INTRODUCTION

Medical teams are an integral part of medical communications (med comms) agencies, bridging the gap between the healthcare and pharma industries. Most crucially, medical teams ensure that the patient perspective is always front and centre, with improved health outcomes being our ultimate goal.

While our scientific teams decipher and provide clinical evidence and data, medical teams such as ours bring clinical experience and expertise – understanding how insights and behaviours play out in the real world.

It is only with the combination of both specialities that we can achieve patient-centricity, ensure compliance, and deliver meaningful experiences for healthcare professionals.

FROM MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS TO MEDICAL MANAGERS

We are qualified healthcare professionals (HCPs) (doctors and pharmacists) who have worked in medicine and then moved into med comms. We can apply our knowledge and experience to medical education, ensuring relevance to healthcare professionals across a range of specialities. Working in this industry also means we have gained new knowledge – for example, when providing support for content development, we work closely with writers, designers and visual experience experts – something we would not experience in a clinical setting! From programme development to relationship management, the role of a medical manager is extremely varied, and we relish the challenge that each day brings. Keep reading to find out what our role entails and why we love doing what we do…

BY CLINICIANS, FOR CLINICIANS

Content development is one of the most rewarding aspects of our role. We work across a range of activities, including congresses, advisory boards, and patient-facing materials. Alongside medical writers, we collaborate to produce content that is medically and scientifically sound. Having attended congresses and webinars as HCPs, we are able to leverage our experience to benefit both colleagues and our clients. This experience is invaluable, as we put ourselves in clinicians’ shoes to help create programmes that resonate with our target audience.

The content we deliver needs to hold scientific rigor and credibility, and it is therefore essential that teams remain abreast of the latest medical advances. We support teams across the business by providing on-boarding in new therapy areas and yearly refreshers where new data and evidence has come to light. What makes the role exciting is knowing that our insights will be used to shape the activities we deliver for our clients. This may be something as minor as providing guidance on webinar broadcast scheduling based on our experience of healthcare working hours, or more complex advice such as developing a scientific story in a way that is clinically impactful. Each insight we provide becomes part of a larger picture, ultimately providing HCPs with a meaningful medical education experience.

COMPLIANCE – THE CORNERSTONE OF MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS

Creating assets for our clients regularly raises compliance queries. Pharmaceutical regulation is vital to ensure that medicines are promoted ethically, and clinicians are provided with fair and balanced information to allow for appropriate decision-making. Our medical team is responsible for ensuring the wider business is educated on pharmaceutical codes of practice, such as the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) codes. We offer regular compliance and pharmacovigilance training, bite-sized code updates, and internal ad-hoc consultancy to support teams company-wide.

EVOLVING OUR MEDICAL STRATEGY

It is vital for us to have a deep understanding of our clients’ portfolio and their medical and commercial strategies to deliver their vision in its entirety. As a team, we help to shape annual tactical plans, project formats and content. For instance, developing agendas for events is a joint venture with the client, external experts, and our in-house medical and scientific teams. The combined effort serves the purpose of offering impactful, factual, and balanced deliverables that improve patient outcomes and inform HCPs.

SCIENCE THAT SPEAKS TO PEOPLE

There’s no denying that med comms is an exciting and fast-paced environment, and our work is different every day. Within this varied environment, our team works to infuse the science with a holistic, patient-centred approach. By doing this, we help make data clinically relevant, optimising our content so that it truly engages healthcare professionals and can make a genuine difference to patient outcomes. We’re proud that much of our work has resulted in changes to clinical practice, which has been recognised not only by the med comms industry but by clinicians who are experts in their fields. We are looking forward to new challenges and the opportunity to make a genuine difference to patient outcomes via the communications we deliver.