Achieving Maximal Impact Starts and Ends with Insights
Growing up, I was always fascinated by the idea of becoming a scientist. The excitement of uncovering something new about the world and making a lasting impact, even with a small discovery, drew me in. I spent seven grueling years pursuing my Ph.D. and made some small discoveries along the way, but I soon realized that scientific advancements only make a difference if the world knows about them. Fast forward 12 years, where I’ve pivoted to a career in medical strategy and communications and that desire to create impact continues to drive me today.
As a member of Real Chemistry’s Scientific & Medical Affairs team, I believe that being “impact-obsessed” means helping our clients better understand the needs of the medical community and communicate critical scientific and clinical information necessary to improve patient outcomes. It’s an extremely important purpose – one that leads to a deep sense of personal fulfilment. But in today’s world of healthcare communications, achieving that impact is more difficult than ever.
Our team is tasked with reaching a diverse set of healthcare providers, all with different backgrounds, priorities and needs. Plus, the amount of scientific and clinical information that clinicians are expected to know with the limited time they have is unfathomable. How do we provide them with concise and relevant content that meets their needs, both in terms of substance and delivery?
At Real Chemistry, we firmly believe that analytics and insights are foundational to devising strategies to make meaningful impact with healthcare providers and the patients they treat. In the past several years, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with our industry-leading healthcare data and analytics team to deeply understand our audiences, including their current challenges and preferred communication channels. This has allowed our team to execute impactful initiatives that we’re proud of. To name a few: consensus articles that teach patients and providers how to better recognize and treat underrecognized neurological conditions, impactful narratives and targeted digital engagement programs to raise awareness of new therapies in oncology, and tools to help physicians find the right patients for new clinical trials for COVID-19 therapies and vaccines.
The common thread through all of these successful programs is knowing the needs of our audiences and delivering value, because when they think they're getting something of value, that's when the impact is made.
Although strategically designing for impact is an admirable goal, measuring impact is even more important. We may have a better understanding of our audiences, but how do we know we’ve achieved our goal? For medical affairs teams at pharmaceutical companies, answering that question is complicated. Compared to other functions such as Commercial, whose activities and programs can be evaluated through metrics such as increased revenue or market share, the impact of medical affairs teams must be measured against their objectives, which include increased awareness, knowledge gained and improved patient outcomes. These so-called “soft” metrics make the impact more difficult to quantify, which remains a persistent issue for many pharmaceutical companies.
But with the availability of more data about healthcare stakeholders, we’re developing strategies and solutions to assess trends in knowledge – for example, by incorporating social media listening and tracking changes in clinical behaviors and patient outcomes by using real-world data. By using data to track progress, identify trends and make informed decisions, we’re helping organizations and medical affairs teams ensure that their efforts are having the desired impact and are making meaningful improvements for patients.
Ultimately, we all want to see that our work has resulted in meaningful change. But it shouldn’t be something we hope for after the fact. Making use of analytics and insights to design for impact and measuring and optimizing as we go is the key to guaranteeing that the endeavors of individuals, teams and organizations will lead to the desired change in the world.
