MSLs have long demonstrated their value in their advance support of product launch through scientific engagements with those clinical KOLs who educate and influence their peers in a treatment area. However, consider the impact an MSL can have on the speed to adoption if you think differently about how you identify the HCPs with whom MSLs engage. What could you achieve if you have your MSL team also educate the high-writing, community influencing HCPs? Would you be able to significantly impact speed to adoption?
Combining clinical expertise with community influence
To successfully launch your product, you have to get prescribers through the five basic questions on your therapeutic area and product:
- Do you believe in the disease/disease state?
- Do you believe in the MOA?
- Do you know the company with the new product offering?
- Do you believe in the clinical efficacy for the appropriate patient?
- Do you believe that IF you write the script, the patient will get access to the product?
In order to write a script for your product, prescribers must understand, and be in agreement with, all five of these questions. What if you could get a jump on the first three questions in the six months prior to launch by having your MSL team spend time with the high value writers in your therapeutic area? During this time, the MSLs can help these HCPs understand your brand’s MOA, and how that new MOA may positively impact patient outcomes, while gaining enhanced scientific insights from the HCPs’ real-world, in-market experiences. By priming the pump in this fashion, these HCPs will be ready for your clinical conversations at launch, and may be quicker to adopt and put your product to use for appropriate patients.
Make no mistake, this strategy does not replace your traditional MSL; it is an augmentation to drive broader awareness. MSLs will continue to engage with KOLs who can provide the surround sound to support your product and prescribing behavior. Instead of being the only vehicle, those MSLs educating KOLs become a supportive and reinforcing voice of a peer. It’s a win-win.
Such utilization of MSL teams with high value HCPs pre-launch can only serve to amplify your market insights and product launch results, while supporting the message that’s already being delivered to the clinical KOLs.
— Chris Savage, Managing Director, Propensity4
Identifying and sizing for optimal effect
Using MSL teams in this fashion, engaging both with clinical KOLs and community influencing HCP/KOLs, definitely requires a larger MSL footprint than you would traditionally use for your engagement. Efficient identification and sizing become paramount.
When identifying HCP/KOLs for such a combined effort MSL team, you should define your clinical archetypes as well as your community archetypes and then determine where they intersect to optimize efforts. The clinical archetyping identifies the scientific KOLs on a national, regional and local level who would best influence peers in your product’s therapeutic area based on their work in research, scientific papers, congress presentations, lectures, and editorial boards. The community archetyping will identify HCPs in your treatment area by diagnosis, procedure and prescribing codes and prioritize those who represent the greatest opportunity for early adoption of your product and community influence
The highest focus for engagement is the intersection of those who practice what they teach – the identified scientific KOLs with the identified community HCP/KOLs as shown below.
LEGEND: In the Community Archetyping: High = High initiating, high diagnosing, evidence medicine specialists. Med = Moderate initiating and diagnosing HCPs in specialties with mid-term launch horizon. Low = Moderate to low initiating and diagnosing HCPs in specialties with longer term launch horizon. V.Low = These HCPs have low/no initiating or diagnosing evidence and will have minimal priority.
Ideally, the size of your resulting team will be based on reaching all your priority HCPs/KOLs. Budget may dictate otherwise, and decisions on how, where and when to address them may be necessary. However, the ultimate goal of an MSL team combining scientific KOL engagements with those of high value prescribers should drive the plan. Once sizing decisions are made, you need to determine if it makes sense to hire the resources needed or outsource. If launching your first product, or have only one product serving a therapeutic area, you may consider outsourcing your expanded MSL team to see you through the 18-24 months of utilization. However, when your portfolio in a therapeutic area is large, hiring in-house resources can be more easily accommodated as they can move to the next product in the pipeline once the initial assignment is complete.
A case in point
We performed an analysis to identify clinical KOL and community influencer archetypes in a recent client engagement in the field of dermatology. We discovered that in the intersection of the 735 client-identified clinical KOLs with all relevant prescribing physicians, half of the clinical KOLs fell within the fifth and sixth priority groups based on prescribing volume. While the team elected to promote all Clinical KOLs to the top priority group, this analysis helped the client recognize the value of engaging with a broader set of customers.
Influencing to drive speedier adoption
Today’s complex healthcare landscape requires innovative thinking to successfully launch a product. Traditionally, MSL focus lists have consisted of scientific KOLs who drive innovation through education and publications. While these remain a crucial part of an MSL’s engagement plan, integrating high-value community HCPs into the plan can smooth the way for earlier adoption and enhance scientific insights with real-world, in-market experience. The resulting streamlined approach supports both scientific and community KOL relationships while amplifying MSL educational impact. It takes the MSL mission of priming the pump with the right scientific conversations to drive speedier adoption of products for the appropriate patient to a whole new level.
Learn more how you to evolve your MSL engagement focus.