Background: The Medical Science Liaison (MSL) who has a strong scientific and clinical background is the disease and drug expert within the medical (affairs) department of the pharmaceutical/biotech company. Doing the important role of being the first point-of-contact to answer any drug or disease related questions from the internal as well as external stakeholders. Previously, MSL initial function was to build rapport with KOLs, but recently, the MSL role has evolved during the past 20 years in many ways from being only a support for commercial teams to the forefront of pharmaceutical practice. The MSL role has become one of the most important customer focused roles within the pharmaceutical/biotech industry and this has led to a massive increase in the MSL work force globally.

The research objective is to explain the relation between the tracking/reporting system for MSLs in medical affairs departments in pharmaceutical companies located within the MENA region and its impact on the MSL productivity therefore impacting the growth rate of the company taking in consideration the varying usage of the systems, frequency of tracking & choice of metrics trying to prove the direct relation between all the variables.

Methods: This research will be an exploratory research to test a non-directional hypothesis in this setting. The type of investigation is a descriptive analysis, correlation which will be non-controlled (amount of control will be minimal (0 – 20%)). The setting will be a field study and the time horizon will be cross-sectional with regards to the theoretical framework highlighted below.

Data collection will be done through an electronic questionnaire developed through Free-online Surveys^® to be distributed to a sample of 73 MSLs from the population of MSLs in pharmaceutical companies located in the MENA Region during a time span from 2010 till 2019.

Results: The list of 73 targeted respondents was made up of 53% Male and 47% Female. 37% of the respondents were currently working as MSLs while the remaining 63% previously worked as MSLs.

Metrics captured by these systems were 90% a mixture of quantitative as well as qualitative metrics. 43% of these metrics were company customized, 33% were general or generic metrics and 29% were therapy area customized. The tracking of the metrics was done monthly in 67% of the cases, followed by quarterly in 34%, annually in 24 % with a clear overlap between most companies in monthly and quarterly tracking.

33% agreed that MSL performance reports generated by the systems, should be readily made available to cross- functional stakeholders and 47% agreed that the use of these systems increased their productivity.

Conclusion: The significant majority of MSL respondents believe that the use of tracking and reporting systems will increase their productivity and nearly half of the respondents believe that making the generated MSL reports readily available for internal stakeholders will further enhance productivity while not negatively impacting motivation of MSLs in pharmaceutical companies operating in the MENA Region.

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S Ibrahim

B Pharm; MBA - Amgen Cairo, Egypt