Expanding Medical Communications Services to Internal Customers
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Drug I n f o m l i o n Journal. Vol. 34. pp. 1053-1061, ZOO0 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
EXPANDING MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES TO INTERNAL CUSTOMERS AMYL. WERNER,PHARMD Drug Information Product Manager, SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Temple University School of Pharmacy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
TIMOTHY E.
POE,
PHARMD
Senior Manager, Customer Response Center
JAMESA. GRAHAM, PHARMD Senior Medical Information Scientist, US Medical Affairs Glaxo Wellcome Inc., Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
This review discusses how a Medical Communications Department can create and maintain new services to internal customers within the pharmaceutical industry. Examples of expanded services that may add value to a Medical Communications Department are listed and described. These new services can increase relationship-building between departments and improve the awareness of the Medical Communications Department's role in the company. Howevel; the new services must be evaluated to ensure that they add value to the department or the company and do not interfere with the performance of core medical information services. Key Words: Medical communications; Internal customers; New services
INTRODUCTION INDUSTRY MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS departments serve two different and distinct customer bases: the internal customer and the external customer. Although the core function of any industry medical communications department is to provide balanced scientific information in response to requests from health care professionals and consumers, medical communications specialists increasingly provide a wide variety of services to other departments within
Reprint address: Amy L. Werner, Drug Information Product Manager, SmithKline Beechman Pharmaceuticals, One Franklin Plaza, Fp1015, Philadelphia, PA 19101.
the company. For the majority of pharmaceutical companies, the same specialists within the medical communications department provide services to both internal and external customers. In this setting, the needs of the two customer bases must always be prioritized and balanced. Although maintaining and expanding the level of medical communications services to the internal customer base is important, this should never involve sacrificing the quality of the core functions of the medical communications department. In contrast, medical communications services in some pharmaceutical companies, may be functionally divided into separate business units so that each group can devote resources to its particular customer base (eg, internal cus-
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Amy L Werner, Timothy E. Poe, and James A. Graham
tomers, global customers, external customers). The medical communications specialist may be integrated into the various product teams to work alongside medical, regulatory, marketing, and sales. A functionally separate medical information group then provides the tradition
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