Survey of Medical Liaison Practices across the Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

Medical liaisons were initially established in the pharmaceutical industry in the late 1960s. Since that time, their role has been evolving in such a way that today medical liaisons are helping to improve outcomes for patients in a variety of venues. They accomplish this through the timely, responsive dissemination of medical information, by exploring mutual clinical and scientific interests with health care providers, by facilitating medical education, and through understanding the dynamics and unmet needs within therapeutic areas. In the literature, there are no recent, published benchmarking data available on medical liaison programs within the pharmaceutical industry. To fill this gap, we conducted a 29-question survey to gather information on 10 key categories of medical liaison programs. The areas for which we sought information included company demographics, medical liaison division background, individual medical liaison information, roles and responsibilities, client demographics, training, knowledge assessment, performance review/performance management, administrative tasks, and current challenges. The survey was sent to approximately 400 members of the Drug Information Association's Medical Communications Special Interest Area Community. Instructions were provided requesting that the survey be filled out only by managers of medical liaison programs. We received 42 complete responses; these indicated that there are many similarities in medical liaison positions across the industry, such as reporting structure, job responsibilities, and medical liaison credentials. Despite these similarities, there are many areas in which medical liaison roles differ between companies.