In the Journal of mHealth, Within3’s VP of Medical Affairs, Mike Abbadessa, writes that medical affairs and digital influencers should work together to shape products and reach a target market. This engagement constitutes developing relationships with clinicians, healthcare professionals, and patients or patient advocacy groups to gain their input and insights, which may offer pharmaceutical and medical device companies a competitive edge. In a fast-moving marketplace, that’s an advantage few companies can afford to miss.

“One benefit of working with DOLs is that social algorithms push the content they produce to the most relevant audience. For example, it’s likely that a DOL posting about cardiology will have built an audience of other experts and stakeholders within this field.” – Mike Abbadessa

As the life science industry evolves to meet this digital mandate, medical affairs teams won’t increase their value provision by relying only on traditional tactics. The rise of DOLs reflects a drastic shift in the way teams engage with experts, and it’s time medical affairs and digital influencers begin to use the potential of digital tools and venues for virtual advisory boards and other activities within the broader insights management landscape.

Read the entire article, or learn more about how to find and engage digital opinion leaders in our blog series.