With regulations creating these clear boundaries to prevent the “Medical Affairs” teams from being measured by the resulting sales, a common question that I’ve heard a few times is “Is there something we can measure beyond ‘activities'”. Its quite common to find a bunch of metrics and charts that tell you how much time is being spent on various activities and whether they are “responsive” or “pro-active” etc. But since these end up being “activities” its like reporting and analysis with your hands tied.
Many of the Med Affairs depts collect and report a lot of this activity data either because they have a CIA that mandates it, or in many cases its being done voluntarily in an attempt to be transparent and prepared for an audit. But how should a department look at these to see if they could do better? Is this all just “busy work” being captured and categorized? We know that this group has indirectly played an important role in educating the marketplace about the drugs their company has brought to the market. Its an important enabling role, given the complexity involved in todays drug interactions and mechanisms. These are the interactions that have led to several Phase 1V trials for additional indications, which have helped many more patients. But given todays market pressures and budget constraints, wouldn’t it be really important to see how all of these activities can be analyzed to make all of these “efforts” mean something more … hate to put it this way but …. “more tangible” :).
