New study on best practices in developing top-tier medical affairs capabilities

The changing healthcare landscape has pushed the medical affairs function into roles involving clinical development, regulatory compliance and market education.

As its responsibilities have grown, Medical Affairs has faced many challenges in creating and maintaining the function as a global group. And while its importance is recognized internally, Medical Affairs leaders sometimes find it challenging to identify strong performance metrics to demonstrate the value of their function to leadership.

To probe current approaches to organizing Medical Affairs capabilities globally and for internally showcasing the function's value, research and consulting leader Best Practices, LLC conducted a primary research study, "Best Practices in Developing Top-Tier Medical Affairs Capabilities, Creating Impact Measures and Improving Globalization."

The study was designed to help organizations find better ways to create and communicate strong Medical Affairs performance metrics, and to identify what companies require to create effective global capabilities for the Medical Affairs function.

In the study, participants noted that successful global Medical Affairs organizations establish deep understanding of local differences and develop the following strategies to overcome them:

• Acquiring the top talent for local affiliates
• Differentiating activities that need local focus and delegating the work to regions for these activities

Best Practices, LLC engaged 29 executives from 26 leading life sciences companies for the study. Segmentation analysis was key to examining trends and effective practices and so on relevant questions the report presents a Large Companies Segment, a Mid-Size Companies Segment and a Small Companies Segment.

Study objectives:

• Illustrate how leading Pharma and Biotech companies structure and organize their global Medical Affairs capabilities
• Highlight strategies for building and maintaining effective reporting structures for global organizations
• Understand challenges in creating successful Medical Affairs organizations
• Identify drivers of strong performance metrics
• Explore critical strategies to showcase Medical Affairs' value to executives and other internal stakeholders

Insights and metrics in the study will help Medical Affairs leaders create a blueprint for showing the value of the function to internal leadership and for better understanding how to coordinate compliance standards across different geographies.

To access the full 63-page report or to download a complimentary summary containing insights found in this report, click on the following link: http://www3.best-in-class.com/rr1353.htm.

For related research, visit our Best Practices, LLC Web site at www.best-in-class.com/.