Unleashing the power of medical affairs

In our cover article this month, Danny Buckland looks at how medical affairs is rapidly moving from a traditional support role to a leading force that champions science and translates it across a nuanced spectrum to meet customer demands. As Danny explains, the role of medical affairs is vital in synchronising the research and commercial sides of the business, and it is expanding to respond to the unmet needs of patients and deliver value to healthcare systems. Read more on page 28.

Also in this month’s issue, Tanja Podkonjak, a director at Takeda UK talks about the challenges facing combination treatments and how they can be solved. As Tanja explains, combination treatments are comprised of a ‘backbone’ treatment, often considered to be the existing standard of care, combined with a new ‘add-on’ treatment. She adds that, despite potentially delivering significant clinical benefits for patients with complex diseases, they often face cost-effectiveness barriers that result in a lack of patient access or reimbursement of these treatments. Read more on page 16.

Looking ahead, our April issue will focus on achieving launch excellence in the new normal. So much has changed in the last two years since the advent of COVID-19. To successfully launch a product in the current environment, it's important to acknowledge what has changed and be agile and adaptable when designing launch frameworks and deciding which strategies and channels to use.

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I hope you enjoy this issue!

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