Medical affairs is at another crossroads. For most of its history, medical affairs’ mission has been straightforward: ensuring that healthcare professionals (HCPs) treat patients in the safest, most efficacious and most appropriate way. It accomplished this mission through trickle-down education, meeting with key opinion leaders (KOLs) and other top HCPs to make sure they understood the latest scientific data, and then relying on those leaders to cascade scientific opinion across the practitioner universe. We might refer to this as the “first era of medical affairs,” a time where medical affairs presented itself as the field’s scientific expert.
In more recent history, medical affairs has been asked to become a strategic “third pillar” of the pharmaceutical industry. Medical affairs accepted the invitation to join the table with other functional strategic decision-makers, including commercial and R&D. ZS estimates that between 2019 and 2023, the percentage of medical affairs leaders who report directly to their company’s CEO doubled, from approximately 30% to near 60%. And while that still leaves many medical affairs leaders without a comparable seat at the table, the rise of medical affairs’ critical contributions to the pharmaceutical industry and to healthcare more generally is undeniable. As others have noted already, the “second era of medical affairs”—as the strategic partner—has begun.
This paper explores two primary questions:
- What does the coming third era of medical affairs mean? What is driving it, when will it be here and what changes can we expect to see?
- What are the talent and culture needs that medical affairs will require to meet the new challenge of medical impact @ scale?
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