3 Thought-provoking themes from the Medical Affairs Professional Society 2020 Global Meeting
The MAPS Miami 2020 meeting was full of excellent sessions and mildly awkward elbow and foot “handshakes” (thanks COVID-19!). Keep reading for 3 thought-provoking themes that kept coming up in Miami.
1. Social listening for Medical Affairs: friend or foe?
The polarizing topic of social listening came up at many of the sessions and discussions in Miami. Some MSL teams were actively trying to navigate this gray area while others thought it was a waste of time. We are at a crossroads with social listening in Medical Affairs. There are many open questions around compliance, what do when a KOL tweets, and if it is even useful.
Some teams reported actively monitoring the social feeds of their top KOLs and including tweets in their insights reports. Some felt there was no value in doing this. The question of what to do next is open.
Do you actively monitor social media for mentions of your product or company? Is it useful? If a physician says something publicly about your product or company, then what? How does this impact your organization or decision-making process?
What are your thoughts? Do you have an example of how social listening has impacted your organization?
2. Medical strategy docs should be reviewed frequently
According to a 2017 MAPS survey, 40% of Medical Affairs teams do not regularly review their Medical strategy (does this seem sort of high to anyone else?). How does your Medical Affairs team incorporate the strategy into daily decision making? If your team doesn’t review strategy docs regularly, how do you ensure that your team’s actions are aligning with strategy?
The strategy helps organizations stay on target and meet overarching goals. Frequent review helps ensure that teams are executing according to plan and outlines how Medical Affairs can bring value.
Many Medical Affairs leaders at MAPS recommended reviewing strategy documents quarterly at a minimum (more frequently for fast-moving therapeutic areas) and asking:
Does your tactical plan align to strategy?
If your tactical plan still makes sense?
Are there things your team should stop, continue or start doing?
This is more important than ever, especially giving how busy everyone is and how quickly things change (Coronavirus has basically brought the world to a standstill!). It helps ensure we aren’t just being busy and that we are focusing on the right tasks.
3. Understanding the needs of stakeholders
This theme came up in every type of session from how to train MSLs, strategic planning, and insights. There were many discussions about low adoption of training materials, tools, and resources. These discussions always seemed to lead a lack of understanding around how the training/tool/resource will benefit the stakeholder. If we do not understand and incorporate the needs of stakeholders, we cannot motivate them to change or create action.
Clearly articulating how something will make stakeholder’s lives easier can help increase buy-in and adoption.
How do you ensure you are creating value for all your stakeholders? How do you know you are creating value? Much of the answer seems to be in close collaboration and partnership. How can Medical Affairs create and maintain trusting relationships with stakeholders?
Conclusion
There was so much good content and discussions packed into MAPS Miami. How to use social listening, aligning to strategy and understanding stakeholder’s needs came up over and over. Are similar conversations happening in your organization? What’s your take?
Thinking about how to be agile in this fast-moving environment is exciting! It will be interesting to see how these trends and conversations evolve over time. How will organizations, teams, Medical Affairs, and MSLs adapt? What are going to be the factors that help Medical Affairs come out on top?