Breakfast Briefing Takeaways: Medical affairs in 2022: Business as usual, or a reshaped environment 1 Mar 2022
We enjoyed our first virtual breakfast briefing of 2022, with a new lively panel discussion format. Our guest panelists, Dr Lucy Cook (PharmaMedic consultant and Director of Wiltshire Pharma), Mr Guy Francis (UK Marketing Director, Amarin UK) and Mr Andy Wise ( Managing Pharma Consultant, Blue Pelican) joined Dr Malcolm Barratt-Johnson to discuss key themes set to shape medical affairs in 2022. We enjoyed 3-minute’ hot topic’ perspectives from each of our panelists to kick-start a lively panel discussion and questions from our audience of pharmaceutical professionals.
Below we summarise some of the themes addressed during the event and share a link to the full recording.
New ways of working
Dr Lucy Cook discussed some of the shifts in our ways of working to more virtual approaches. Many employees are still working from home and have re-evaluated their work life balance to some degree. There are benefits and pitfalls of this way of working – with superior flexibility on the one side, and loneliness and home distractions for some on the other. This new approach does bring its own challenges for employers to be aware of – and while recognising the benefits of working from home, it is important to consider how to energise staff with face-to-face interactions. For sales staff, while there are now limited F2F meetings we can explore opportunities for hybrid meetings combining virtual and in-person attendance.
Interplay between commercial and medical affairs
Mr Guy Francis approached the topic from his role as a Marketing Director. He raised a number of key issues including how we can encourage medical and commercial disciplines together for ‘’purpose driven outcomes” and create genuine measurements of success. Remote platforms and channels for brand awareness are developing quickly and are being driven by both medical and commercial functions. Yet, against this backdrop of increased virtualisation, traditional approaches such as letters as opposed to emails are also attractive and gaining strong engagement rates.
Industry reputation
Mr Andy Wise shared his perspectives from his role as an experienced recruitment professional in the medical affairs space. He noted that there is a lack of awareness of the existence of the discipline of medical affairs outside of industry itself. He also highlighted that pharmaceutical sector continues to suffer because of a poor reputation and medical affairs promotes a strong and tangible argument in favour of ethical, patient focused activity in pharma. Therefore, we should examine the opportunities to raise awareness and promote medical affairs outside of industry.
The meeting wrapped up with a lively panel discussion moderated by PharmaMedic Managing Director Dr Malcolm Barratt-Johnson, with participants tackling issues from leadership training for medical affairs professionals, to how ethics is the cornerstone of innovation.
To suggest topics for our next meeting, email hello@pharmamedic.co.
To watch the webinar recording, click below.