Here are summary notes from a recent Medical Affairs webinar: “An Opportunity for Medical Affairs Strategic Leadership During the Pandemic and Beyond”.
Key points:
The rapidly changing global COVID pandemic with the consequent pressures of politics, economics and time are resulting in the need for fast evidence generation and evidence dissemination. This is however resulting in variable quality and this sometimes leads to flawed healthcare policy and decisions.
This is providing a new opportunity for Medical Affairs leadership to be the stabilizing force for safety and quality and to ensure that HCPs are appropriately informed based on evidence, especially in times of rapid decision making.
Medical Affairs can help ensure both speed and quality of evidence generation particularly utilising real-world evidence (using well-established databases).
COVID-19 has resulted in an amplified volume of data which needs to be disseminated quickly. There’s been a surge in pre-prints (posted prior to formal peer review) which allow for the rapid dissemination of research and facilitate collaboration and informal feedback. However they should not be used to guide clinical practice.