During the past decade, the role of Medical Affairs (MA) professionals has evolved from custodians of scientific data to pivotal players at the intersection of research, development, and commercialization strategies. A recent McKinsey report titled “A Vision for Medical Affairs in 2030” emphasized the importance of MA professionals in integrating data and insights to meet evolving healthcare demands). The Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the growing importance of understanding medical and technological advancements to develop impactful MA-driven strategies.
Amidst this evolving landscape, MA professionals face the daunting task of managing an ever-increasing volume of biomedical research, with over 1.7 million new citations indexed by PubMed in 2022 alone. This deluge of data presents a formidable challenge:
How can MA professionals efficiently sift through information to find relevant, high-quality studies for informed decision-making?
The answer lies in embracing innovative solutions such as literature management technologies, specialized databases, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and real-time digital reporting and sharing. These strategies are not just necessary for navigating the vast landscape of medical research; they are crucial for shaping the future of patient-centric healthcare decision-making.
Embracing Literature Management Technologies
Leveraging custom and/ or market-available software solutions designed specifically for the efficient handling of medical literature can have immense benefits. These technologies play a crucial role in streamlining the tasks of searching, retrieving, and organizing publications to enhance efficiency and save time in today’s high-pressure environment. By employing advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to markedly enhance search accuracy and speed, this enables swift navigation through extensive literature, ensuring relevant information is quickly accessible.
Something to Consider: Despite the advances in technology, it’s important to recognize that manual search and sorting efforts continue to play a crucial role in many MA teams’ workflows, providing a necessary layer of human oversight.
Engage with Specialized Databases
When focusing on utilizing databases that are specifically tailored to specific therapeutic areas or diseases, you can minimize the retrieval of irrelevant data, ensuring that search results are as relevant and useful as possible. This access to key findings, including real-world evidence and clinical trial results, is enhanced by tapping into specialized databases and registries dedicated to clinical studies, imaging, and genetics. This provides a more targeted and efficient search strategy.
Implementation Tip: Offering a curated list of essential databases in these specialized areas can provide more precise guidance to researchers, streamlining the research process further.
Form Multi-Disciplinary Teams
Consider creating collaborative teams that include a diverse group of professionals such as MA professionals, data scientists, epidemiologists, health outcomes researchers, clinical researchers, and safety specialists. These types of multi-disciplinary teams are instrumental in evaluating the outputs of literature searches. By harnessing diverse subject matter expertise, the team can enhance their ability to interpret various data types and integrate them into actionable insights that are practical and valuable.
Value: A collaborative effort is key to synthesizing comprehensive views from disparate pieces of literature, thereby enhancing the quality and applicability of the insights generated.
Adopt Real-Time Digital Reporting/Information Sharing
Implement or adopt digital reporting tools and dashboards that provide instant notifications and updates on new studies, research findings, and developments within specific areas of interest. Real-time tools are crucial for maintaining an up-to-date knowledge base in rapidly evolving fields, allowing MA professionals to collaborate and facilitate informed decision-making.
Going beyond emails, it’s essential to explore and utilize creative dissemination techniques for these reports to ensure that the communication is effective and engages all relevant stakeholders efficiently, moving beyond traditional methods like email for more dynamic and interactive sharing of information.
Here are some examples of what that could look like:
- Interactive Dashboards: Use real-time data visualization and alert systems for immediate updates (Tableau & Power BI offer these options)
- Collaborative Platforms: Employ digital platforms (tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams) for specialized discussion channels and information sharing
- Short Video Summaries: Offer concise recorded video overviews of key publications/ findings for ease of understanding and reference (Note: Engage your training teams to lead these!)
- Automated Alerts: Implement tailored notifications for the latest publications or news
- Mobile Applications: Consider using or developing an app for instant notifications on new research, competitive intelligence, and industry updates
- Regular Virtual Meetings: Plan and conduct online sessions for ongoing learning and strategic discussions
Optimizing medical insights and capabilities within Medical Affairs organizations requires at least these key strategies to be embraced. If you can ensure you have a tailored software solution to efficiently handle medical literature, employ specialized databases when resources tailored to specific therapeutic areas are required to minimize irrelevant data retrieval and ensure relevance, form and engage with multi-disciplinary teams to foster diverse perspectives and enhance data interpretation and lastly, embrace real-time digital reporting and information-sharing tools to facilitate instantaneous updates on new studies and developments; it will ensure your team remains abreast of relevant information in their respective fields of interest.
Learn how CCC’s solutions support medical affairs teams here.