Medical Affairs Customer Engagement: What’s Next?

Published March 19, 2025

Medical Affairs teams are increasingly harnessing the power of omnichannel communication and orchestrated customer engagement to enhance interactions with key stakeholders. Changing customer preferences and access to content are key factors Medical Affairs teams are addressing by adopting more customer engagement channels. As these capabilities continue to expand, it is important for teams to embrace a strategic mix of field medical engagements, digital platforms, personalized messaging, non-personal engagement and seamless coordination across channels.

By adopting an omnichannel strategy, Medical Affairs teams have the ability to create meaningful, purposeful relationships with customers by tailoring scientific exchange to their needs. Medical Affairs teams are striving to provide a seamless, integrated customer experience. Nearly 90% of organizations note they are taking a more customer-centric approach to external engagement, with 75% including customer preferences into channel and content selection, design and integration. Teams are considering HCP preferences and implementing strategies to personalize content, channel and cadence of engagement to meet the customer where they are and leveraging technology, insights and analytics to optimize cross-channel engagement.

Customer Engagement Orchestration Optimizes Digital and In‑person Channels for Personalized Customer Experiences

What Are the Benefits?

Seamless, flexible integration with ecosystem and partners

Diverse and complex data sources are transformed into actionable intelligence

Enables cross-functional collaboration and scaling

Insights and Analytics Are the Center of Effective Customer Engagement

As Medical Affairs teams transition from being siloed to collaborative and expand into digital channels and non-personal engagements, the use of analytics and insights to drive decision making has become even more important. By analyzing data on customer preferences, behaviors and response rates, Medical Affairs can determine where to focus their efforts for maximum impact.

Through a recent TGaS assessment¹, we identified that teams are using analytics and insights in Medical Affairs in several areas:

• Channel and Content Development—to inform strategy that ensures materials being developed or studies being conducted are aligned to address knowledge gaps, unmet medical needs and customer preferences
• Impact Measurement—to demonstrate the impact, performance and effectiveness of Medical Affairs teams
• Resource Allocation—to support resource and budget allocation to ensure key tactics and workstreams are prioritized in alignment with overall business objectives and customer needs
• Customer Insights—to provide valuable customer insights through CRM data, market research, social media, publications and claims data to gain a deeper understanding of customer preferences and needs

Collaboration Between Medical and Commercial

The partnership between commercial and Medical Affairs has continued to gain momentum over the recent past.

Ways to Enhance Customer Engagement

The Future of Medical Insights & Analytics

Shifting to Customer-Centric Mindsets

Shifting mindset on customer centricity so that approaches are external-in rather than an internal-out

Analytics-Driven Culture

Across industry, a cultural shift of decision making backed by analytics and insights, from strategic planning through to tactical execution

Orchestrated Campaigns with Automation

Execute on HQ, digitally-driven orchestrated campaigns with automated timing and sequencing

Archetypes for Personalization

Establish personas or segments to support overall efforts for personalization

Optimizing Resources

Optimization of resources and budget such that scientific engagement maximizes the value of internal teams and capabilities for external stakeholders

Evolving Team Structures

Increasing resource with potential evolution of team structure (e.g. centralization, TA-alignment)

Analytics-Driven Engagement

Strategically enabling analytics-informed scientific engagement with orchestration internally or having MSLs at the center

From personalized digital interactions to seamless omnichannel communication, Medical Affairs is witnessing a groundbreaking shift towards orchestrated customer engagement strategies. Innovations in omnichannel approaches are revolutionizing the way biopharmaceutical companies and HCPs connect and collaborate in today’s dynamic landscape. These advancements are reshaping the way medical education and information is shared, insights are gathered, and relationships are cultivated in the pursuit of improved patient outcomes and healthcare innovation.

By learning from commercial teams and implementing effective customer engagement strategies, Medical Affairs can better engage with customers, build relationships and ultimately drive better outcomes for patients.

Authors: Sarah Odeh & Nancy Phelan

1 Medical Affairs Insights and Analytics Landscape October 2024, TGaS Advisors, a division of Trinity Life Sciences

This blog is part of the One Chapter Ahead blog series, a Customer Engagement-focused thought leadership initiative to bring an informed, inspired point of view. Our intent is to bring a fresh perspective, driven by data, benchmarks, insights and expertise.

Other blog posts in this series:

• What Does “Good” Look Like in Customer Engagement? 
• Get Ready to Orchestrate a Better Customer Experience
• Integrated Data + Hyper-local + Cross‑channel = Customer Engagement
• Foundational Differentiation: CE Requires Efficient Operationalization of Data
• Key Takeaways and Learnings from HLTH 2024 
• Is Medical Omnichannel Poised for Growth?
• Are Pharma Brands Really Transformational?
• Culture and Collaboration: Keys to Customer Engagement Success

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