How COVID-19 can help Medical Affairs transform biopharma into ‘expert partners’
While biopharmaceutical executives are busy responding to the immediate needs of the COVID-19 crisis, many are also asking what next? How will the pandemic change our customers’ needs during and post-recovery? What will biopharma company engagement with healthcare professionals look like over the next 2 years? Specifically, how will customer engagement teams connect and re-start conversations with HCPs?
The one thing that’s clear is that the COVID-19 recovery will be a time of real change, risk and opportunity for our industry. At the heart of the recovery challenge for biopharma is its ability to re-engage and interact with physicians in newer, deeper and more meaningful ways.
As we have argued before, Medical Affairs is uniquely positioned to change the perception of biopharma companies as “transactional marketing organizations” (1), transforming them into “expert partners” for their diverse range of stakeholders.
This is an existential imperative in today’s rapidly changing, digitalized, democratized healthcare landscape. As well as explaining and contextualizing the complex science behind diseases and treatments, it means developing an issues agenda with topics and points-of-view, co-creating ideas with stakeholders, and today it means helping HCPs and their administrators address the key challenges facing them during the recovery and post-recovery period.
Re-engagement with existing patients
The impact of COVID-19 has dramatically reduced patient volume, since fewer patients are seeing HCPs for non-COVID-19-related conditions. Medical Affairs leaders need to ask how they can help HCPs and their practices overcome patient acclimation to non-engagement with their healthcare providers. For example, how can practices best communicate the adequacy of new in-office safety protocols to reassure patients that it is safe to come back? What support can Medical Affairs give HCPs and their practices to help handle the reviews and catch-up visits with chronic disease patients? For patients and conditions where therapy adherence may have been interrupted by the crisis, how can biopharma companies help HCPs to address this?
Engagement with new patients
According to a recent survey conducted by McKinsey, physicians reported even greater volume reductions in new-patient interactions (2). This will translate into more untreated patients in any given disease and fewer new prescriptions in the future. So, what support can Medical Affairs give HCPs and their practices to help engage with new patients, and recapture ‘lost’ ones? What help can we deliver to HCPs to assist with patient access, given the mass loss of coverage and inability to meet co-pays resulting from unemployment?
Remote Services
During the pandemic, telemedicine has surged across medical specialties and geographies—a trend that many physicians surveyed by McKinsey believe will continue post-crisis. How can Medical Affairs support HCPs with remote patient diagnosis, monitoring and management, given the increased trial of telemedicine during the crisis? The increased adoption of telemedicine and remote services has generated a vast amount of provider and user experience data. Capturing these insights from providers and patients, and rapidly translating them into lessons learned and future strategies for healthcare practices, could be of great benefit to Medical Affairs teams in many disease areas.
The COVID-19 pandemic may be a catalyst for many changes in healthcare. In times of change, those who can turn risks into opportunities truly thrive. Medical Affairs leaders who can re-envision their engagement and interactions with physicians in the wake of COVID-19 and start answering some of these most pressing questions, could deliver huge reputational dividends for biopharma. They might even start to transform their companies from “transactional marketing organizations” into “expert partners” along the way.
References:
1. M Health. Thought Leadership in Healthcare Study. 2019. 2. McKinsey. COVID-19 and commercial pharma: Navigating an uneven recovery. 2020.
