Medical Affairs teams operate in a unique environment: high-value, unbranded scientific content to share, but strict compliance boundaries and lean budgets. Having just begun tiptoeing into more proactive outreach, medical affairs often relies on one or two channels like email or a single external partner. This leads to low engagement, wasted resources, and a frustrating lack of measurable impact.
The industry has long embraced the idea of omnichannel—connecting efforts across all channels—but a 2024 industry survey showed that there’s still no clear consensus on even defining the concept. The industry has made progress toward improving experiences, but less than 20% of HCPs feel they get tailored experiences. Current approaches aren’t effectively engaging HCPs, 68% of whom report feeling overloaded (and up to 80% in specialties like oncology).
So how can we connect with and truly support them in their work?
Technology has given us a better framework: optichannel. Stephen Onikoro, our Chief Operating Officer, introduced it in a presentation at Fierce Pharma Week 2025 along with a case study on how it recently empowered one team to drive rapid, sustained interest in a disease state education microsite.
Precision over spray-and-pray: The optichannel difference
Optichannel is a strategic approach that revolves around making channel and tactical selections, then deployments, based on real-world data. Instead of guessing what an HCP might want, we use customer behavior and preference data to find out and engage them where they already go for information. We layer in platform performance data to maximize every dollar and to ensure that every outreach is precise, respectful, and truly meaningful.
This approach is focused. It’s not about connecting all channels–as Onikoro said, “Because you have all channels available to you does not mean you should use all those channels to get to that HCP or that customer.” Optichannel focuses on the two or three channels where a specific HCP is most likely to engage, maximizing efficiency and impact.
It’s also centered on creating meaningful experiences to ensure relevance for HCPs. The content must be credible and valuable. AI-driven models can continuously learn from past engagement to predict future behavior, creating a tailored journey for each individual. This ensures every interaction is a logical next step.
As Onikoro explained, this means “You’re optimizing for each person based on how they’re most likely to engage with your content and how they have engaged in the past. And you’re creating future paths for each customer based on all of those data inputs.”
Ultimately, this means that medical affairs can deliver timely, unbranded scientific content that genuinely supports HCP decisions and improves patient outcomes.
Case study: A blueprint for measurable success
This shows clear results when put into action, like solving a key MA challenge: lack of visibility.
In this case study, PharmaForceIQ partnered with a large biotech that was a few years away from launching a new mechanism of action in two oncology indications. The medical affairs team had built a powerful disease state portal, but it had almost no traffic after six months. They needed a way to drive engagement compliantly and efficiently, without a commercial-sized budget.
So how did we do just that? We focused on precision and measurement.
We started by going beyond the obvious for campaign targeting. Instead of the entire universe of U.S. oncology providers, we used real-world data to identify a higher-value segment of about 19,000 HCPs (community oncologists, specialists, NPs, and PAs) most likely to encounter the indications and engage with the content.
We then used proprietary audience affinity data to pinpoint the exact channels and publishers these specific HCPs engaged with most often. As Onikoro stressed, “No HCP engages with just one channel continuously—most HCPs engage with a handful of channels.” By analyzing individual preferences across the cohort, we could predict and invest the limited budget in the top tactics with the highest predictable return.
We also defined metrics that supported the team’s objective in a specific and measurable way. We established a clear, three-level engagement funnel:
- Awareness: The HCP visited the site at least once.
- Education: The HCP engaged multiple times.
- Action: The HCP engaged three or more times.
Once the campaign was live, our system created individually personalized journeys, at scale, and continuously optimized each individual HCP’s journey. If one channel wasn’t working, the system would find another way to reach them. That might mean a change in subject line and redeployment of an email, or it might mean shifting to on an entirely different channel.
Driving sustained education: 69% HCP engagement in 6 months
This strategy delivered. Within just six months, 69% of the targeted HCPs across both indications were driven to the website and engaged with its educational content three or more times. That is more than 12,000 HCPs who reached the deepest (Action) phase of the funnel.
Overall, the campaign successfully drove over 80% of all target HCPs, or over 15,000 providers, to the website at least once.
Broken out, an astonishing 64% of HCPs in indication one and 74% in the second indication reached the highest level of engagement (3+ visits), spending over a minute on the site during each visit.
Average engagement rates across channels for Indication One were 54% higher than industry benchmarks, and average engagement rates for Indication Two were 73% higher than benchmarks.
Key lessons to inform future campaigns
This success was the result of a deliberate, data-driven strategy that can serve as a roadmap for any medical affairs team:
- “You can’t afford to be everywhere,” Onikoro noted, so focus on a handful of channels that are proven to be effective for your specific audience. “You have to find the right balance between the breadth and the depth of where your HCPs specifically are… Then two or three channels, or two or three publishers, can make a huge difference.”
- Outline success from the start, since “We wouldn’t know what success looks like if we don’t define it upfront.” Specific metrics—like a certain number of page visits or time on site—are what help your stakeholders understand impact and may even win you that next budget.
- Keep working to break down internal silos. The field and digital worlds must be connected: “If an HCP has come to your website or your portal three times, the MSL had better know about it, right?” This is powerful and critical to driving relevance across their overall experience.
- Even with minimal content, you can maximize impact. You don’t need a massive library of assets to succeed. A few well-crafted, effective pieces of content or creative assets are enough to drive traffic and move metrics when deployed thoughtfully.
Medical affairs is the voice of science. It’s time for that voice to be heard with clarity, precision, and proof. Go beyond just connecting channels to leveraging real-world data for optichannel campaigns that drive sustained impact and create measurable value.