MAPS EMEA 2025: Driving Transformation and Excellence in Medical Affairs

With over 700 professionals in attendance, the MAPS EMEA 2025 Annual Meeting marked a turning point for Medical Affairs – signaling a new era of strategic influence, patient focus, and digital transformation. Held at the Hilton London Metropole from May 12-14, the event saw a notable increase in participation from previous years and offered a dynamic platform to explore the function’s evolving role. Centered on the theme of Transformation, the event emphasized how Medical Affairs continues to evolve as a strategic, proactive leader – driving innovation, enhancing patient outcomes, and enabling cross-functional collaboration.

Through a comprehensive program of sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities, the conference highlighted the multifaceted nature of transformation – spanning leadership, health equity, digital innovation, launch excellence, evidence generation, and patient engagement. For the global Medical Affairs community, this gathering was not only timely and relevant but a clear sign of what’s next.

This blog summarizes the key themes that emerged from the conference, with a spotlight on a few areas that stood out as particularly impactful and forward-looking for the future of Medical Affairs.

1. Embedding Patient Engagement and Advancing Health Equity

Patient engagement emerged prominently throughout the conference, reflecting the growing importance of incorporating authentic patient perspectives into Medical Affairs strategies. The opening General Assembly, featuring patient advocates and industry leaders, emphasized the critical need for patient-centric thinking to enhance trust, improve healthcare outcomes, and ensure relevance. Practical workshops further addressed how Medical Affairs teams can operationalize patient engagement through targeted initiatives focused on health equity, providing concrete examples of addressing disparities in healthcare access, treatment, and outcomes.

Beyond access, patients face a variety of barriers to health equity that can persist throughout their healthcare journey. Among these barriers are Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) that encompass the non-medical factors (e.g., environmental, socioeconomic, etc.) that significantly influence health outcomes. Medical Affairs is uniquely positioned to not only identify existing health equity barriers through insights from real-world evidence but also advocate for solutions that address disparities in care.

2. Strengthening Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership was a clear focus throughout the conference, reflecting the continuously expanding role of Medical Affairs as a driver of enterprise-wide impact. Sessions underscored the importance of Medical Affairs thinking and operating beyond its traditional function – contributing proactively to cross-functional strategy, evidence planning, and stakeholder engagement.

One area where the role must continue to evolve is early involvement in the drug development lifecycle. Medical Affairs teams can play a vital role in shaping clinical development plans from the outset – bringing insights into patient needs, data gaps, and system-level realities that can significantly improve value and outcomes.

At Putnam, we believe this early strategic involvement of Medical Affairs is essential to optimize development programs to ensure they are informed by insights from all stakeholders.

3. Demonstrating Value Through Real-World Data Generation and Advanced Analytics

Robust evidence generation, leveraging real-world data (RWD) and advanced analytics, was featured as a central topic. Attendees discussed practical strategies for bridging post-launch evidence gaps, optimizing data-driven decision-making, and building compelling evidence narratives that resonate with payers, regulators, and clinicians.

Workshops highlighted the expanding role of Medical Affairs in orchestrating comprehensive evidence plans, integrating clinical insights, economic considerations, and patient-reported outcomes to clearly demonstrate therapeutic value in real-world settings.

However, a key challenge remains aligning cross-functional stakeholders across R&D, commercial, and market access. Medical Affairs can and should play a more active role in driving that alignment – ensuring that evidence strategies reflect shared priorities and are built to serve diverse internal and external decision-makers. The degree of maturity in this integration varies widely across organizations and establishing clear ownership, governance, and communication pathways remains a key opportunity for many organizations.

There is also an opportunity in applying advanced analytics and closed feedback loops – where real-world outcomes directly inform refinement of strategic imperatives and key tactics.

4. Achieving Launch Excellence and Seamless Integration

Launch excellence was another key theme, with breakout sessions exploring best practices for product launches, particularly in scenarios involving integration of newly acquired assets into existing portfolios. Participants discussed strategic considerations for seamless global-to-local transitions, cross-functional collaboration, and effective planning. Additional workshops provided valuable perspectives on compliance-related risks, underscoring the importance of alignment between Medical Affairs, regulatory affairs, and commercial teams to achieve successful and compliant launches.

Medical Affairs is well positioned to bridge strategic, clinical, and operational considerations in the launch process. Its in-depth medical understanding and proximity to both internal and external stakeholders allow it to surface unmet needs, anticipate evidence requirements, and ensure scientific integrity throughout the transition from development to commercialization. Organizations that embed Medical Affairs into launch planning from the outset are better positioned to deliver insight-driven strategies that resonate across markets and stakeholders.

5. Harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Enhance Medical Affairs Capabilities

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) was a significant focus, reflecting its transformative potential across Medical Affairs functions. Workshops examined practical applications of AI in real-world scenarios, such as enhancing data analytics capabilities, accelerating insights generation, and optimizing stakeholder engagement.

Attendees discussed how strategic implementation of AI-driven solutions can streamline workflows, enhance accuracy, drive personalization, and foster innovative approaches to addressing complex healthcare challenges.

We are seeing first-hand – through our Medical Affairs Leadership Council – that AI is rapidly expanding across a broader range of use cases, moving beyond digital content and publications into insights generation, scientific engagement, and trial support. While adoption levels vary by organization, the trajectory is clear: AI is becoming a foundational capability within high-performing Medical Affairs teams.

For teams just starting their AI journey, focusing on a few practical, high-impact use cases is an effective way to build early momentum.

6. Quantifying Success: Measuring the Impact of Medical Affairs

Several sessions addressed the increasingly critical need for Medical Affairs teams to effectively demonstrate their impact within organizations. Discussions highlighted advanced frameworks and methodologies for measuring Medical Affairs outcomes and value, focusing on clear, meaningful indicators aligned with organizational objectives and patient needs.

Key success factors included:

• Choosing outcomes that are meaningful and feasible
• Identifying the most appropriate data sources
• Using a blend of leading and lagging indicators

Participants explored practical strategies to quantify the effectiveness of Medical Affairs activities, emphasizing how robust impact measurement strengthens the internal positioning of Medical Affairs and supports strategic decision-making.

A wide range of impact metrics are available, and teams may be inclined to focus on the most ambitious endpoints – such as closing a major care gap – without fully considering feasibility. However, care gaps exist along a spectrum, and Medical Affairs leaders can strategically prioritize which ones to address. Tackling the largest or most complex gap is not always necessary. Impact can be demonstrated in many ways, and a thoughtful combination of leading and lagging indicators often yields the most meaningful and actionable insights.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Medical Affairs

As the MAPS EMEA 2025 Annual Meeting made clear, Medical Affairs is entering a new era – defined by strategic influence, measurable impact, and transformation at scale. The discussions, insights, and collaborations that took place throughout the conference underscore the urgency for Medical Affairs leaders to embrace this momentum.

By continuing to innovate, engage meaningfully, and prioritize data-driven strategies, Medical Affairs is well-positioned to shape the future of healthcare – and deliver greater value to patients, providers, and the broader system.

How is your Medical Affairs team preparing for this transformation? We’d love to hear your perspective.

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