Thought Leader Service Excellence: Establishing a Foundation for MSLs to Provide Proactive & Compliant Communication with KOLs

Industries Profiled:
Pharmaceutical; Consulting; Medical Device; Biotech; Manufacturing; Health Care; Biopharmaceutical; Communications; Consumer Products; Clinical Research; Laboratories


Companies Profiled:
Adamas Pharmaceuticals; Amplity Health; Baxter International; Biogen; Boehringer Ingelheim; Cardinal Health; Eisai; Fidia; Indivior; Insmed; Insyght; IQVIA; Jazz Pharmaceuticals; LEO Pharma; Merck KGaA; Merck; Mylan; NexGen Healthcare Communications; Novartis; Nutricia; Sandoz; Sanofi; Sunovion

Study Snapshot

Best Practices, LLC engaged 28 field medical leaders from 23 biopharmaceutical companies across global business units through a benchmarking survey. More than 70% of the participants hold leadership positions at the Director, Vice President and Head level.

Key topics covered in this report include:

• Forging deep thought leader relationships
• Thought leader segmentation
• Proactive vs reactive MSL interactions
• Frequency of MSL interactions
• Compliance management
• Managing opt-in “standing order” systems
• Lessons learned

• Proactivity: Most biopharma aspire to proactive services to retain TLs evolving along a 7-factor service continuum:
  
  
  1. Segment key thought leaders for proactive service
  2. Service model leans to or away from proactive service
  3. Different types of scientific information are shared more or less proactively by design
  4. Standing-order is formal or informal
  5. Duration of standing order ranges from permanent to quarterly
  6. Technology enables easier opt-in presentation on iPads, etc.
  7. Understanding thought leader needs informs what to share proactively
     
     
• Opt-in Standing Order (SO): Nearly 1/3 of companies deploy formal standing orders and up to 79% use informal systems.

• Integration of seven service factors for proactive thought leader engagement
• Segmentation of thought leaders
• Percentage of proactive and reactive thought leader interactions
• Frequency with which MSLs conduct the listed proactive activities; other types of information / services proactively provided by MSLs to key thought leaders
• Approaches toward maintaining records to ensure service and material requests handled proactively are desired by the thought leader
• Duration of opt-in standing request for a thought-leader before it must be updated
• Systems that permit opt-in (aka standing request) system to work most effectively for the thought leader and for corporate compliance
• Ability for thought leaders to request they not be contacted by field-based medical liaisons within the systems
• Do not solicit status
• Conditions that trigger the removal or resetting of the DNS such that the thought leader can now be contacted by the field team
• Top lessons learned for making opt-in system easy to use for the thought leader and compliant for corporate requirements
• Top lessons learned about how field medical practices can become proactively more responsive to thought leader needs
• Therapeutic areas served by benchmark partners