Office based medical leader who is responsible for developing and enabling their field medical team (MSL/DSL/MA) to establish scientific leadership of AstraZeneca and build professional relationships with healthcare professionals. Focused on a specific Therapy Area or significant product, this role ensures alignment with and achievement of the company's business unit goals. Accountable for strategic Therapy Area direction, establishing standards of medical capability, business/resource planning, scientific leadership within the Medical Affairs Team.
Embeds a deep healthcare system practices and gaps understanding (environment, priorities, clinical and patient pathways, etc) that can translate into actionable strategies within the local Medical Plans. Accountable for developing and execution of the Therapy Area/Product Medical Affairs Plans composed of confidence and evidence generation activities, as well as fundamental and sustainable clinical practice transformations that strengthen healthcare ecosystems, improve treatment outcomes, drive meaningful changes in patient care and treatment paradigms and enable access to quality care in alignment with the company’s portfolio. Recognizes and incorporates innovation wherever appropriate into Medical Affairs strategic plans and lead in execution to drive strategic and sustainable impact internally and externally to support the adoption of evidence-based practices, guidelines, and treatment approaches. Acts as a catalysts of sustainable healthcare ecosystem change, enhancing access to quality care for patients and enabling the adoption of our innovative medicines.
Ensures that all local medical requirements are met for all product/TA material and will use medical expertise to contribute to the marketing direction of the product/TA. Recognised as a medical expert within the local marketing company and be responsible for providing medical leadership, expertise, and strategic input to ensure that the Medical Affairs plans align with the broader business objectives.
As a Medical Leader, collaborate with leaders from relevant cross-functional teams identify, activate and measure scalable healthcare practice shaping initiatives with integrated partnership engagement plans composed of key traditional (e.g. HCPs) and non-traditional (e.g. policy and decision makers, PAGs, government, innovative solution providers) stakeholders. Able to lead a significant cross functional, projects. For example, projects like RWE, pre-launch, post-launch clinical trials or market access projects. Works to ensure operational excellence and collaborates with compliance to ensure adherence to company standards.
Team & People Management:
- Recruit the right talent based on capabilities and abilities required for the field medical role.
- Ensure the optimal environment for the field medical team development, growth, and high performance.
- Foster a culture of I&D, agility, innovative mindset, win-win partnerships and collaboration.
- Lead an effective, strategic, and outcomes-oriented field medical team(s) with a high level of scientific expertise.
- Manage and drive team’s performance with measures and metrics put in place that reflect meaningful patient outcomes with continuous improvement approach.
- Lead a team with comprehensive understanding of the healthcare ecosystem to address population health discussions and deliver outcomes that address impactacross the patient pathway.
- Guide the team(s) to have a deep understanding of stakeholder needs to effectively communicate complex scientific information using the right content and channel mix.
- Ensure the team’s quality and promptness of status, information and insights reported back to the cross-functional teams and in company tracking systems.
- Role model as an expert in the assigned therapeutic area with well established relationships with key healthcare professionals.
- Conduct one on one meetings/field visits to coach and review according to the most up-to-date global field medical engagement model on proficiency and related capabilities.
- Role model the AstraZeneca values fostering personal accountability, ownership of individual and team success, operational agility and growth mindsets.
- Contributes to establishing and implementing policies, procedures and objectives for own work and for the field medical team(s).
- Lead and manage change initiatives as needed in the field to enable positive business outcomes.
- Oversee direct report compliance with all AstraZeneca guidelines, standards, policies and local regulations. Manage and oversees team financial resources.
Strategic Planning and Delivery:
- Ensure the Field Medical Strategic Plan (FMSP) and field medical activities are prioritized and aligned with the Medical Affairs Strategic Plans
- Ensure the Field Medical Plan includes an Integrated Engagement plan with an appropriate ratio of traditional and non-traditional stakeholders.
- Work closely with the Medical Affairs Team and cross functional team to provide input to medicaland product strategies.
- Drives prioritization of activities across the team to ensure appropriate focus on portfolio priorities.
- Identify opportunities and initiate discussion potential strategic, scalable & sustainable clinical practice transformations initiatives that can impact on patient access to quality care.
- Ensures the team leverages Digital and innovation / technology as an enabler for patient centric solutions and effectively contributes to enhancing equitable access to people in assigned accounts / clinics / healthcare systems.
- Leverage technology, available data / dashboards to drive data-driven decisions to support internal discussions and external engagements.
- Contribute on field and external stakeholder insights and perspectives in medical and brand internal strategic discussions and communicate internally on actionable items as appropriate.
- Provide regular updates to team and broader organization on delivery versus plan, variance to plan, proposed mitigation with emphasis on internal & external strategic and patient impact.
- Ensures own knowledge of best practices and new relevant developments is kept up to date with understanding of its relevance to the team(s).
Medical strategy and clinical input
- Drive Medically led/co-led initiatives, on an identified gap in collaboration with CFTs, that contributes to an overarching plan mapped to drive positive patient outcomes.
- Leverage medical expertise to design, implement, and oversee real-world evidence (RWE) projects. Identifies reliable suitable data sources and ensure the scientific rigor and integrity of real-world studies.
- Responsible for interpreting and communicating the findings from RWE projects with a strong focus on translating RWE into actionable insights that can internally inform medical and commercial strategies and externally ultimately improve patient outcomes and inform healthcare decision-making.
- Establish AstraZeneca as a scientific leader through proactive medical inputs.
- Lead educational initiatives, developing clinical support tools, and providing scientific expertise to support the integration of new medical advancements into clinical practice.
- Puts in place measures to showcase the impact of initiatives.
- Agile adoption of innovation through win-win partnerships within the healthcare ecosystem that are scalable and can enable sustainable patient outcomes.
Medical Governance Oversight
- Leads a team that ensures all product materials for a specific therapy area are kept up to date and accurate.
- Personally, provides expert scientific support/approval on product materials involving large or more complex drugs, or documents and reports for more important conferences/symposiums.
- Has signatory authority on outgoing therapy area materials if needed.
- Advises the marketing team as a medical healthcare expert ensuring the medical and scientific accuracy of outgoing marketing materials.
- Ensures that all branding work is carried out in accordance with AstraZeneca standards and external regulation.
- Governance and overall adherence to processes and regulations including but not limited to: clinical trials, promotional activity (e.g. Local country Code of Ethics), patient safety (ensure that pharmacovigilance activities meet internal SOP and local regulations e.g. RMPs, PI updates, oversight of safety profile of products registered in the local country)
