbulent times is a key part of our recipe for success.
Don’t forget to celebrate International MSL Day on March 27th! We applaud each and everyone who is part of medical affairs and strives to make a difference, adding value through your work!
Wishing you all good health, proper balance in your lives and a chance for renewed energy to kick start 2024!
Cheers!
Cherie
About the author:
Cherie Hyder, PharmD, MSL-BC
Cherie Hyder is a Syndicated National MSL Director at Syneos Health. In her previous job at Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, she supported a virtual launch of Nurtec ODT for acute migraine. She has been involved in drug development for more than 30 years, working at the FDA in CDER and pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Lilly, Novartis, Solvay, and Avanir, among others. At the University of Missouri, she received a Doctor of Pharmacy degree with the intention to devote her career to pharmaceutical research. She has multiple adjunct faculty appointments and enjoys teaching opportunities.
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