Year: 2016-17

Company: Shire

Liaison(s): Monica Richardson, Ramin Farhood, Krystene Woodard, Garrett Alexander

Our sponsor for this project is Shire plc. Shire is a global biopharmaceutical company that was founded in 1986 with its first products consisting of various calcium based therapeutics used to treat or prevent osteoporosis. Over the next few decades, Shire embarked on a series of strategic acquisitions and today has become the leading biotechnology company focusing on serving patients with rare diseases and other highly specialized conditions with over twenty-two thousand employees across more than sixty countries. For our project, we undertook studying to understand industry standards regarding medical science liaisons ( MSL ) and health outcome liaison ( HOL ) activities to provide useful information for optimizing the role of MSLs and HOLs as global medical affairs departments continues to evolve. The team was tasked with the investigation of over 3,100 pages of metrics and industry benchmarking data related to international MSL and HOL activities to identify common practices in international medical affairs operations. The team effectively leveraged the data to identify common industry standards in budgeting, software and technology applications, organizational structure, career ladder, MSL field activities, and muchmore. Secondly, the team developed a user-friendly, customizable database containing pertinent data that was gathered and analyzed. Finally, raw data was extrapolated to generate new graphics to be used in future development of an online interactive database. Ultimately the results of the project, are intended to provide a dynamic tool to guide management in structuring medical affairs operations relating to MSLs and HOLs.