Pioneering a Modern Medical Insights Journey: Perspectives from Two Biopharma Leaders

Research shows that 98% of key opinion leaders (KOLs) want to share insights with biopharmas, but believe that only a third of the insights they share are actually used. Although these insights contain valuable information that impact patients, many organizations struggle to find an efficient way to collect, analyze, and quickly disseminate them to the right people. As the director of DD&I, BP global medical affairs at a global pre-commercial oncology biopharma experienced, “We didn’t have an elegant way to capture these insights — these ‘pearls’ — from our field medical team, home office, or medical HQ users.”

Many who already have systems in place, like Ivo Huybrechts, head of medical insights at UCB, are finding it’s time to seek a new solution as their needs and available technology evolve. “We’ve had our system for five years, but in the technology and AI landscape, it’s outdated,” he says.

Re-imaginging the capture and analysis of medical insights

Choosing a new solution was part of a bigger strategy for these medical affairs leaders who were looking to redefine their end-to-end process for capturing and analyzing medical insights. While their overarching goal was similar — they both selected Veeva Medical Insights — each had different considerations when approaching possible solutions.

Pre-commercial biopharma: Expanding stakeholder use

With a focus on pioneering novel innovative therapies for cancer and infectious diseases, the pre-commercial biopharma is currently building its infrastructure. The team wanted a solution where both CRM and non-CRM users could easily submit insights to be ingested, synthesized, and then actioned. “Veeva Medical Insights has an evolved user experience and interface,” the director says. “No matter whether information comes in from an MSL or global medical affairs colleague, we can capture this as a medical insight entry in the system.”

UCB: Improving three pillars of insights

UCB, a larger, more mature company, already had established infrastructure in place. Huybrechts outlined three main pillars of his insights program he wanted to improve — the human component, process, and technology.

Huybrechts explains that people’s behaviors can affect the quality of the insights. “People are not motivated to enter insights,” he says. “They see it as something that needs to get done and it’s typically put off.” UCB also wanted to bring non-CRM users into the process, especially internal global stakeholders who interact with the most important medical experts. “They don’t enter anything into the CRM so we miss all that critical information.”

To create a more consistent, end-to-end process for insights generation, Huybrechts and his team developed key intelligence topics and listening priorities and scheduled regular meetings to discuss insights. To bring both the human component and process improvements together, he looked to leverage more modern technologies, including AI.

Criteria for selecting a solution

When it came time for UCB to select a solution, Huybrechts looked at three main criteria — input, output, and user experience. “What’s most attractive to me about Veeva Medical Insights is the visibility of what’s being entered,” he says. “Any user, at any time and anywhere, can see the insights that are entered into the platform, which is hugely motivational.” His second criterion was what he could do with the data captured. “There’s so many things you can do right at your fingertips.” The third criterion was the user experience and convenience of the platform. “AI speeds up the process of tagging and sorting insights to find themes or patterns, which helps us get them to the right people quicker than we could previously.”

For the pre-commercial biopharma, the director and his team were already familiar with Veeva. “We were at the right place and time to implement Veeva Medical Insights and we were able to get up and running with our use cases quickly,” he says. The technology implementation also provided his team with another benefit: the opportunity to train all relevant functions on the organizational definition and compliant usage of a medical insight. “We were able to layer on how we do this better from a process perspective.”

Going beyond field medical

Redefining the insights journey has also allowed both companies to involve other stakeholders beyond field medical. For the director at the pre-commercial biopharma, this includes home office medical colleagues. “Our medical directors and global medical affairs colleagues go to congresses, which is a prime venue for collecting insights,” he says. “From a global lens, Veeva Medical Insights ensures there is a harmonized process for how we capture and report across all functional areas.”

Huybrechts is also bringing advisory reports into the system. “When you add those golden nuggets into the bigger mix, it puts things into perspective, which adds incremental value,” he says. “That’s really when you take insights generation to a higher level.”

Insights and the impact of medical affairs

Measuring the impact of medical affairs is a topic that is top of mind for most organizations. When it comes to insights, it’s important to understand their strategic influence across the larger organization. But for most, the only visibility they have is quantitative metrics.

Huybrechts believes the implementation of Veeva Medical Insights will help them move beyond that typical quantitative perspective. “Now we can shift the discussion away from just numbers to what really matters, the nature of the insights. That’s where we really need to go.”

The director at the pre-commercial biopharma agrees, “It brings us from task to value.” For him, using Veeva Medical Insights is part of a bigger strategic initiative. “The insights from our thought leaders will help shape the direction we take our launch in the future.”

Preparing your organization to modernize medical insights

For those thinking about next steps in their medical insights journey, the director at the pre-commercial biopharma encourages them to take the leap. “Remember to think long term, including how to embed this into the DNA of your medical organization and, more importantly, the downstream impact this will have.”

Huybrechts emphasizes setting your strategy first and getting all of your ducks in a row. “This implementation touches many areas from compliance and analytics to legal. “It’s an important decision and everybody needs to be on board.” Change management is also an important area of consideration. “Put yourself in the shoes of stakeholders in each area of your organization,” he says. “For those capturing insights it’s a step forward, but all other functions involved need to feel comfortable with what you’re doing, so make sure to manage that.”

“Veeva Medical Insights is a significant advancement for the industry in how to capture insights and action them,” the director says. “We’ve already seen substantial benefits but the real value is yet to come.” He and his team are going to be feeding these insights and other significant data from Link Key People into a data analytics platform. “Once we start mining this, we’re going to see a tremendous amount of value.”

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