Key takeaways

• Meaningful scientific exchange starts with understanding what each healthcare provider needs in that moment, not just leading with a standard message.
• AI can help MSLs prepare for and learn from engagements, but medical affairs leaders need strong guardrails because scientific accuracy affects patient care.
• Measuring medical affairs impact depends on therapeutic area context, baseline understanding and indicators tied to quality of care.

ZS and Murali Gopal at Ardelyx discuss AI, medical affairs and how to rethink key opinion leader strategy.

Clinicians have more information available than ever, but less time to sort through what’s relevant, credible and useful for patient care. So how should medical affairs teams rethink scientific exchange when expertise is changing, healthcare delivery is evolving and AI is starting to reshape how teams prepare for engagement?

In a recent conversation about how medical affairs teams can make expert engagement more relevant, practical and measurable, Jon Gonzales, associate principal at ZS, spoke with Murali Gopal, SVP, head of medical affairs at Ardelyx, about how to prioritize engagement across the asset life cycle, how AI can support medical science liaisons (MSLs) responsibly and why successful scientific exchange depends on understanding each clinician’s needs in the moment.

Jon Gonzales (JG): Murali, you’ve led and been part of leading medical affairs organizations throughout your career. How have you helped teams elevate their capabilities to deliver more successful scientific expert engagements?

Murali Gopal (MG): There isn’t one magic trend. It’s a multitude of things. You’re looking at the roles that the HCPs play, not just in science, but in clinical care, how they work with payers, how they work with patients and how that’s evolving.

We’re seeing that patients have access to a plethora of information that they walk into offices with. We need to make sure clinicians get the necessary information at the right time so they can make better decisions with patients.

To expand those capabilities, I focus on a few key things:

1. Keeping an ear to the ground on what’s happening across the healthcare landscape, including how care is delivered, how HCP roles are changing and how patients are bringing more information into clinical conversations.
2. Understanding what technology now allows medical affairs teams to do, especially as tools are built specifically for medical affairs rather than repurposed from commercial use.
3. Keeping in mind how much information is now available to clinicians and how quickly it’s growing, because they have access to more data than ever but limited time to review it all.

JG: You talked about the evolving landscape and how much information is now available to MSLs. As a leader, how do you help teams decide where to start—who to engage first and what to prioritize?

MG: Guiding is the right word because the MSL ultimately needs to make those decisions in their territory. They know their geographies better than someone sitting centrally in an office.

There are goal posts you can use across the life cycle of an asset. Before launch, medical affairs can be in the public domain learning about the disease state, sharing disease-state information, understanding gaps and having academic or high-volume clinical discussions. As you get closer to launch and approval, you start to look more closely at where the high-volume clinicians are while still maintaining relationships with KOLs (key opinion leaders). From there, you reach as many relevant HCPs as your team size allows. Ultimately, the MSL’s responsibility is to provide information that is helpful and value-based, not transactional, so clinicians can provide appropriate care to patients moving forward.

JG: You’ve worked in therapeutic areas with large numbers of experts, especially in GI. In those broader landscapes, what makes it challenging for MSL teams to understand who to engage and what information will be most useful?

MG: In areas like GI, disease states often cross specialty and primary care. That changes the approach dramatically. The materials may be different. The topics may be different and the priority areas for discussion may be different.

Primary care clinicians deal with everything, so the information they need may be more focused on what matters most right now and how they should approach the disease before a patient gets to a specialist. In specialty care, advanced practice providers may also play a major role. The shift is not only about tailoring content to different audiences; it’s also about changing how that content is delivered and recognizing how little time clinicians have to do their own research or spend with an MSL. That means having a conversation, understanding the gap and providing data the clinician can use when making decisions.

JG: With the rise of clinical AI and the ability for HCPs (healthcare providers) and MSLs to retrieve information more easily, how is that changing scientific exchange—and what responsibility does medical affairs have in this new ecosystem?

MG: Scientific teams have a very high bar for how they respond to questions and provide information. And there are certain goal posts that have been set up that allow them to feel more secure with the information that they’re accessing versus just everything that’s available in the public domain.

For medical affairs, the opportunity starts with using AI inside closed systems rather than relying on the open public domain. That means pulling from trusted inputs—previous notes, existing insights and materials created for MSLs—and restricting those inputs so what teams use has been approved, aligns with the science and reflects what the organization understands to be important to clinicians.

That responsibility matters because scientific information can affect patient care. AI may create more efficient ways to prepare and learn from engagements, but medical affairs still needs checks and balances—reviewing generated materials, double-checking references and using medical, legal and regulatory processes before information is shared more broadly.

JG: You mentioned that medical affairs has a responsibility to make sure AI-supported scientific exchange is accurate, appropriate and tied to patient care. With that in mind, where have you seen AI make things more efficient for MSLs?

MG: On the field-facing side, we’re still early. The most practical efficiency I see today is helping MSLs synthesize information before and after engagements. AI can help them pull together what they need from prior interactions and approved materials before a meeting, then assimilate what was learned afterward, so preparation and follow-up take less time.

I would be more cautious about real-time medical inquiry responses in the field. Those interactions happen in the moment, and that is different from an internal process where a team can research an answer, review it, approve it or decide not to use it.

That’s why I think internal use cases are further along right now. Organizations can test capabilities in controlled settings, check references and build confidence before turning more time-sensitive use cases over to field teams.

JG: How can teams measure whether field engagement is changing clinical behavior, and what benchmark can show a change in clinical practice?

MG: I don’t know that there’s one benchmark because this is still evolving.

Teams can look at engagement data, claims data, evidence generation and referral patterns to understand where MSLs have engaged, where they haven’t and what differences show up. The question then becomes what change you are trying to see and whether it shows up in care patterns, such as referrals, diagnostic rates or therapies delivered.

That measurement has to be disease-state specific. For example, if a disease is underdiagnosed, teams might look at whether diagnostic patterns changed in areas where medical education occurred. In some cases, the benchmark may be tied to quality of care.

The important thing is to understand the therapeutic area, establish a baseline and decide what change would meaningfully improve care.

JG: What separates a meaningful scientific engagement from a routine one now?

MG: It comes down to whether you’re making valuable use of the clinician’s time. If you go in assuming you have a message and you’re going to deliver that message no matter what, you’ve already lost.

You need to understand where the clinician is with the disease state, treatment options, gaps and pain points. Medical affairs isn’t providing care or telling clinicians what to do.

It’s helping educate healthcare providers so they can consume the right information more quickly. The engagement should be value-based and interpersonal, not transactional.

JG: How do teams keep engagement anchored to where the science is actually going, not to a list from six months ago?

MG: There isn’t a magic bullet, but there are a few things teams should already be doing. The first is landscape monitoring: keeping track of new therapies, guideline changes and what’s happening in clinical practice. It’s about keeping an ear to the ground on where the field is moving.

The second is listening to the boots on the ground: the MSLs. As field teams go out, they’re learning what’s happening in practice and translating that information back to the organization. That matters because what teams assume centrally may not reflect how clinicians are actually operating, and those insights can challenge the current approach and help teams customize engagement based on what they’re learning.

The third is expanding beyond the traditional idea of always engaging the same high-tier KOLs. You never want to lose those relationships—you continue to maintain them, learn from them and engage with them—but the engagement may look different. Meeting less frequently with established experts can create the space and time to reach other HCPs at the right time.

JG: Thanks, Murali, for this insightful conversation and for sharing your perspective on how medical affairs teams can make scientific engagement more relevant and valuable.

MG: Thanks for having me, Jon.