Medical Affairs (PH148)

Global Medical Affairs Report Sample

The following excerpt is taken from Chapter 1, "Medical Affairs Resources and Structure." The full report contains budget and staffing breakdowns for US, global and country-level (non-US affiliate) teams. For the purposes of this website, some data points have been removed.

Country-Level Medical Affairs Resources

During budgeting time, much of the responsibility for resource justification falls on the general manager (GM) for each country-level affiliate. The GM defends budget plans in meetings with global corporate executives. For this reason, the GM assumes the role of spokesperson for medical affairs, so he or she should be well-informed regarding the intricacies of each medical spending area.

At a country-level affiliate for Company C, a global pharmaceutical company, the budget is built from the ground up at the local level. Medical affairs management at the national level communicates the budget draft to centralized management at headquarters via teleconference. Future medical affairs programs, activities and strategies are discussed and debated during the teleconferences.

Using feedback from this process, the country-level team finalizes a formal budget, then reviews it in detail with the country's general manager. At this stage the GM must understand the justifications for each planned program, because he or she then travels to headquarters for an official budget review with upper management. A GM unclear about any line item may fail to win executive buy-in and approval for that item — and the medical affairs budget may not turn out the way its stakeholders want it to.

Spending

Resource levels can vary greatly for affiliates, especially in medical affairs. Rightly or wrongly, global pharmaceutical companies tend to view country-level affiliates by regional and national market potential. If a company has only limited clinical or commercial operations in a particular country, then the medical affairs department will only receive limited resources itself.

This variability is shown in the following charts. Survey responses fell within a wide range of spending — even on the same continent. In 2009, affiliates in North America saw budgets as low as $x for Company 31 and as high as $x million for Company 1. Case-specific strategy, needs and resources create differences from team to team, but some variation is linked to different markets' real and potential revenue. For example, Company 1 is expanding operations in Mexico, an emerging economy ripe for growth — while Company 31 is located in the mature market of Canada, which offers limited potential.

Figure 1.17 and Figure 1.18 show country-level budgets in 2010 and 2011, respectively (these charts appear in the accompanying summary). Again, the data provide evidence of different approaches to medical affairs resources in developing and mature markets. In general, most companies are in exploratory mode when it comes to emerging markets. Investment levels vary accordingly, and Company 1 provides an excellent example of this truth. In 2010, its Mexican medical affairs budget shrank to $x million from $x million; the same budget rises to $x million in 2011. Other affiliates in emerging markets, like Company 25 and Company 30, both Asian groups, saw consecutive years of increased spending.

In contrast, budgets in mature, developed markets are fat or declining. The Canadian team from Company 31 is managing a shrinking budget, while Company 10's group in a mature European market works with a budget that has not changed over the studied three-year period.