How Pharmaceutical Companies Benefit from Physician Consultants

MDconsultants is a predominantly physician network of talented consultants who solve diverse and challenging problems in various specialties across Canada and the United States. Our company is led by 3 physician partners who graduated from the University of Toronto and is supported professionally by a full-time managerial staff. Our current range of capabilities include healthcare & startup consulting, health services delivery, providing professional second opinions, and occupational & organizational health.

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Pharmaceutical startups are working hard at changing the story surrounding chronic diseases, and they’re looking for physicians’ inputs and expertise to help them. Unfortunately, chronic diseases affect a huge percentage of the population and some of the treatments offered are ineffective, have terrible side effects, or no treatment available. 

So, how can physician consultants help pharma companies? The majority of pharmaceutical companies require a physician’s input and assistance with medical education, medical affairs, clinical research, development, and marketing.

The list of roles a doctor can take on when working for a pharma company is long but we’ve broken down and included three different types of responsibilities a physician may be presented with: 

  1. Scientific advisors assist with designing research trials and developing trial outcomes, analyzing trial data, or tracking data after market approval to identify any problem areas. Typically, a doctor with a strong background in bench side research would thrive in this role.
  2. Speaker programs offer physicians the opportunity to present data about the pharmaceutical company’s products to funders and other doctors. In this role, there is the opportunity to work with a novel medication developed by the company which has not yet been released to the public.
  3. Health regulation compliance is extremely important for pharma companies to abide by. Passing regulations for a market drug approval is a huge task for companies and doctors. Physicians can assist pharma companies with the operation of a drug’s safety and effectiveness approval through a submission and registration process. A doctor’s review and feedback could help a company progress in their pursuit of health regulation approval.