Medical Communications Agency Your Knowledge Partner

Medical communication agencies are integral to pharmaceutical companies and play an important role in driving communications plan. They support all aspects of multi-channel communications from strategic support to meeting management, and publication planning. As knowledge partners, they provide scientific, strategic, and tactical expertise across the product life-cycle and help pharmaceutical companies raise awareness of a drug or a disease area through different forms of communications.

Pharmaceutical or healthcare companies meet their medical writing requirements either by setting up in-house medical writing departments or by outsourcing the work to a medical communications agency. The primary function of a medical communications agency is to develop scientific, regulatory, and educational/training material to raise awareness and educate healthcare professionals about new research and innovations in medicine. A typical medical communications agency works together with pharmaceutical clients to achieve their communication goals. In recent times, there has been an increase in demand for medical writing. To fit the needs of pharmaceutical companies, medical communications agencies have evolved from being service providers to consultancy services and business-partnering model.

There are different types of medical communications agencies, some concentrate on publications and medical education often called MedComms. Some agencies offer a full range of consultancies such as medical education, public relations, market research, and advertising, while others focus on niche areas.¹ Medical communications agencies play an important role in communicating drug-related information throughout the drug development and life-cycle management phases. They provide medical writing support, managing queries around the drug product; internal communications to client’s brand/medical teams, publication management, event management, and brand messaging through integrated solutions. Medical communications agencies not only develop the required deliverables but are also involved in providing strategic input, guidance, proper planning, and execution of projects.

Key attributes that make a medical communications agency a preferred choice for pharma/healthcare companies are:

• Understanding client’s needs and adapting to their style of work
• Driving projects with efficient planning and execution
• Ensuring quality and compliance standards
• Responsiveness and leaving an overall positive and memorable impression Medical

To meet the global pharmaceutical client’s expectations, a Communications medical communications agency should maintain a highly qualified staff with an ability to work across therapeutic areas and those who are well trained on relevant industry regulations, guidelines, and compliance requirements. Most importantly, agencies must keep a customer-centric approach ensuring customer engagement by collaborating with them. Experience to work in a global setting is an advantage. A typical medical communications agency’s core team consists of scientific and client service teams. The scientific team comprises medical writers, subject matter experts, quality assurance, editorial, and creative designing staff who primarily focus on content development. Whereas, the client service team includes project managers/account managers who liaise with clients and scientific teams ensuring timely delivery as per the client’s budgets.

Reference
1. Moon A. From academic to medical writer. 2016. Available at http://medcommsnetworking.com/careersguide.pdf. Accessed on Feb 1, 2019.

Enago Life Sciences is a leading global medical communications partner to healthcare and biopharmaceutical companies, offering a full range of services supporting brand strategies through development phases to commercialization. Whether it is an early development product with a potential market launch or a mature brand relaunch demanding a robust publication plan; peer-reviewed publications; medical educational material, or digital graphic design, we have the expertise to meet all your needs. Our global team of experts has extensive knowledge and unsurpassed experience in a broad range of therapeutic areas. We focus our innovation on factors critical to our clients – reducing time to market, reducing costs, and improving quality.