What a Medical Affairs quarterly review could look like

A medical affairs quarterly review currently reports how much the function did. This is a description of one that reports what the science did instead — four slides, the questions each would answer, and what becomes arguable once they exist.

I want to describe a meeting that does not happen yet, because it is easier to argue for a measurement framework by showing what it would let you say.

The premise is simple. Everything below is built from conversations a field medical team is already having. No new activity, no additional burden on MSLs, no research programme. The only difference is that the substance of those conversations has been captured and structured rather than summarised from memory. The reasoning for why that matters is why the function has no owned number; this is what changes when it does.

The review most functions run today

The deck opens with a count. Meetings held, HCPs reached, advisory boards convened, materials distributed. Perhaps a regional breakdown, perhaps a comparison against the same quarter last year.

Then somebody asks how it went, and the answer is qualitative — a few anecdotes, a sense that engagement is improving, a mention of two clinicians who were particularly positive.

None of this is wrong. It is simply the maximum a function can say when the only structured data it holds is what an activity number can and cannot say. The anecdotes are doing the analytical work, and anecdotes do not survive a challenging question from a CFO.

Here is what the same quarter could look like.

Slide one: which scientific topics moved

Not how many conversations happened. Which communication topics were substantively discussed across the quarter, and how deeply.

Each topic shows talking-point coverage and insight yield — how much of the planned science actually got discussed when the topic came up, and how much came back from HCPs when it did.

The interesting rows are the mismatches. A topic with high coverage and low yield is being delivered efficiently and learning nothing; the material may be answering a question nobody is asking. A topic with low coverage but high yield whenever it does come up is being under-raised relative to how much interest it generates.

Neither of those observations is available from an activity report, and both are directly actionable in the next quarter's plan.

Slide two: where the evidence gaps concentrate

Every insight captured during the quarter, typed and grouped. Unmet needs, evidence gaps, treatment barriers, unanswered clinical questions.

Then cut two ways: by region, and by specialty.

The value is in the concentrations. An evidence gap mentioned once is a conversation. The same gap raised by fourteen specialists across three countries is a publication priority, and it arrived without commissioning any research — it came from conversations the team was already having.

This is the slide that changes what Medical Affairs brings to evidence generation planning. Instead of arguing from impression, the function arrives with a ranked list of what the field is actually asking for, sourced and countable.

Slide three: which arguments are being challenged

Which planned scientific talking points draw objections, how often, and from whom.

A talking point that is consistently challenged by specialists in one therapeutic area is telling you something — either the evidence behind it is weaker than assumed, or the way it is framed is not landing with the people best equipped to assess it. Both are worth knowing before the next content cycle, and both are currently invisible.

There is a second use for this view that matters more than it first appears. It identifies where the field team is being asked to defend positions the evidence does not comfortably support. That is a scientific integrity question as much as a measurement one, and no activity report will ever surface it.

Slide four: which HCPs progressed, and what moved them

Not a leaderboard of clinicians. A view of movement.

With knowledge tracked per topic, it becomes possible to see which HCPs' understanding shifted during the quarter and which interactions preceded the shift. Over enough interactions, patterns appear: which sequences of topics tend to precede movement, which conversations tend to stall, where a second meeting adds value and where it does not.

Two cautions on this slide, both important.

It is a cohort view, not an individual performance view. Reporting individual MSL numbers against knowledge movement would reintroduce every problem the framework was built to avoid, and would degrade the data within two quarters.

And movement is not adoption. An HCP who becomes fully informed and correctly concludes the therapy is not right for her patients has moved. That is a successful scientific outcome and the slide should show it as one.

What this review lets you ask for

The four slides are not the point. What they enable is.

A function that can show fourteen specialists in three countries raising the same evidence gap can ask for a specific study, with a specific rationale, and be taken seriously. A function that can show which scientific arguments fail under expert challenge can ask for the content to be revised, with evidence. A function that can show where understanding is stalling can ask for the resource to address it, in the places it will make a difference.

That is the difference between reporting and arguing. Most medical affairs reporting today describes effort and asks for trust. This version describes outcomes and makes a case.

None of it requires the field team to do more work. It requires the work they already do to be captured in a form that survives the meeting.

If you want to see what this produces from a single scientific conversation, book a walkthrough. Thirty minutes, your therapy area, your content.

Zainab Zahid is Head of Product at RocketMSL.