MSL Insights Blog
Helping MSLs & MSL Managers get the most from Medical Insights
Natalie DeMasi at Cutting Edge Information kindly interviewed us on a few ways to improve Medical Affairs KPI tracking. An excerpt: "Bringing real-time medical insights back to the internal organization is a prime way to demonstrate medical affairs value."
A link to the complete post is here: http://www.cuttingedgeinfo.com/2015/two-ways-to-optimize-medical-affairs-kpi-tracking-my-conversation-with-the-ceo-of-kernel
Thanks, Natalie!
As you may know, we develop kernel with the participation of our Medical Affairs customers. For each customer, we schedule weekly calls to solicit their feedback and ideas to improve. Based on our customer preferences and product vision, we prioritize these ideas in our roadmap. Since launching our first version in December of last year, we’ve released 12 software updates to kernel.
A recurrent request is for reports: the ability to rapidly view MSL activity and trends across therapeutic areas, in real-time. On July 16, we released three reports to help MSL leaders and teams resolve these questions:
1. What is each MSL’s current field activity?
The user activity report displays the number of interactions, time spent in the field, number of field insights and other valuable data for liaisons.
For MSLs, this report helps you assess your progress so you can adapt as necessary. For MSL leaders, this report helps you assess a liaison’s activity in comparison with the team, so you can optimize coverage across regions.
2. What is our team’s current field activity?
The team activity report displays the number of interactions, time spent in the field, number of field insights and other valuable data for MSL teams.
For MSL leaders, this report enables you to view your team’s activity in comparison with a previous time period, so you can comprehend whether your field activity is on track.
3. What are the top field insights from our team?
The team insights summary report displays top field insights based on your team’s votes and other attributes. It also conveys which thought leaders and institutions contributed the top insights to your team.
For MSL leaders, this report helps you identify and share field insights with other stakeholders so you can make better, faster decisions.
Collectively, these reports help you demonstrate the value of Medical Affairs and drive the right strategies for your organization. To access a report, simply visit kernel and view results on your laptop, iPad or smartphone in real-time. If you wish, you may also download reports as images, .PDF files or Word documents to easily create presentations.
“The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.”
-- Sir Jonathan Ive, SVP Design at Apple
In May of last year, we were introduced to the senior director of Medical Affairs at a global pharmaceutical company. Several weeks later, we had an initial teleconference followed by a meeting at an Italian restaurant in San Francisco.
Over capellini al pomodoro, we learned our customer had been seeking a software application for Medical Affairs for years. Specifically, he desired an application to identify and share medical insights and trends with the rest of the organization, in real time.
In light of our team’s experience from Google and LinkedIn, this request was uncomplicated. Our head of engineering studied artificial intelligence and predictive analytics at MIT and was eager to write an application for medical scientists. Our head of user experience studied human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon and was eager to develop designs for MSL teams. And our head of product management, Eric Kowalchyk, won a Scott Cook innovation award at Intuit and was determined to solve an unmet need for Medical Affairs organizations.
As a next step, we shared a set of draft designs with our customer. After soliciting his feedback and revising our designs through an iterative process, we started coding the application in September.
Concurrently, Eric interviewed every MSL on our customer’s US cardiometabolic team to appreciate their challenges and request their ideas:
For our team, these interviews represented a moment of epiphany.
In November, we were invited to a scientific exchange with a thought leader at Stanford University School of Medicine. Our customer believed that attending this exchange would provide better insight into the role of MSLs. Needless to say, we found the conversation captivatingly educational. Our thought leader was warm and expansive, yet careful to distinguish his opinion from a citation. As a result of this exchange, we identified several opportunities to make our application simple and easy to use for MSLs.
In December, we released a pilot version of kernel to our customer’s US cardiometabolic team. After training each team member, we scheduled weekly calls to solicit their feedback and ideas to improve kernel further. Based on our customer’s preferences, we prioritized these ideas in our product roadmap.
Since then, we’ve released nine software updates to kernel. However, this is only the beginning as we continue to improve our application further. So when we share potential new features with you, it comes from a sincere desire for your feedback. Our goal is to build a valuable application that you love.
A few weeks ago, we attended the DIA Medical & Scientific Communications Forum in Arizona. It was our first industry conference and we enjoyed seeing our friends, colleagues and customers. We also attended sessions on topics such as the current compliance landscape and the role of medical-science liaisons in clinical trials. A particular highlight was a session that discussed the complexity of integrated healthcare systems.
The speaker recommended that our definition of thought leaders should include individuals at Integrated Delivery Systems (IDSs). In the US, there are over 970 IDSs which are collectively responsible for 85% of healthcare delivery. These IDSs may be influential on a local, regional or national level. As an example, large IDSs such as Ascension Health may influence smaller IDSs in regards to protocols for certain populations.
“The IDS sphere of influence is an emerging focal point of influence. MSLs should work with IDSs because that’s where the thought leaders,
key decision makers and lives are.”
— an executive director in Medical Affairs, Health Systems
IDS thought leaders believe treatment value propositions should incorporate safety, efficacy and effectiveness in terms of cost, comparative treatments and other criteria. These thought leaders may work in areas such as care coordination, outcomes research or quality management. They may also participate on protocol and formulary committees.
With access to considerable real-world evidence, IDSs frequently have valuable perspectives on treatment value propositions for disease states. Accordingly, it’s essential to understand their perspectives.
Coincidentally, several of our customers are using kernel to collect feedback from IDSs and payers on therapy value, market access and other topics. Our next product release will let you segment IDS and payer thought leaders by local, regional and national levels of recognition. As a result, you’ll be able to identify and share insights across all types of thought leaders and regions in real-time. We’re developing these enhancements so you can drive the right strategies for your organization.
“It never occurred to me that there was going to be any stumbling block. Not that I had the answer, but I had the joy of going at it. When you have that joy, you do the right experiments. You let the material tell you where to go, and it tells you at every step what the next has to be because you’re integrating with an overall brand new pattern in mind.”
-- Dr. Barbara McClintock, 1983 Nobel laureate in medicine
In July of last year, we decided to develop an application for Medical Affairs. At the time, we had little experience in biopharmaceuticals so we interviewed 20 companies to research how Medical Affairs delivers value to the organization.
Five months later, we released our first version of kernel with customers in the US and Asia. Since we use a participatory design process — soliciting customer feedback to determine which product features to develop next — we conducted 25 sessions with Medical Affairs teams to answer these questions:
This feedback helped us learn which features our customers love, as well as which features we can improve. We learned that MSL teams are passionate about using kernel to showcase medical value, but seek enhanced functionality and usability. So while we’ve made considerable progress, we have more work to accomplish!
Here are the most popular requests from our customers:
In addition to these requests, we’re also integrating with Salesforce and Veeva to synchronize data with kernel, which eliminates duplicate data entry and saves your MSLs' time.
In June of last year, our wives suggested that we develop a software application for Medical Affairs. They believed that Medical Affairs organizations need applications which are specifically designed to showcase the value of Medical Affairs. Since our company had little experience in pharmaceuticals, we conducted 50 interviews with Medical Affairs leaders at 20 companies to research how their teams deliver value to the organization. Next, we leveraged this research in developing an initial version of our application.
In our interviews, we asked the leaders questions such as:
1. What do you believe are the best quantitative and qualitative metrics to measure the performance of your MSL teams?
From Medical Affairs leaders, we learned the value of MSL teams lies in sharing actionable insights which generate medical value. As expressed by the senior director of MSL excellence at a global pharmaceutical company:
“We believe it is meaningful and mutually beneficial interactions with thought leaders which generate medical value for the organization. Examples include having a thought leader assist with clinical trial site selection or share perceptions on treatment decision making processes.”
Accordingly, we’re developing ways to present actionable insights in clear, interactive charts which Medical Affairs leaders can easily share with the rest of the organization.
2. If you could solve one key issue to make your team’s work easier, what would it be?
We learned that Medical Affairs teams find it difficult to stay current with the volume and sources of critical information (publications, research, etc.). In the words of an MSL at a midsize pharmaceutical company:
“I have to scan through psychiatry journals even though it’s not my primary focus. I don’t want to miss something, because otherwise the thought leader will think you’re not on top of it.”
As a result, we built a smart knowledgebase for disease states that is organized by topic, so Medical Affairs teams don’t have to visit multiple websites or search email folders. We’ve also made this information accessible via iPads and iPhones, as well as laptops.
3. What are the most important data insights that you’d like to track but are unable to track today?
We discovered a compelling need to identify patterns across what MSL teams are seeing in the field. As explained by a vice president of Scientific Affairs in California:
“It’s straightforward to understand an individual thought leader’s perceptions over time, but it’s difficult to determine perceptions across thought leaders, particularly across thought leaders in different regions or settings.”
In response, we developed custom analytics to monitor changes in thought leader perceptions. We monitor your key metrics and proactively let you know if there’s a material change. This way, you’re always up-to-date on emerging medical trends.
“Reductionism can expand our vision and give us new insights into the nature and creation of art. These new insights will enable us to perceive unexpected aspects of art that derive from the relationships between the biological and psychological phenomena.”
-- Dr. Eric R. Kandel, 2000 Nobel laureate in medicine
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in insights. One example was the revelation that anti-cancer therapies such as Herceptin can target a specific protein, as opposed to all actively dividing cells. Like a catalyst for knowledge, insights can accelerate the sense-making process, so you learn faster and can apply this knowledge to actionable, evolutionary steps.
In 2012, we developed a software application which delivered insights for technology companies. With a presence in six countries, our customers included 23andMe, LinkedIn and Tribune.
In 2014, our spouses suggested that we develop an application for Medical Affairs (my wife works in Medical Affairs at a large pharmaceutical company and my co-founder’s wife works in pediatric oncology at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Stanford University). Our spouses believed there was an unmet need within Medical Affairs for custom applications.
Since we had little experience in pharmaceuticals, we conducted interviews to research how Medical Affairs delivers value to the organization. After speaking with Abbvie, Genentech, Novartis and others, we learned:
In September, a director of MSL field operations shared this insight:
“At the moment, our only option is CRM which was designed for Commercial. But we’re not salespeople, we’re scientists…and we need a better way to showcase the value of Medical Affairs.”
As a result, we decided to focus exclusively on Medical Affairs. In June, we found our first customer, a multinational company in Japan. In July, we found our second customer, a midsize company in California. In each case, our customers had been seeking a solution like kernel for years.
Today, we’re delighted to announce that kernel is now live. With two customers and four on our waiting list, we’ve made a good start. However, this is only the beginning as we intend to improve kernel further. So when we share new product ideas with you, it comes from a sincere desire for your feedback. Our goal is to build a valuable application that you love.
