Misaligned Pharma Structures Blamed For Poor Medical Education Performance

Experts have analyzed over a dozen teams engaged in medical education. They found out the poor performance of the teams could be partly attributed to the misalignment of certain factors including strategies for medical science liaisons and medical publications.

Cutting Edge Information, a company engaged in business intelligence, published a study that shows that the overall educational message being established by drug companies gets muddled up by medical communication structures and education that are in the first place misaligned. To remedy this and solve the strategic misalignments, drug companies resort to medical education teams.

However, Market Wired said an executive called these as mere Band-Aid solutions. What is needed is a coordinated effort between the medical education teams and their counterparts in the regional and nationwide levels so they could come up with a cohesive strategy.

Regulatory restrictions have somehow discouraged the existence in the United States of medical education programs that are industry-driven. However, this has not stopped the pharmaceutical companies from investing in activities related to medical education.

Wall Street said up to 57 percent of the pharmaceutical drug company's education teams are supportive of its multiple therapeutic portfolios. At the same time, 43 percent of the medical education teams of these companies support the entire products portfolio.

"Medical education team structure varies by the size of the product portfolio, decision-making processes and the actual activities for which teams are responsible," said Cutting Edge Information research team leader Natalie DeMasi."As far as decision making goes, most teams surveyed set their medical education strategies at the global level, but regional teams can modify these strategies to meet local needs."

Medical education according to Pharmafile has two perspectives and from the point of view of medical professional, it means being updated with the clinical technology and practice, which is rapidly changing. However, the pharmaceutical industry looks at medical education as something that could help them promote their drugs and other therapy products as well as educational grants.