Best Practices in Pharma Medical Education: Staffing and Future Trends

STUDY OVERVIEW

Biopharmaceutical companies deploy medical education programs to inform health care professionals about the latest products, therapies, indications and treatment approaches. However, compliance pressures have tempered the sponsorship of some medical education programs by pharma companies, as well as some third-party providers of such services.

These constraints have given rise to questions around the necessary staffing levels of the medical education function and anticipated future trends in staffing.

Best Practices, LLC, undertook this benchmarking study to investigate current staffing levels for Medical Education groups at pharmaceutical organizations and to what extent companies are utilizing outsourcing. In addition, the study presents participants' perspective on future trends in Medical Education, in particular regarding staffing. Biopharmaceutical leaders can use the insights from this study to compare the staffing levels of their Medical education function with those of peer organizations.

KEY TOPICS

• Staffing benchmarks for Medical Education groups
• Trends in grants to professional societies/associations for accredited and non-accredited education programs
• Future trends in Medical Education staffing & investment

KEY METRICS

• Number of FTEs (Full Time Equivalent employees) working in global professional medical education organization
• Budget per FTE
• Percentage of education programs in sourced and outsourced
• Average span of control (number of medical education staff per manager)
• Regional FTE allocation
• Budget per education program
• Trends anticipated in the direction of staffing for field-based educators and clinical specialists
• Medical Education Investment Change Trends

SAMPLE KEY FINDINGS

• Benchmark Companies Rely Heavily On Outsourcing: Pharma companies heavily rely on outsourcing for developing and deploying medical education programs. They outsource 86% of medical education program development to vendors, while they depend totally on vendors for program deployment and delivery.

Best Practices, LLC engaged 15 leaders supporting medical education at 13 leading life sciences companies. More than 50% of participants are at the level of director/ senior director and around 20% of participants are managers. More than 80% of participants were from the United States.

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