Medical Affairs 2030, a vision of the future:
medical affairs professionals

Considering the speed of innovation and changes experienced in the healthcare sphere today it is challenging to predict the future 5 years from now.

Medical affairs traditionally focused on 3 overlapping key areas:

Medical Affairs tasks at present

The biggest changes that we are observing are driven by a shift in patient demographics with more elderly patients and the increasing incidence of diseases that predominantly affect these patients. At the same time new technologies and especially artificial intelligence applications change access to information.

Knowledge, today’s “currency of medical affairs”, becomes more accessible and rapidly available.

How does this change the role of medical affairs?
… what are the skills medical affairs professionals will need to succeed in 2030?
… how can the changing needs of HCPs be appropriately addressed?

What will never change is the commitment to the safe & appropriate use of treatment options.

However, from being a source of knowledge, medical affairs will transition to a manager of knowledge, as the information HCPs rely on to treat patients needs to be correct, reliable and unbiased. At the same time, it needs to be processed in a way that deals with the complexity of science, is broken down in small units of information and allows the HCP to communicate easily to the patient guiding them and their relatives.

The medical affairs “currency of the future” will therefore be partnership and trust.

Academic and strategic partnerships will become increasingly important. The facilitation of expert networks and transparency will help to drive safe & appropriate use of treatment options.

Medical affairs professionals need to become communication, networking experts and trusted partners.

Back to the initial question regarding the skills a medical affairs professional needs in the future … it will no longer be sufficient to be the subject matter expert for a treatment option and/or an indication. In addition, what is required is the ability to manage complex connectivity and have technical expertise in managing AI tools that allow access to treatment options whilst monitoring safe & appropriate use in partnership with the HCP and the patient.

If you are interested to discuss and/or workshop what your medical affairs department could look like in the future, please contact me via info@infill.com