Medical information as a channel in the Medical Affairs Omnichannel model

Ask a Medical Affairs team to list its Omnichannel touch points and medical science liaisons, congresses, scientific webinars and a medical portal will appear quickly. Medical information often appears last, or as infrastructure rather than as a channel. Yet in most companies it answers more HCP questions in a year than liaisons hold conversations, works to defined response times, keeps a complete record of every request and every answer, and produces referenced scientific content to a standard the rest of Medical relies on. It is the touch point with a great deal of structure and very little connection.

This article argues that medical information should be planned as a channel in the Medical Affairs Omnichannel model, describes what it contributes when it is, and sets out what has to change for the connection to work. It draws on Medical Affairs engagements in US biopharma and global pharma, on the Medical Affairs Professional Society's work on Omnichannel engagement and on IQVIA's paper on Medical Affairs Omnichannel.

Why is medical information planned as a service desk?

History and regulation. Medical information grew up as the function that responds to unsolicited requests, and the rules that govern those responses, including the EFPIA Code, the IFPMA Code of Practice and in the United States the FDA's guidance on unsolicited requests, define it by what it may do when asked. That inheritance produced a function built around inbound requests, response times and documentation, and measured on them. It also produced a function that most of Medical Affairs sees through its outputs, the letters and the standard responses, rather than as a participant in the HCP's scientific journey.

The consequence is a structural blind spot. A liaison preparing for a conversation does not know that the HCP asked medical information two questions last quarter and what they were sent. The digital team building a scientific resource does not start from the questions HCPs actually ask. The medical planning process does not read the question log. The function that knows a great deal about HCP scientific needs is rarely consulted.

What does medical information contribute as a channel?

• Closing questions raised elsewhere. Questions captured at a congress, raised with a liaison or arriving through a portal that need a referenced written answer reach medical information through one route, and are closed to one standard. The liaison's follow-up is completed by a function built to complete it.
• Telling other touch points what the HCP already has. A liaison who can see that an HCP received a standard response on a dosing question last month opens the conversation from that point. Medical information that can see a liaison discussed a trial last week answers the follow-up request in that context.
• Providing the scientific core of digital channels. Standard responses and referenced summaries that medical information already maintains to a high standard become the source material for scientific webinars, portal content and approved digital follow-up, built once and adapted for each channel rather than written again by each team.
• Signaling what HCPs need. The question log is an early and unfiltered record of what HCPs want to know. Read monthly, it shows which topics are rising, where evidence is missing and which messages are being misunderstood, well before a congress or an advisory board confirms it.

What has to be true for the connection to work?

Four conditions, agreed inside Medical and with Legal and Compliance.

Shared visibility first. Requests and responses are visible to the Medical touch points that need them, which means liaisons can see medical information history for the HCPs they cover and medical information can see relevant liaison interactions. This is a data access decision with privacy and compliance dimensions, and it belongs to Medical rather than to the platform team. Where Medical and Commercial share a platform, the access rules keep medical information records inside Medical.

One response standard second. The response times and documentation standards medical information already applies to inbound requests apply to every HCP question whichever channel it arrived through. A congress question or a liaison follow-up is a medical information request, and is tracked as one.

Content built once third. Scientific content is produced to the medical information standard and adapted for each channel, with one owner and one version. The alternative, where each channel writes its own, produces inconsistency an HCP notices and a review burden Medical cannot sustain.

A review routine fourth. The question log is read as insight at a fixed point each month, by people who can change the medical plan, the evidence program or the content. Medical information teams have often recorded these patterns for years without anyone asking for them.

How does this change the HCP's experience?

The HCP asks once and is answered once. A question raised with a liaison that needs a written answer arrives from medical information within the agreed time, referring to the discussion. A question sent to medical information that would benefit from a conversation is offered one, with the liaison informed. A scientific webinar invitation reaches the HCP because they asked about the topic, and the material offered afterwards is consistent with the written answer they received. None of these steps is promotional, each is recorded, and together they describe a Medical function that behaves as one.

What are the warning signs that medical information is disconnected?

• Liaisons do not know what HCPs were sent. Conversations start from zero, and HCPs explain again what they already asked.
• Questions from congresses and liaisons bypass medical information. They are answered informally, to no standard, and are not recorded as requests.
• Each channel writes its own content. The webinar team, the portal team and medical information produce three versions of the same scientific summary, and review them three times.
• The question log is reported as volume. Monthly reports count requests by category, and nobody reads the questions themselves.
• Medical information is measured only on response time. The function is efficient at closing requests and invisible to medical strategy.

Where should a Medical Affairs team begin?

With one brand or one therapeutic area, and with the question log. Read the last two quarters of medical information requests as a set, with the liaisons who cover those HCPs in the room. The exercise shows how much of what HCPs ask is already known to one part of Medical and unknown to the rest, and it makes the case for shared visibility more convincingly than a platform presentation. The response standard, the content model and the review routine follow from that first reading. Teams that have done this describe the same result. Medical information stops being the department that answers letters and becomes the channel the rest of Medical plans around.