Today, patients are more “active” than ever before — while the knowledge-gathering stage in the traditional path to treatment was limited to consultation with friends and family, patients are now taking an increasingly active role in educating themselves and making their own decisions about their treatment options. The internet has played a major role in this shift, giving patients access to limitless educational resources that once were accessible only by direct consultation with a medical expert. For pharma brand leads, it means that content relevancy and improving engagement are the most crucial elements or the future of medical education success. It means that as you look at your next phase of planning, you need to be finding new ways to conceive and deliver content to increase engagement. Respondents frequently mentioned “less buzzwords” as a desired change to pharma’s medical education approach, along with “more case studies.”
In the Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) community, external medical education can be categorized based on the extent of influence and industry involvement; however, it should always have the ultimate goal of optimizing patient care and improving health outcomes. Medical Affairs (MA) professionals take the lead to reach this goal by establishing external education programs to address knowledge, competency, or performance gaps. Educational strategies are implemented while fully complying with all applicable laws and codes and considering variables such as regional differences. External medical education demands are continuously evolving, and MA needs to continue to evolve with these changes to establish effective education strategies. Furthermore, the swift change to virtual education platforms due to the current COVID-19 pandemic requires speed and agility across stakeholders. The adaptation of medical education tactics will ensure effective healthcare professional (HCP) education, which will ultimately lead to improvement of patient’s healthcare.
MA professionals need to measure the impact of future of medical education initiatives on clinical practice and patient outcomes. Assessing relevance and effectiveness should be a continuous process throughout planning and implementation of an activity and needs assessment insights should inform the outcomes assessment plan. Activities should be continuously assessed for relevance and effectiveness and modified when needed. Moore and colleagues proposed a model of outcomes assessment that can aid MA professionals when evaluating activities for their impact on HCP performance and patient outcomes
