Driving Medical Excellence across fragmented Medical Affairs organisations

The why

As Medical Affairs organisations expand across regions and functions, translating strategy into consistent execution becomes increasingly complex. Teams often operate with strong intent, but without shared direction, clear roles, or sufficient visibility across activities.

This case shows how a global pharma company strengthened Medical Excellence by aligning priorities, clarifying roles across global, regional, and affiliate levels, and enabling the regional organisation to act as a stronger orchestrator of Medical Excellence.

The challenge

The organisation faced growing complexity across scientific society engagement, congresses, and real-world evidence.

Efforts were fragmented, with limited transparency and unclear roles across global, regional, and affiliate teams, particularly in planning, execution, and dissemination. This made it difficult to coordinate activities, reuse insights, and align on priorities across markets, leading to duplication of effort and inconsistent execution.

How we helped

We supported the client through a structured Medical Excellence project across three tracks: scientific society engagement, congress engagement, and real-world evidence.

Our work combined internal insights, outside-in perspectives, and hands-on facilitation, grounded in interviews across global, regional, and affiliate stakeholders and informed by external perspectives from peer organisations.

We:

Assessed current ways of working, focusing on gaps in roles, governance, and transparency.
Brought in outside-in perspectives to challenge and inspire direction.
Defined clear strategic priorities and high-impact opportunities.
Developed practical frameworks and governance models to guide execution.

This aligned stakeholders across levels and translated complexity into a shared, actionable direction.

Outcome

The project created clarity, alignment, and a foundation for consistent execution across Medical Affairs.

Aligned priorities and shared direction

A common understanding of key challenges and opportunities aligned stakeholders around a focused set of high-impact initiatives, shifting from parallel efforts to a coordinated Medical Excellence agenda.

Clearer roles and stronger collaboration

Clear roles were defined across planning, execution, and dissemination, including how teams lead, contribute, and enable. This strengthened governance and clarified the role of the regional organisation in contributing to global planning, enabling affiliates, and facilitating insight flow.

A prioritised roadmap for sustained progress

A clear roadmap balanced short-term improvements in transparency and coordination with longer-term operating model and governance evolution aligned with global.

Frameworks enabling consistent execution

Practical, execution-ready frameworks addressed key gaps in visibility and coordination:

Scientific society engagement
Structured KOL mapping, engagement planning, and insight sharing to enable coordinated and transparent engagement.

Congress engagement
Aligned planning and execution models with earlier data visibility, consistent messaging, and structured post-congress dissemination.

Real-world evidence
Clear processes for planning and dissemination, improving visibility of studies, capabilities, and evidence gaps.

These enabled a shift from ad hoc execution to scalable ways of working.

What moved the needle

This was not about introducing new activities, but about creating visibility, alignment, and clear roles across what already existed.

Operating model clarity and end-to-end perspective Clarifying roles and linking evidence, engagement, and execution enabled more coordinated decisions and reduced fragmentation.

Transparency as a foundation for coordination Greater visibility across plans, activities, and insights improved alignment, reduced duplication, and strengthened collaboration across levels.

From insight to action Concrete frameworks and prioritised actions ensured momentum beyond the project and enabled the organisation to progress with confidence.

Partner

Jonas T. Karlsen, Ph.D.

Jonas is a life science strategist supporting executives drive progress across the value chain. He is an expert in bridging strategy and execution via global operating model design and transformation rooted in strategic objectives. He engages with structured top-down thinking and a pragmatic and collaborative approach to mobilise organizations and make things happen.

Jonas holds a Ph.D. in biophysics from the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, and further studied at California Institute of Technology. Recipient of the Ministry of Sciences Elite Research Award.

Selected experience

Ecosystem integration and external innovation pipeline
Lab of the future capability building and operating model design
Global clinical operating model design and transformation
Pre-launch strategy for cardiometabolic TA development

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