The actionable, real-time feedback medical science liaisons (MSL) gather from healthcare professionals (HCP), key opinion leaders (KOL) and other stakeholders provides critical intelligence that can shape both real-world evidence (RWE) generation plans and your pharma market access strategy.
For small to mid-sized biotech and pharma companies, other critical factors also need to be considered if you’re operating with limited commercial infrastructure and smaller medical affairs and field teams.
These challenges mean every insight counts.
This blog explores how you can harness medical science liaison insights to drive better outcomes in your market access and RWE strategy.
Why medical science liaisons are central to your strategic decision-making
Medical science liaisons serve as scientific bridges between you and your external stakeholders. They focus on non-promotional medical affairs, peer-to-peer engagement, gathering qualitative insights on clinical practice trends, treatment pathways, unmet needs and stakeholder perceptions.
These insights are often the first signal of shifting dynamics in the advanced therapeutic landscape — particularly useful when entering new markets, launching new indications or adapting to policy changes.
Key areas where medical science liaison insights add value include:
- Understanding access barriers (e.g. payer restrictions, formulary issues).
- Identifying data gaps in current RWE that limit value demonstration.
- Capturing feedback on clinical study relevance in real-world settings.
- Monitoring competitor positioning and evolving treatment guidelines.
Bridging medical science liaison insights with drug commercialisation
Drug commercialisation teams are tasked with demonstrating the value of a therapy — not just in terms of clinical efficacy, but also in cost-effectiveness, quality of life and real-world outcomes.
The medical science liaison can enhance this by:
- Surfacing local reimbursement hurdles. During scientific exchanges, MSLs often learn about prior authorisation issues, regional differences in coverage or HCP frustrations with prescribing logistics. Feeding this intelligence to your drug commercialisation team allows for a regionally tailored pharma market access strategy.
- Validating value propositions. Before formalising a value dossier, MSLs can test key messages with KOLs and early adopters. Their feedback can guide refinements that make your payer submissions more compelling.
- Highlighting emerging stakeholders. As healthcare ecosystems evolve, so do the decision-makers. MSLs may identify new payer influencers, policy advocates or integrated care networks for you to engage with.
Enhancing your real-world evidence strategy with field-based insights
RWE is critical for post-launch success, but designing meaningful RWE studies requires a deep understanding of what truly matters to clinicians, patients and payers.
Medical science liaisons are well-positioned to influence RWE by:
- Identifying practice variations. MSLs can detect discrepancies between your clinical trial protocol and real-world use — insights that can inform a more relevant and pragmatic RWE study design.
- Informing endpoint selection. What endpoints do KOLs and HCPs find most clinically meaningful? Are payers asking for additional evidence on adherence, hospitalisation rates or economic burden? MSLs capture these preferences and feed them into your RWE planning.
- Engaging study collaborators. Many MSLs develop trusted relationships with investigators and thought leaders who are ideal partners for RWE initiatives. Early engagement allows you to co-create clinical studies that meet scientific, clinical and access needs.
Best practices for capturing and leveraging medical science liaison insights
To turn field intelligence into an actionable strategy, you must establish structured processes and cross-functional collaboration.
- Standardise insight capture. Equip MSLs with digital tools to log and tag insights in real-time, ensuring consistency and ease of analysis.
- Establish feedback loops. Schedule regular debriefs between MSLs, drug commercialisation and RWE teams to review findings and align on strategic implications.
- Prioritise insights by impact. Not all insights are equal — develop criteria to prioritise input based on potential impact on access or evidence generation.
- Enable closed-loop reporting. Demonstrate to MSLs how their insights have influenced decisions. This not only improves morale but also sharpens the focus of future field engagements.
A unified pharma market access strategy for success
The qualitative voice of the field is irreplaceable in data-driven healthcare. Medical science liaisons provide a strategic advantage by translating frontline scientific dialogue into insights that shape smarter, more agile RWE and market access strategies.
Waiting until post-launch to connect medical science liaison insights with market access and RWE is a missed opportunity.
A massive team isn’t necessary — what IS necessary is a strategic process for collecting, analysing and acting on what the field team is already hearing. Even five to 10 high-quality insights can shape your entire pharma market access strategy or RWE programme when operating in a focused market.
By breaking down internal silos and fostering cross-functional alignment, you can leverage medical science liaison insights to gain market access and sustain it through credible, real-world value demonstration.
TMC Commercial provides a full-service drug commercialisation solution, including medical affairs, regulatory compliance and marketing authorisation application support. If you want to reduce the time, cost and other complexities associated with entering new markets, contact TMC Commercial today at connect@tmcpharma.com.