Medical Information Contact Center

Pharmaceutical medical information is a broad term that entails an extensive amount of drug or product data for both on- and off-label uses. The activities of a medical information department revolve around the creation of fair and scientifically balanced materials for patients and health care professionals, including publications, dossier development, and promotional review committees.

A subset of medical information includes reactively responding to unsolicited product questions from external requestors. Pharmaceutical companies have medical informational contact centers staffed with medical information specialists (MISs). These professionals are product specialists who communicate with clients (both the medical community and the public) to provide concise, accurate, and non-promotional data in a timely manner. On a typical day, the MIS uses multiple channels to respond to customer inquiries, including phone, email, and more.

In addition to responding to and documenting calls in compliance with regulatory and legal demands, the MIS also identifies and captures adverse events and product quality complaints. Depending on the life cycle of the product, an MIS may assist with clinical trial recruitment and patient assistance programs. MISs may also attend medical congresses and scientific meetings. Not only do these experiences enhance the MIS’s scientific knowledge, but they also provide the client a face-to-face exchange of medical information with the MIS.

MISs are pharmacists, nurses and scientific PhDs who have years of related experience. More often than not, MISs specialize in one therapeutic area for one company. However, a portion of the MISs at Med Communications have a unique role. With Med Communications’ shared model option, one pharmacist may be responsible for providing medical information for several pharmaceutical companies. This model provides benefits to both our MISs and clients, as it allows us to offer our clients greater flexibility and cost savings while helping our employees to diversify their skill sets.

MISs are vital to Med Communications as they possess the clinical expertise to communicate complex product knowledge and directly fulfill the needs of our clients and their customers.

A critical element of contact center quality is the selection of staff. In the Med Communications contact center, pharmacists, nurses, and scientific PhD staff respond to medical information program inquiries. Our MISs’ deep knowledge of pharmaceutical products and the health care system fosters trust among customers who are health care professionals, and makes communication with patients and caregivers easier as well.

Using pharmacists, nurses, and scientific PhD staff as MISs for a medical information program provides many benefits:

• Efficient, effective customer service. Our MISs are already familiar with the real-world experience of working at the pharmacy or hospital, and they understand challenging issues and their urgency, such as infusion problems, device malfunctions, and the environments in which these situations occur. Our MISs greet customers warmly using client-specific language and actively listen to customer needs and handle them immediately without further triage to a more highly trained specialist, increasing both efficiency and the caller’s satisfaction with the company.
• Knowledgeable support for physicians, pharmacists, and nurses. Our MISs have experience practicing in various settings, such as community or retail pharmacies and hospitals, so health care professional customers feel that they are talking to a peer. There is no need to explain medical terms or science, as customers might need to with a less experienced specialist.
• Credibility for patient and caregiver customers. Our MISs have experience discussing medications, explaining side effects, and helping with copay card assistance, and are thus familiar with supporting patients and caregivers.
• Faster training and contact center program startup and implementation. Our MISs’ medical background means they have a deeper understanding of medical information than staff whose experience lies in other areas, which means less background information is necessary during training.
• Experience working with pharmaceutical data.  Our MISs understand clinical trial data and endpoints and are comfortable discussing this information with patients, health care professionals, and clients.
• High-quality interactions. Because of their background and scientific training, our MISs score high marks in both customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance with minimal errors. Across all contact center clients, the Med Communications contact center quality score, which measures quality of service, routinely exceeds 97%. Hiring pharmacists, nurses, and scientific PhD staff and training them well makes this possible.

Our clients expect quality service, and Med Communications’ high standards help us deliver on our clients’ business goals. Our experienced pharmacists, nurses, and scientific PhD staff MISs understand pharmaceutical products and communicate medical information about pharmaceutical products better than contact center specialists from other backgrounds. There are no shortcuts; a high-quality medical information interaction with a customer requires a high-quality MIS. Med Communications takes pride in providing that high quality of service to our clients and their customers every day.

In order to serve a broad range of client needs, Med Communications contact center also staffs non-health care professional personnel, known as Medical Information Assistants, for handling non-medical pharmaceutical customer inquiries.

All Medical Information Contact Centers need a validated Medical Information Database to be compliant with the regulatory authorities.  At Med Communications, each client has the option to use their own in-house medical information database or use Med Communications’ cost-effective, validated database.

Med Communications employs state-of-the art telephony, customer relationship management, communications, and reporting systems, which enable the following innovative services:

• Real-time metrics and dashboards
• Forecasting
• Phone, email, fax
• Call recording
• Video chat
• Live chat
• Chatbot
• Web-based request forms
• Web call back
• Built in analytics
• Visual layouts and filters
• Self-service medical information portal

The call experience is managed by down-to-the-minute detail in an environment where, even in the event of phone call transfer, our onscreen communications technology means customers never have to repeat information.

Medical information reports provide our clients with instant access to the latest customer inquiries regarding their products.

Med Communications is a trusted global provider of medical affairs services to the life sciences industry, with over 25 years’ experience providing reliable and expert medical information contact center services.  This track record is only possible as a result of the value that our clients experience by choosing Med Communications as their experienced outsourced medical information contact center partner:

• The ability to staff the contact center with an experienced outsourced partner’s highly qualified staff in a way that is more cost-effective for the client.
• Additional time for the client’s own staff to spend on drug product research and development, regulatory submissions, launch preparations, and other core-capability work.
• The ability to startup contact center services quickly with an experienced outsourced partner.
• The ability to leverage the best practice expertise of an experienced outsourced partner, in the event that the client doesn’t have the time, staffing, technology or expertise to create their own medical information contact center.
• The ability to leverage an already established “shared service” staffing model, in the event that a client needs full-time coverage for customers, but inquiry volume requires only part-time staffing.
• The ability to easily scale staffing to seamlessly handle new product launches and the ramp-up/down of inquiry volumes.
• The ability to support new global markets using an experienced outsourced partner’s global staff.

Med Communications provides high-quality controls through strong processes and continual education across the entire staff. This ensures an in-depth ability to identify and handle compliance-related issues, from adverse events to product quality complaints and more. Our staff manages product complaint communications with external customers according to client instructions for product replacement.

Selecting a contact center vendor is choosing an ambassador of your company. The development of a contact center relationship is an investment of time, energy and finance that can yield countless returns if the relationship is valued and viewed as a partnership. Building trust over the long term will lead to effective collaboration, proactive planning, and the peace of mind that your customers experience a trustworthy, balanced, and effective communication on behalf of your company.

Where to start?

During implementation, be prepared to respond to requests for information from the contact center project lead. To lay the foundation, start as you intend to go on with professional relationships, product training, telecommunications processes, and procedures for inquiry handling. The amount of company culture you share with your project lead will be handed over to the front-line medical information specialists on the project. Onboarding materials, live training sessions, invitations to town hall type meetings or even visits to headquarters can build a firm bridge and forge a cohesive line from headquarters to the medical information contact center. That bridge can flow two ways, and you will be surprised by the support, insights and solutions that will come from medical information specialists who are properly engaged and empowered to represent the brand. Insights passed at a touchpoint can enlighten the project lead to notice a trend that may otherwise be overlooked. A well-informed ambassador will take pride in providing compliant, helpful medical information to the consumers and healthcare professionals your company hopes to reach.

How to keep it going?

Approach regular touchpoints with curiosity, get to know the project lead, allow time for problem solving, and bring company news that may not be directly relevant to the project. The project lead brings years of experience from a variety of companies (from startup biopharma to established top 25 Pharma) that can bring ideas, insights, and a different perspective on an issue. Think long term by sharing company values, goals, and future plans so that the contact center integrates into these company projects.

The Right Partner. The Right Resource.

At Med Communications, we bring over 25 years of dedicated partnership into each new relationship. Our clients vouch for our commitment to excellence and value the customized approach used to meet their specific needs. The audit-tested project lead listens carefully and takes the initiative to create a service that accurately and compliantly reflects the brand you support. International Medical Information staff bring a diverse background of clinical or academic healthcare experience, geographic location, language, and interest, but all share the common purpose of improving patient experience and care through effective scientific exchange. Our team takes pride in the work we do and views each day as an opportunity to be the voice of our clients to the world. And as a contact center, we truly are that voice.