This is the fourth in a four-part blog series that examines the Clinical, Medical Affairs, Regulatory, and Safety product domains at ArisGlobal.
The ArisGlobal marketing department sat down for a talk with Sandeep Mahagaonkar, Associate Director – Medical Affairs and Quality at ArisGlobal. Sandeep graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Gulbarga University in India, and he furthered his education at the University of Oxford in England and awaits the grant of a post-graduate degree in Strategy and Innovation. Before joining ArisGlobal in 2013, he spent nearly ten years with SAP Labs spanning different roles in technology and product management.
What attracted you to ArisGlobal?
I was in a technology role for most of my career. I moved to product management at SAP Labs two years before joining ArisGlobal. I was managing products in the CRM domain. I had a sense of what ArisGlobal was working on, their domain focus on healthcare, and their product offering. Having worked in organizations that specialized in building software products, what truly attracted me to ArisGlobal was its focus on patient safety through the innovative portfolio of software products. I heard of an opportunity in product management in Medical Affairs, and it seemed to align with what I did in CRM. Both Medical Affairs and CRM departments are centered around customers and having the right engagement strategies to help deliver significant value to the involved stakeholders. Although I was new to the medical information domain, the synergies with CRM really helped make a swift transition.If you had to describe Medical Affairs, how would you sum this up?
Medical Affairs, to me, acts as the bridge between the industry and its stakeholders. Its primary role is to provide scientific and clinical support for commercial products via the medical community and is uniquely tasked with managing external relationships with the scientific community as well as with patient groups, authorities, and others. Going forward, Medical Affairs has a key role to play in making recommendations on how patient and care pathways can be changed or improved. The other important aspect is that the stakeholder timeline expectations are shortening – meaning information is expected to be delivered faster and in real-time – which puts a lot of pressure on the MA teams to respond quickly. Digital technologies, like LifeSphere Medical Information, which are already having a huge impact on the marketplace, will continue to enable Medical Information teams to respond efficiently and consistently to the stakeholder needs.