Medical Affairs Unscripted | The Value of Medical Affairs – Strategic Thinking and Continuity from Clinical Development to Commercialization and Beyond with Jodi Smith, PhD

Podcast

May 2, 2024

“You need to be agile, it’s constant movement. I’ve often made this analogy to trying to walk when there’s an earthquake. So, if it’s low on the Richter scale you can keep walking. And I think in regular just ups and downs of big pharma or biotech, you know there’s a volatility that just comes with the job. But when you now work in a more volatile area in development, it’s like you’re walking constantly on a Richter scale of like four or five, always. And there are people who are fine, but they really want to be in the one or two. They want the predictability, and you know the fact that there could be the potential for rapid change and having to adjust. Your messages might have to change. The data is likely to change and you’re going to have to adjust for that. So, you can’t really rest, you can’t put your feet down, you’re constantly on your toes.”
Jodi Smith, PhD

In this episode of Medical Affairs Unscripted, Peg Crowley-Nowick, PhD, MBA, President of Medical Affairs Consulting at Lumanity, and Jodi Smith, PhD, the Global Medical Strategy Lead in Thoracic Oncology at Pfizer, discuss the value of Medical Affairs. While they agree that there’s a cost associated with bringing Medical Affairs into the early development of a drug, they see a clear and measurable benefit, from accelerated enrollment to having a solid foundation for commercialization. Through their many years in different roles within Medical Affairs, they know that to achieve these benefits, organizations need to have the right team members in the right roles with the agility to work in an ever-changing landscape as well as provide strategic thinking, a diversity of audience, and continuity throughout the product lifecycle – from clinical development through commercialization and beyond.