It’s a fact of life: even the top scientific experts are not always compelling speakers. Speaking about complex science while keeping the audience engaged requires a high level of skill, and isn’t for everybody, no matter how brilliant they are.

Instead, you might select specific experts for specific initiatives – to publish papers, conduct clinical trials or even develop patents – based on their previous experience.  Knowing their strengths (and weaknesses) upfront can inform the way you craft Medical Affairs strategies by transforming decision-making from experience and instinct to accurate, data-driven insights that achieve your goals.

For too long Medical Affairs teams have been constrained, forced to base decisions on other departments’ metrics augmented by their own instincts and experiences. Making objective, data-driven decisions has been difficult, if not impossible.

Publication planning is a good example. Authors and publications still may be selected based on their scientific gravitas or the feelings planners got after a few conversations. In today’s scientific environment, however, having “a good feeling” isn’t good enough. While instinct and experience shouldn’t be ignored, planning effective scientific communications strategies requires objective information that establishes trends and enables predictive analyses.

Developing a Medical Contribution Trendline takes the guesswork out of selecting scientific experts to present or author papers. For each scientific expert in your pool, a trendline tracks and overlaps data that includes their bylines, the journals in which they appeared, meetings at which they presented, patents they authored and clinical trials in which they were a site investigator.

Being able to track this information is important because scientific experts’ interests and expertise evolve. When shifts occur, last year’s key collaborators may no longer be the most influential communicators for your specific message. Yet, your team’s experience and instincts may not reflect those shifts until it’s too late to adjust your plans.

That’s why relying upon current data designed specifically for Medical Affairs is vital. Pharmaspectra’s graphical representation lets you see at a glance where your experts are most active and track that activity over time.

By understanding where your scientific experts spend their professional time, you can develop a good understanding of their preferences and, therefore, their strengths. You’ll know early whether a particular expert may be a more effective co-author than speaker, or whether their most valuable contribution may be in research. Knowing this upfront helps you tap experts with the right skills sets to be effective at communicating your message to specific audiences in specific venues.