How Medical Affairs Becomes the Connector with Sonia Talwar

Going back to where you're seeing a modern medical affairs organization, I would say it's more like a strategic intelligence function. I've uh told my colleagues, I'm like, think of us as Jarvis if you're thinking of Iron Iron Man, or if we want to go back a little further, like Kit of Knight Rider. But you know, we may not be AI. I mean, I'm real.

So but you know, we're kind of that center that can support the larger function. And the reality of it is that medical information, it's one of the few groups that gets that unfiltered view and perspective from what HCPs or clinicians are asking, understanding like what are their true questions that they have, because that's they usually call during their downtime or when they have some time. You could see where the uncertainty or confusion lies, and you can also see how it's being used in the real world and from the patient perspective.

How do they feel about the product? We sometimes get, you know, opinions. We don't ask for them, but they of course provide them, right? So it's incredibly valuable what you can get out of it.

So if it's leveraged well, that's where you can identify certain evidence gaps. Hello, hello, and welcome to Pharma Sessions, a place for pharmaceutical leaders to come and learn from each other. I'm your host, Jonathan Kaskey. Technology and market trends are bringing change at an ever-accelerating rate, and no person, team, or company can afford to be left behind.

Here, we dive into the strategies and tactics that our guests use to tackle these challenges and create new opportunities, and how you can do the same in your own organization. This episode of Pharma Sessions is sponsored by Xunt, makers of the X1 reporting platform. On today's episode of Pharma Sessions, I'm thrilled to welcome Sonia Talwar, Senior Director of Scientific Communications and Medical Information in Hematology Oncology at Pharmacosmos Therapeutics. That is quite a title.

Sonia has spent more than 15 years building and scaling Metafair's capabilities across pharma, has deep expertise in meta information, publication strategies, scientific communications, evidence planning, and more. And I think what makes Sonia's perspective really compelling is her ability to connect functions that are often siloed, medical, market access, commercial, HOR, SICOMS, and turn that complexity into intentional evidence strategy that really moves things forward. So with that, welcome to the show, Sonia.

Hi, thank you, Jonathan. Thanks for inviting me and having me on your show today. Absolutely. I hear you have a disclaimer you'd like to read.

Yes, I have to provide a disclaimer. I just wanted to let everyone know that the views are that I'm sharing today are of my own and are not that of my employer. Very good. All right, so before we dive into the questions, I always like to do an icebreaker.

And usually I talk to people about what they've had to eat so far today, but we're gonna do it a little different because I took my kids to a live band karaoke over spring break. Do you have a go-to karaoke song, Sonia? I do. There's two I go for.

One is I know this is gonna be a total curveball. I like to do the golden girls theme song. Oh. But I also like Brath in Pocket by um The Pretenders.

Oh, I love the Pretenders. That's the basic. That's very, very cool. I wouldn't have had to guess for a long time before I got to Golden Girls.

Yeah. All right. So Sonia, you have really spent your whole career meta-information, scientific communications, broader meta-fair strategy. Kind of looking back at things, do you want to share some of your history?

What drew you to this side of pharma? There's not like one defining moment. I I have always had an interest in science. And that's one of the reasons why I pursued pharmacy school.

And then straight out of during pharmacy school, I had an interest in the pharmaceutical industry. So I did a lot of internships. And my first job was really in a call center at a large pharmaceutical company. But that's where I was able to see the impact.

And I saw the science, the data, and then I would engage in with different healthcare professionals, with patients. And I saw how is that science getting translated, how it clearly informs decisions and it ultimately impacts patients. So I was really interested in that in-between of the science, the translation, how it's communicated, and how it impacts patients. And that's really how medical affairs really sits right in the middle of that.

And so that's really what kind of grabbed my interest in this area in the industry. You're connecting data strategy, your stakeholder needs in a very real way. Very interesting. And so you made this connection because you had a pharmacy background, correct, but knew you didn't want to go into a traditional pharmacy practice.

So was it this idea that you could impact more patients, or what was it about the pharmapath that made it feel like the right fit for you? Yeah, I think it was two things. I think one is understanding that science to impact, that's one component. And yes, having a broader impact, but it was also the environment.

Those internships helped me make that decision. And, you know, I have tremendous respect for pharmacists, my own pharmacists. I always thank them for what they do. And I have a lot of friends of mine who are still in that sector.

But for me personally, I didn't want to be the smartest person in the room. I needed to be in an environment where I'm learning from peers, learning from other leaders, learning from different individuals on the team. And that's where I realized it was just the right fit for me. That's very cool.

So one thing that you've talked about in the past that probably it's not surprising that as somebody who hosts the podcast, I'm into is communications. One of the interesting things that you've described is your annual evidence strategy workshop that brings together medical, market access, commercial. What problem were you trying to solve when you first created that process? Thanks for bringing that up.

I actually wrote an article about this recently called Three Feet from Gold, you know, just evolving the evidence strategy efforts. And in the early days of the company, I'm we were moving very quickly. We just launched a product. And as the product is starting to develop some of that phase four data, we actually didn't have an HUR, real world evidence team.

And I was tasked to build out the publication operations and strategy. You can't have a publication without evidence to publish. So we found that as I was engaging with different teams, medical, market access, commercial, they were all building their own evidence plans in parallel, but they weren't in sync. And so everyone had these valid priorities, but just different timelines and they had their own definition of value, right?

So that led to inefficiencies. And I pointed it out. I said, we're gonna have a lot of missed opportunities because that can impact field discussions, or if evidence comes too late when we need it earlier, you need someone to strategically coordinate that. And that's where the workshop was designed to fix that.

Really, what we did was we had to step back and align on what decisions we needed to support. Like what evidence do we really need to get there? Like what's really going to move the needle? So we shifted that mindset of function-specific needs to what is the current asset needs and ultimately for our patients, whether it's something that'll support their better access or something that'll help better support clinical decisions.

We needed to align around that. And so what was the reaction when you suggested bringing everybody together in this new way? I'm just curious how it was received when you first brought that up. I took some time to meet with different leaders to get them on board.

And we didn't want to have too many cooks in the kitchen. We kept a few leaders per organization, and uh, we invited them. And what we did was they understood and realized that they were on different priorities, but it became very evident when I sent out a baseline survey. And what we did was based on the evidence gaps that we were aware of, how did it line up with the corporate objectives and business goals and asked them to prioritize it?

And so when I had each team prioritize it at the workshop as they came, presented it to them, and they were very surprised to see that no one was aligned. So no one was aligned. Interesting. It was kind of like shock value.

I mean, today it's evolved because we have this effort, but initially no one was aligned. And really what we did was we started to, you know, create a framework that helped anchor a shared focus. And what we did was we looked at, you know, what evidence needs to be generated first based on the gaps that you mentioned. And then, you know, why does it matter?

And then how does it ladder up to the broader organizational goals? And then we also we had breakout groups and paired medical and commercial. And that was done intentionally so that they can understand each other's perspectives and come to an agreement. And that kind of uh allowed for a broader agreement amongst the team.

Yeah. So if I can recap here, so it sounds like before you brought this up to the team as a whole, you had individual meetings kind of with the key stakeholders to explain what you're doing and what you're about to be requesting of them, um, which is amazing. At one point, I was doing a lot of work with one of the Nordic companies and they exposed me to this term that's called for rinkering, which I'm probably getting totally wrong, but it's a Swedish term that means anchoring, and it's like the meetings before the meetings to make sure that uh that everything happens as you want it.

And then you're in those conversations understanding that they all have overlapping but potentially different priorities. And then the meeting itself, this workshop, is an attempt to align around one unified evidence strategy instead of different competing agendas, potentially competing agendas. Is that correct? Absolutely.

And even when you have like multiple breakout groups, you find that in most cases, like anywhere from 70 to 80 percent of the teams, they have some kind of overlap in terms of priority because they hear each other out and they start to realize that yes, this ladder's up, this makes sense of why this would be a priority over the other one. And we would ask the teams to justify so that the broader group understood. So it was an intentional workshop that allowed for that integration and the conversations and it really opened up everyone's eyes and perspectives of what are the current needs?

Because sometimes you only know what you know. So that really allowed for a better alignment. Yeah. So then once that alignment is created, what does good, I guess, collaboration look like throughout the rest of the year?

Because you don't want to just have a workshop and then say, see you later. I'll see you next June when we have our next workshop. Um, and evidence doesn't always go according to the plan. So how do you maintain that collaboration throughout the whole rest of the year?

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it's not a one and done. You have to have a few touch points throughout the year. And that also will help show the strength of that alignment, really.

Like, for instance, you're not in a situation where you're showing the plan. And some people are like, wait, what is this? This is the plan. Everyone is aware of what's being presented.

I've been in situations where I've had to present to our global CEO and share our evidence strategy, and the head of market access say, yes, this is, you know, we agreed upon this. This is what we want to do. We're supporting this. And so you have different teams supporting medical.

But like you were saying, when we have these touch points, you realize that with evidence generation, not all your studies that you plan for work out the way that you intend. Sometimes the data doesn't read out the way you look, expected it. Even the external landscape can shift. And what happens is now you have a shared way of adapting, that good collaboration.

You see situations where you're not just doing status updates, you're actually doing a little bit more decision making in some of those meetings. People are able to reprioritize because now we did the exercise of what are the priorities and we're able to adjust accordingly. And people now have that understanding and that notion of like the must-have versus the nice to have. So that distinction is now ingrained in everyone when we're talking about evidence and we're able to make some decisions faster and more efficiently.

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That's XS-U-N-T.com. All right, let's jump back into the episode. I would imagine that as you're presenting your arguments in the example you gave, you know, presenting up to the C-suite, it probably carries a lot more weight that you, you know, it's not just medical affairs saying that it's everybody that has been weighing in on these recommendations.

And that's probably much more likely to get approved. Absolutely. I mean, now you're looking and you're presenting an evidence plan that is enterprise. It's not just a skewed perspective, it's not something that's benefiting one particular audience.

It's a more holistic approach of how we're presenting a plan and everyone has had their hand in it. I like that. Well, I always think a successful episode is when we talk about something that can actually help people do their jobs a little differently. So if you're out there listening, just you know, do that.

And uh it would be a really good takeaway. But maybe we can switch gears a little bit, right? And um, one of the things that you've spent a good deal of time responsible for is medical information. And I've spent some time working with MedInfo people by cells, and it's obviously a hugely important part of the organization.

But some of the challenges that they've expressed is that it it can sometimes be viewed as a support function or even as a cost center, right? Where it's like you are legally obligated to send these response letters in a certain period of time. And so what's the fastest, easiest way to do that? How do you think that medical information should be viewed in a modern medical affairs organization?

It's funny you say that it's like a cost center because I've heard that as well. I've heard so many different terms about medical information. And I guess uh we're like the unicorn of medical affairs, right? So a lot of times I think historically it's always been thought of as a reactive function because you're responding to unsolicited requests and questions that come in.

But going back to where you're seeing a modern medical affairs organization, I would say it's more like a strategic function, maybe a strategic intelligence function. I've uh told my colleagues, I'm like, think of us as Jarvis if you're thinking of Iron Man, or, you know, if we want to go back a little further, like Kit of Knight Rider. But you know, we may not be AI. I mean, I'm real.

So but you know, we're kind of that center that can support the larger function. And the reality of it is that medical information, it's one of the few groups that gets that unfiltered view and perspective from what HCPs or clinicians are asking, like understanding like what are their true questions that they have, because that's they usually call during their downtime or when they have some time. Um, you could see where the uncertainty or confusion lies, and you can also see how it's being used in the real world and from the patient perspective.

How do they feel about the product? We sometimes get, you know, opinions. We don't ask for them, but they of course provide them, right? So it's incredibly valuable what you can get out of it.

So if it's leveraged well, that's where you can identify certain evidence gaps. Yes. If there's messaging clarity that's needed, field training needs. And in some cases, yes, life cycle strategy.

It could have some impact there. Just to be clear, the cost center word was not that was not my term. That was what somebody in medical information had said to me. It's like we do not want to be seen as a cost center.

We want to be seen as a strategic partner. But the implication was that they were seen that way. Yeah. And actually, what we were working on in that project was kind of what you just hit on at the end.

What they were talking about was basically being that intelligence layer of saying, hey, we're taking in all of these first-line questions and then analyzing those and seeing if there were educational gaps uh that could be filled. And that was how they were looking at making themselves more of a strategic partner to cut a long story short. I continue to be fascinated by that because it's like, you know, I've also been involved at various times in my career of like running ad boards and other things, and it's like pay a lot of money to physicians to get their opinions versus in MedInfo.

That's the only place where they're proactively saying. Yeah, exactly. It's like they're coming to you with their problems and giving you an opportunity to solve them. And maybe you can do that a bit more holistically if you look at things the right way.

Yeah, and that's where you have to have like that that lens, right? That strategic lens. I've seen so many situations over the years emerging off-label interest. Is that one company there was the product was intended one way, and then we had a lot of calls coming in from a certain clinical population of healthcare decision makers, and we're like, oh, okay, yeah, um, that was unexpected.

And then sometimes there's data needs that keep asking for certain data and we don't have it. Obviously, maybe we should do something about it. We should generate that data. So safety needs, you start to see like where the gaps are.

And even for your field, as I mentioned, if you start to see questions coming in where the answer is in the label, that could be in a training gap where you might have to revisit it with field colleagues. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So uh I feel like we wouldn't be a podcast in 2026 if we didn't at least touch on AI and uh so it's clearly creating all sorts of new possibilities and ways you could do the job in Scicoms, in Metafairs. Where are you seeing the most practical and immediate value today?

I would say probably content development for supporting our field colleagues. We, you know, develop a lot of materials, leave behinds and brochures and slide decks and different digital materials. We have been able to leverage AI in that sense, drafting medical content, doing literature reviews inside in SICOMs and summarization, doing uh, you know, I do MRC review or medical legal regulatory review for medical materials as well as commercial materials. And you can use that as a first pass review.

So there's just so much utility. I think I have been using it every day personally. Uh, but I and I see uh, you know, some different groups, they're starting to adopt it. And it's it's very interesting to see all the different use cases.

So what about response letters? Are you seeing anything in that? Just because about that info? Yeah, we we certainly use it to develop like the first draft.

And then, you know, like I said, with publications, uh, I remember a challenge we had was just doing the plain language summary when you when you have a bunch of farm Ds, MDs trying to summarize something at an eighth grade reading level. It was actually a challenge. So AI can help with that. Um, so so certainly there's a lot of utility.

I think that as we adopt it and we start to use it, you still need to know what good quality looks like. Otherwise, you know, you can totally miss something that is actually like it's a good from far, far from good situation, right? You might have that happen. Yeah.

So content, both content creation to a draft level, and then it's a little bit of transformation you were talking about for plain language summaries. It seems like pharma as a this is just my take on it, but it's like so much of the stuff that we have to create is so structured. And and that's actually a place where AI tends to play pretty well is working towards structure, working towards towards templates, that it seems like there is a good example to at least get some of the boilerplate in there without human involvement.

And then ideally, you know, people are both reviewing and then adding the parts that really do require that like deeper level thought and and understanding. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, very good.

So let's end on a forward-looking note, but just circling way back to our very first part of the conversation. Uh, looking ahead, how would you like to see the relationship between medical affairs, commercial, and market access continue to evolve over the next few years? I've worked at different companies and I've seen the groups in so many different ways, where sometimes there's a wall between the differ between commercial and medical, and then sometimes it's almost holding hands.

So I think that we're moving more towards that integrated model where the functions are almost like a triad and you have like the patient in the center, right? For years I used to see medical and commercial, and then market access has always been there, but now I'm seeing more of market access and medical together. So it's clearly there's a there's definitely a relationship there where you're going to see more of, like how I mentioned earlier, a shared evidence strategy. There's going to be, I would anticipate, a sharing of insights, or even, you know, we talked about AI.

And our team, like we have an AI strategy. We're going to share that with other teams because maybe that can help them in certain ways. So AI enabled collaboration to improve enterprise speed and efficiency, and just in general, just a unified strategy on a larger sense. So I think that there'll be more of an integration in that sense.

And this is where medical has that opportunity to be that. Strategic connector. Just like how I described, I was, in a way, a strategic connector with evidence strategy. There's definitely a role for medical affairs to be a part of that.

So we can help ensure that things are scientifically rigorous, clinically meaningful, so that as it meets our different audiences' needs, we can ensure that it's it's robust enough to make a point and make an impact. And from a outside perspective, vendor perspective, one of the nice things is I get to see how a lot of different companies are doing things and the breaking down of walls, everybody has their own compliance, right? And everybody's operating within their guidelines.

But even things as simple as exposing if an MSL has been calling on a doctor that a pharma rep is about to see, right? These are things that are just make the physician experience better because you don't want the rep to come in and be like, well, yeah, your friend down the hall just told me about that, you know, this morning. And now you're talking to me this afternoon, right? So even just literally removing some of the barriers of exposing activities, forget about the content or anything, anything else, can just make these things operate in a way that's a much better experience for the doctors and ultimately for the for the patients too.

Yeah, it shouldn't be like a you again, right? Yeah, be like, oh, I saw you, I had a really affecting great conversation. And I always say be brief, be brilliant, be gone, right? You don't want to see that individual or maybe that company again for some time, right?

So you're absolutely right. I think it's just I always say that we're all in the same highway going the same direction. We just have different lanes, right? Ultimately, we're a business.

We want to grow the business, right? So that we can make an impact on patients. Why not do it together? It shouldn't be separated, right?

Perfect. Love it. We can end it on that note. But you did mention an article you published.

Where did you publish that article if people want to find it? Oh, it's on LinkedIn. Okay, an article I wrote about um evidence strategies. So three features.

All right. Check out Sonia's LinkedIn profile. Thank you so much for joining me. This was a lot of fun.

Thank you, Jonathan. Appreciate your time and thanks again. This episode of Pharma Sessions is sponsored by Excent, makers of the X1 reporting platform. And that's a wrap on today's episode of Pharma Sessions with me, Jonathan Kaske.

If you enjoyed today's conversation, don't forget to hit follow or subscribe and share it with someone else in the pharma world who might need to hear it. For more on pharma trends, career growth, and business strategies, connect with me, Jonathan Kaske, on LinkedIn. Until next time, thanks for listening.