Survey of Medical Liaison Practices 3: Assessing Practice Trends across the Pharmaceutical Industry

In an effort to assess medical liaison trends across the pharmaceutical industry, two surveys of medical liaison managers were previously administered and published. The intent of these surveys was to identify overall approaches used by pharmaceutical companies in defining and managing the medical liaison role. We conducted this third survey to focus on areas identified by the initial survey participants as major challenges. In addition, we aimed to broaden our survey to include responses from both medical liaison managers and field-based medical liaisons. The current survey focused on four areas: the role of medical liaisons in competitive intelligence, health outcomes, compliance, and nontraditional medical liaison staffing options. The survey results indicated the following: a majority of companies have defined competitive intelligence plans that include the medical liaison organization; the health outcomes role is less prevalent than the traditional medical liaison role; compliance standards vary across the industry; and the contract medical liaison field will potentially grow in the future.