Leveraging Modern Technologies in Medical Affairs Functions

We are living in an era where digital transformation is redefining the way industries operate. Some sectors have completely reinvented themselves with cutting-edge technologies to enhance efficiency, productivity, and agility, while others have embraced these advancements to maintain a competitive edge and anticipate evolving customer needs. The most successful transformations today have one thing in common—a razor-sharp focus on customer experience.

Industries such as Information and Communication Technology, Media, and advanced Manufacturing sectors have embraced digital almost seamlessly with a lens on customer experience. On the other hand, Medical Affairs organizations in healthcare either do not have an enterprise-wide digital strategy or are only in the early stages of evolving a digital strategy. More often than not, digital initiatives within Medical Affairs operate in silos, driven by ad hoc projects and short-term requirements, which can limit opportunities for sustained innovation in medical affairs. While this challenge is widely acknowledged, it is often misunderstood as a tooling problem. In practice, it reflects a deeper issue - how Medical Affairs organizations conceptualize and govern technology adoption. In many cases, medical affairs technology has evolved organically, shaped by local needs, individual leaders, or short-term imperatives rather than a coherent enterprise vision.

This leads to a familiar pattern. Tools are introduced to solve specific pain points, such as document management, analytics, or engagement tracking. Over time, these tools coexist without shared data models, common success metrics, or aligned ownership. The result is functional progress without organizational transformation.

True innovation in medical affairs requires a shift from isolated digital projects to capability building. This means viewing technology not as an end state, but as an enabler of new ways of working, how insights are generated, how decisions are made, and how Medical Affairs creates value for internal and external stakeholders.

From this perspective, the question is not whether Medical Affairs should adopt new technologies, but how it establishes the foundational capabilities, data readiness, governance, change management, and operating models, that allow innovation to scale responsibly.

According to a survey conducted by the Medical Affairs Digital Strategy Council, COVID-19 has put a spotlight on the need to accelerate digital transformation across the pharmaceutical industry. This is particularly relevant to Medical Affairs, which is at the frontline of leading external medical interactions with healthcare professionals, payers, and other key stakeholders. While 67% of participating Medical Affairs organizations reported ambitious digital plans, only 27% were satisfied with their company’s progress, indicating there is significant work to be done to achieve true innovation in Medical Affairs.

This gap between ambition and execution highlights an important reality. For many organizations, the challenge is not awareness or intent, but sequencing. Digital transformation in Medical Affairs rarely fails because of lack of vision. It stalls when teams attempt to leap directly from aspiration to advanced technologies without establishing intermediate milestones.

A more sustainable approach is to view medical affairs innovation as a progression of maturity. Early stages often focus on digitization and process standardization. More advanced stages introduce analytics, automation, and selective use of AI in Medical Affairs. Only at higher maturity levels do organizations begin to realize enterprise-wide impact, where insights, workflows, and governance operate cohesively across regions and functions.

By acknowledging this continuum, Medical Affairs leaders can reframe success. Progress is no longer measured solely by technology deployment, but by improved decision quality, reduced friction, and increased strategic bandwidth for teams.

This perspective also reinforces why incremental, outcome-driven goals are essential. They create momentum, manage risk, and build organizational confidence, especially in highly regulated environments.

So, how do we enable Medical Affairs to rapidly adapt to and adopt modern technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to deliver automation, without disrupting critical workflows, and create the much-needed bandwidth for teams to focus on more strategic work? Defining a clear North Star is important, but equally vital is setting milestone-based, incremental, and outcome-driven success measures.

At the recent AI in Medical Affairs conference in December 2021, Indegene joined Georgios Tramountanis, Head of Global Oncology Medical Information and Review, Takeda to share perspectives on future-proofing Medical Affairs organizations for their digital strategies.One key takeaway was the industry’s recognition that, while other sectors have advanced quickly, Medical Affairs in life sciences organizations has been slower to fully embrace technology. The event was designed to help Medical Affairs teams leverage insights from real-world data using human-centric AI, ML, and advanced forecasting and optimization—tools that can enhance understanding of patient experiences and strengthen relationships with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and healthcare professionals. More than 100 Medical Affairs leaders from top pharma companies attended.

A recurring theme across such industry forums is the growing recognition that AI in Medical Affairs must be designed with human workflows at the center. Unlike commercial functions, Medical Affairs operates within scientific, ethical, and regulatory constraints that demand transparency, traceability, and judgment.

As a result, successful adopters tend to follow a few emerging best practices (recommended approach). First, they anchor technology initiatives to clearly defined use cases that matter to scientific teams, rather than abstract efficiency goals. Second, they invest early in governance—clarifying ownership, validation expectations, and risk thresholds before scaling solutions. Third, they treat change management as a core capability, not an afterthought.

This approach reframes medical affairs technology as an extension of scientific rigor, not a replacement for it. AI-enabled tools augment human expertise by reducing repetitive effort, improving consistency, and surfacing insights that would otherwise remain hidden.

Importantly, this mindset also helps align stakeholders across Medical Affairs, IT, Compliance, and Legal. When technology is positioned as an enabler of quality and compliance, rather than speed alone, adoption becomes less adversarial and more collaborative.

The event also highlighted that Medical Information (MI) and Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR) review are two areas particularly ripe for automation. We agree, as field medical and external engagement opportunities are also expanding through digital channels.

MI and MLR often emerge as early candidates for automation because they combine high volume, repeatability, and strict compliance requirements. These characteristics make them well suited for structured applications of AI in Medical Affairs, particularly where pattern recognition, comparison, and classification are involved.

However, the strategic value of these use cases extends beyond efficiency gains. When implemented thoughtfully, automation in MI and MLR becomes a proving ground for broader medical affairs innovation. Teams gain experience with validation, auditability, and human-in-the-loop oversight, capabilities that are transferable to other Medical Affairs activities such as insights generation, evidence planning, and scientific communications.

This is an important distinction. Automation should not be viewed as an isolated productivity initiative, but as a capability-building exercise. The lessons learned, around governance, trust, and workflow integration, inform how Medical Affairs can safely expand its use of advanced technologies over time.

By starting where the value is tangible and the risk is manageable, organizations create a foundation for scaling innovation across the function.

As a case in point, Indegene has partnered with Georgios Tramountanis at Takeda Oncology on several proof-of-concept projects, supporting Takeda’s digital innovation journey in MI and MLR. One initiative involved automating the creation of the Claims Database by training machines with advanced Natural Language Processing algorithms and ML to identify promotional claims, extract them intelligently, and create a dynamic database. This system can compare new claims against the Claims Database for validation, enabling reviewers to work with the most accurate and current claims while reducing cycle times.

We also implemented a content comparator to assess two versions of the same document—one with MLR committee comments and the other with changes incorporated. This automation shifts the repetitive work to machines, allowing reviewers to focus on higher-value, strategic evaluations.

Through these AI in Medical Affairs initiatives, we have aimed to reduce cycle times by at least 15%, improve first-time accuracy, lower compliance risk, and accelerate time-to-market for assets by about 20%.

Beyond individual use cases, these initiatives highlight a broader lesson for Medical Affairs leaders. Early success with medical affairs technology often depends less on the sophistication of algorithms and more on integration with existing workflows.

When automation aligns with how teams already work, rather than forcing radical process redesign, it accelerates trust and adoption. Over time, this trust becomes a critical enabler for more advanced applications of AI, including predictive insights and decision support.

From a strategic standpoint, such examples underscore the importance of designing technology initiatives that are measurable, auditable, and extensible. These attributes allow organizations to move from isolated wins to repeatable innovation patterns.

While these successes demonstrate the potential for innovation in Medical Affairs, the Medical Affairs Digital Strategy Council report points to several key challenges:

Addressing these challenges requires more than incremental fixes. Scaling innovation in medical affairs demands a deliberate operating model that balances global consistency with local flexibility.

Leading organizations increasingly focus on three enablers (recommended approach). First, governance frameworks that define decision rights, validation standards, and escalation paths for medical affairs technology initiatives. Second, shared data foundations that enable insights to flow across regions while respecting privacy and regulatory constraints. Third, success metrics that extend beyond activity counts to outcomes such as cycle-time reduction, quality improvement, and stakeholder satisfaction.

Equally important is leadership alignment. When Medical Affairs, IT, and Compliance share a common understanding of risk and value, technology initiatives move faster and with fewer downstream obstacles. This alignment also reinforces the evolving role of Medical Affairs, from a reactive support function to a proactive, insight-driven partner within the enterprise.

By investing in these enablers, organizations position themselves to scale AI responsibly and sustainably, without compromising scientific integrity or compliance.

This is just the beginning of a long journey yet a very important one for Medical Affairs organizations, as their roles are moving from a support function to a strategic pillar, that is key in driving patient experiences and outcomes.