What is Medical Affairs?
(… And why you need a strategy)
Simply put, Medical Affairs may be considered as the bridge for communication between clinical R&D and the end-user physician.
In reality, the Medical Affairs function is actually more of a hub, interacting with, and connecting product design and development, clinical research, marketing, sales, regulatory affairs, and legal & compliance matters within a company, while also engaging, educating, advising and gathering insights and feedback from clinician-customers.
Medical Affairs teams develop strategic peer-to-peer relationships with physician key opinion leaders, or ‘KOLs’, as they are commonly referred to in the industry. Not only does this enable continual and well-informed user input over a product’s life-cycle, but the unbiased scientific discourse that Medical Affairs teams engage in with KOLs also builds credibility in the people and organisation behind the product.
The Medical Affairs team is therefore well-placed to drive the clinical evidence generation strategy for a product, in order to obtain data demonstrating safety and efficacy, at a minimum, and ultimately to support its value proposition.