Pharmaceutical Market Europe • May 2025 • 30
TRENDS
Celebrating comms excellence
Essential agility in an era of change
for medical affairs
The role of medical affairs has always been to ensure that scientific grounding and medical expertise guide pharma’s interface with the outside world.
As partners to healthcare professionals, the medical affairs teams of today face increasing challenges. Expectations around speed to market and value provision, the growing volume and complexity of data, and the demand to adapt to a multitude of stakeholders – with different needs and interests – means both mental and practical agility, at speed, have become ever more critical.
And not only is medicine changing more rapidly than ever, but it’s doing so amid cultural and societal shifts that change the way information is assimilated, communicated and received. Medical affairs teams must increasingly deal with:
- An evolving competitive set, including new entities marketing their own drugs, unburdened by the complexities of larger, more established companies
- The rapid dissemination of information on non-traditional channels, calling for an ‘always-on’ approach to identify trends and combat misinformation
- Geopolitical events – from supply chain disruption and policy changes to a shifting political focus – requiring careful integration of varied perspectives and cultural nuance.
This constant barrage of new and varied challenges necessitates that medical affairs teams evaluate and communicate the scientific and clinical data through a more holistic lens.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) will most certainly support a more agile medical affairs approach, with tools to rapidly interrogate large and diverse data sets and equip teams with timely insights and content to respond to changing market discourse. Importantly, however, is to ensure that decisions and any AI outputs are informed by multiple perspectives, making sure data points on science and trends are contextualised with human experience and the societal landscape.
Medical affairs is no longer just a guardian of scientific integrity – it is a driving force in shaping the future of healthcare, ensuring that medicine can be effectively integrated into changing landscapes. The pivotal role that medical affairs plays nowadays is not only demonstrated through the complexities of science, but by the agility of response.
Drew Owen is Chief Scientific Officer at Publicis Health UK and Clare Middleton is Group Managing Director at Langland
Pharmaceutical Market Europe (PME)
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