Dr. Luca Dezzani, VP of US Oncology Medical Affairs at Johnson & Johnson, sat down with me for a discussion around innovation in Medical Affairs, new technologies for data dissemination and medical education, how to engage with different healthcare stakeholders, plus much more.
Here is a sneak peek of our conversation:
Q: What have you seen in terms of the evolution or the emergence, if you will, of the Medical Affairs Department as we see it today?
A: Medical Affairs started as a very operational scientific arm of the pharmaceutical company with a very clear mandate to provide highly scientific medical education to key opinion leaders and HCPs in general. It used to be very much legs on the ground – MSLs going out and engaging and educating people, HCPs in general, who were using our products. That was where medical affairs started 20 or 25 years ago.
A lot has changed and there are many other areas that are now part of the responsibilities of a medical affairs organization; whether it’s data generation, the whole chapter of real-world evidence, and doing studies to continue to provide evidence beyond the registration of a particular medicine. Then, we have the whole work that we have been doing with patient advocacy groups and also helping, with that component, again, in the spirit of patient centricity.
We have been doing more and more scientific communication and working with medical societies to continue that partnership with the objective of providing medical education to their members. In other words, there has been a major evolution of the core responsibilities of medical affairs or I would say, an expansion of the core responsibilities of medical affairs from pure medical education and engagement to data generation, data dissemination, data amplification, and really working with these stakeholders and building those partnerships across the entire ecosystem.
For more of our discussion, you can watch the whole Fireside Chat with Dr. Luca Dezzani, or listen to the podcast version, below.
To check out previous Fireside Chats and to make sure that you don’t miss any future updates, subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or our podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly leave a review on iTunes.
About Impetus Digital
Impetus Digital is the spark behind sustained healthcare stakeholder communication, collaboration, education, and insight synthesis. Our best-in-class technology and professional services ensure that life science organizations around the world can easily and cost-effectively grow and prosper—from brand or idea discovery to development, commercialization, execution, and beyond—in collaboration with colleagues, customers, healthcare providers, payers, and patients.