Health transformation and medical affairs leadership: what is the diagnosis?

I have just a few more remaining weeks as a student on the Health Systems Transformation course with the School of Systems Change.

We have been carefully defining and refining our ongoing personal enquiries – questions we are asking of ourselves, our communities and society more broadly.  Framing up these “how might I/ we” questions with precision and intention can have a profound influence on the work that we do within systems change.

The first question – to myself – is “how might I increase my personal autonomy to challenge norms within the status quo that are creating health inequities and harming the planet”. As an extension of this, I also ask “how might medical affairs develop greater autonomy to collectively disrupt norms within the status quo that are creating health inequities and harming the planet.”

Recognising that I do not know the exact right “answer” to these questions, I have a number of hypotheses that I would like to share in this blog.

But before we get into the possible solutions, lets first attempt to make the diagnosis.

Some of you might have seen a post last week from Paul Simms of Impatient Health asking “who is the most forward-thinking innovator you know, working in medical affairs?” The answers were illuminating - from “sorry, not a single name comes to mind”, “to there are probably some but not audible”, and “the (lack of) replies and reactions say enough”.

What is going on here?

I would argue there are several roots causes, and my diagnosis might hurt a bit. But if we cannot see clearly, we might struggle to move forwards.

First, medical affairs lacks a strong collective leadership identity that is visionary and ambitious. We have forgotten that we have a unique voice to use, and our core values as medical doctors and scientists have been challenging to consistently uphold.

Second, is our operating context. Although there is a tendency to blame medical for its lack of leadership and inability to live up to its potential, we neglect to recognise that the operating context and culture we work within can be disempowering. For example, most businesses have a one-sided focus on outcomes to demonstrate short term impact leaving little time or space for nurturing creative experimentation or working on projects at the edges away from the mainstream that may lead to longer term value.

As an aside, organisations often have a genuine desire to value diversity but in reality reward rational science based ways of thinking above other forms of knowledge such as intuitive, imaginative, cultural, feelings-based or ideas that are rooted in traditions.

Finally, and this is especially relevant in relation to the topic of future orientated health transformation, the industry has a narrow and limited view of what health transformation actually is. We focus predominantly on technological and institutional transformations, neglecting  other perspectives on the future of healthcare such as social, ecological and economic transformations. More on this coming soon.

Considering this, I think that we need to do 3 things.

1) We need to know and feel secure in who we are as medical affairs and form a collective leadership identity. This means defining the unique contribution we make to the business, to patients, to society and to the planet. It means building collective leadership rather than individual hero-centric leadership capabilities. And it means team development and psychological growth.

2) We need to find our voice in medical affairs to activate our potential as advocates for change. This means building our own inner confidence that what we have to say is not only worth hearing, it is critical that it is heard.

3) We need to take action by building operational skills and capabilities that broaden the value we bring to the business and work to break down functional silos. For example gathering future orientated healthcare market insights to inform commercial strategies beyond what they need to be today, integrating climate and health data to shape policy change and elevating the patient voice to influence corporate ESG strategies.

Do you agree? Let me know!