Medical Affairs is growing in importance

Medical Affairs is becoming the central player in establishing and maintaining a drug's value in the market: regulators are giving more fast-track approvals to drugs as they push for faster patient access to innovations. As a consequence, parts of drug development are shifted into the market, where Medical Affairs is the critical player in helping a drug reach its target product profile (TPP) and full potential. Moreover, today, a product must continuously demonstrate its medical benefits as well as its health economic value proposition in the local context.

The five roles of Medical Affairs

1. Data generator to close the gap to TPP
   Fast-track approvals are forcing Medical Affairs to comply with post-marketing conditions to generate data that proves a drug is closing the gap to its TPP.
2. Driver of change from promotion to education
   Where Medical Affairs once had a purely supporting role in a marketing promotion, it now proactively disseminates scientific knowledge and helps shape medical practice in close exchange with physicians and other stakeholders.
3. Owner of medical value proposition in real-world settings
   Today, Medical Affairs is required to closely coordinate the latest data-science to generate in-market studies with the efficient and coherent generation of data across the globe.
4. Key contributor to health economics outcomes research
   Medical studies increasingly need to factor in healthcare economics to provide regulators and cost bearers with sufficient facts to set drug prices. While Market Access is key to coordinating the process, Medical Affairs needs to deliver crucial insights to maintain the medical-value proposition.
5. Cross-functional orchestrator
   Where in the past, drug companies usually had to convince only regulators or payors of a drug's value, they today have to orchestrate a network of stakeholders to acknowledge the value of their drugs. Medical Affairs in a unique position to do this.

Different ways forward

To win in the future, Medical Affairs will have to play a more active and central role. But, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. To see where to start, download our whitepaper on Medical Affairs. If you like to discuss what this means for your company, reach out to our Roland Berger experts!