What are you most excited about for this year’s 10th anniversary conference?
The world Medical Affairs and MSLs are working in is changing so rapidly. MSLs have become the organization’s voice of scientific expertise and taken on an increasingly strategic role. I’m excited to hear how organizations are navigating this change and using next-gen technologies like H1.
How do you think the MSL Society Conference helps advance the MSL profession?
This conference is a staple for MSLs at all stages of their career. The experiences shared during every session is incredibly valuable as MSLs think about ways to elevate their work and the value they can bring back to headquarters.
What are some of the ways your company supports MSLs or Medical Affairs?
Our company is changing the way Medical Affairs and MSLs approach scientific discussion and medical expert engagement. We are fueling their strategies with AI-powered insights built off of the world’s largest database of HCP information. In seconds they can intuitively search, combine and contextualize data to surface relevant experts, information about their work and patient populations.
The world is digital and moving faster than ever. Our solutions allow Medical Affairs and field teams to act faster and more effectively with insights at their fingertips that
increase engagement, inform territorial planning, eliminate redundancy of daily activities, identify digital influencers and “rising star” KOLs, and increase the quality of engagements with tailored “cheat-sheets” for personalized interactions.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and making necessary adjustments, what have been your biggest challenges as a company, and how did you overcome them?
In general, the pandemic increased global demand for healthcare data, and as a mission driven organization created to be the industry’s single source of truth for healthcare data we responded by doubling down on building analytic capabilities that get relevant insights into the hands of MSLs and Medical Affairs teams faster. We were able to secure a significant amount of funding and pull together a superstar team of employees.
Over the past few years, how has technology or digital innovations impacted pharma and specifically medical affairs?
There has been a paradigm shift in medical affairs, where MSLs are no longer just educating and informing doctors – they are accelerating medical innovation by aggregating data and analyzing it for new insights to act upon.
This paradigm shift is made possible by new technologies and the availability of massive amounts of healthcare data. Everything an MSL needs to know is now accessible right at their fingertips through comprehensive databases. And this data can be mined with advanced analytics to glean deep insights that would previously be difficult if not impossible to uncover.
What are some interesting trends you have observed recently within medical affairs?
More technologies are being created specifically for MSLs and medical affairs, and medical affairs is now getting the same level of support from life sciences and medical device companies as commercial teams. In fact, the top five global pharmaceutical companies are now entering more technology partnerships, expanding their medical analytics teams, and increasing their budgets and resources for medical affairs. A recent study by ZS Associates revealed that artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) are among the top areas of investment for medical affairs.
Ariel Katz
CEO & Co-founder
H1