Operational & Strategic Reporting in Medical Affairs with Kjersten Teeter of Blueprint Medicines

Most Medical Affairs organizations can report how many interactions they logged, how long contracts took, and how many patients enrolled. Far fewer can explain what that work changed, and that gap is where this conversation begins.

Scott Thompson, CEO of Acceleration Point, sits down with Kjersten Teeter (Blueprint Medicines), Head of Medical Affairs Operational Excellence and Strategic Planning, to work through how Medical Affairs reporting matures from process visibility to strategic impact. Operational reporting tracks the activity, timelines, and process efficiency of Medical Affairs work; impact reporting measures the change that work produces in what the medical community knows, believes, or does. The two former Sanofi colleagues cover process-level reporting using HCP contracting as a case in point, designing reports for audiences from executive leadership to project managers, why a leadership champion matters more than stakeholder interviews, the integrated Medical dashboard Blueprint built around field data, and how AI is starting to change what Medical Operations teams can see. If your dashboards count everything but explain very little, start here.

Key Takeaways

• Reporting has to tell a story. "When you think about reporting, I think about it in a much more holistic fashion. It has to tell a story. The numbers on the page have to have impact." Kjersten frames the core question as the "so what": why the work matters, and who it matters to.
• Process data shows whether the process works: Timelines demonstrate adherence, but Kjersten notes they are also "a really good way to understand if your process just isn't working in the way in which you intend." Scott shares how a six-person HCP contracting team that executed more than 3,000 contracts used process visibility to go from over 14% of contracts taking longer than six months to none exceeding three, with an average of about one and a half.
• Design reports for every audience. "Your executive leadership is not going to necessarily want to see what your project managers need to see." Scott adds a CRM example: "Everybody reports on how many people did you talk to. Nobody remembers to create a list of the people you haven't talked to."
• Secure a champion before you build, because stakeholder interviews alone can still miss the mark. In Kjersten's words: "Buy-in at the beginning is the most important component of reporting."
• Impact lives outside the activity. Scott describes impact as "always the result on someone or something of the things you do," and names the two impacts Medical Affairs can drive: "You can change a belief, or you could change an action." Industry data reflects the gap: ZS estimates that 90% of Medical Affairs organizations consistently track activity, while fewer than 10% routinely measure behavior change.
• Approach AI iteratively. Kjersten's team has identified specific use cases for AI in Medical Operations, and Scott's advice for teams starting out is simple: "it's better to be iterative than perfect."

Resources Mentioned

ElsieAI by Kwello: The generative AI tool Kjersten describes using on top of Blueprint's integrated Medical dashboard to surface gaps in data generation and scientific contextualization. Learn more about Kwello Insights.

About Our Guest

Kjersten Teeter is Head of Medical Affairs Operational Excellence and Strategic Planning at Blueprint Medicines. She has spent more than a decade in the pharmaceutical industry and more than 20 years across the broader industry, including academia, with experience on both the investigator side and the industry side of research. Before Blueprint, she worked alongside Scott Thompson at Sanofi, and she has built her career on creating operational effectiveness and efficiency so that research moves forward for industry and academic partners alike.

Connect with Kjersten on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kjersten-teeter-21526b59/

FAQ

What is the difference between operational reporting and impact reporting in Medical Affairs?
Operational reporting tracks Medical Affairs activity and process performance, such as contract timelines, study enrollment, and the number of field interactions. Impact reporting measures the result of that work on someone or something outside the organization, such as a change in what the medical community knows, believes, or does. In this episode, Kjersten Teeter of Blueprint Medicines describes the shift from operational reporting to strategic output as moving past the counting to ask "why does it matter?"

Why do Medical Affairs reporting initiatives fail?
Kjersten Teeter points to two recurring causes. The first is a disconnect between audiences, since executive leaders and project managers need different types and levels of information. The second is the absence of a senior champion who drives alignment across leadership. As she puts it: "Buy-in at the beginning is the most important component of reporting."

Should Medical Affairs teams report on actuals or set goals?
Blueprint Medicines began by reporting on actuals and is now starting to measure execution against the tactics in its annual Medical Affairs plans. Kjersten Teeter and Scott Thompson agree that goals should follow baseline data, not precede it, because "you need the data up front to understand the questions that you're truly asking."

What should a field medical dashboard show?
Scott Thompson and Kjersten Teeter describe a progression that turns field data into a story: whether the team prioritized the right HCPs, how many opportunities for interaction it had, how those opportunities were used, and what the team learned through insights. At Blueprint Medicines, field data reaches the organization through monthly insight reports and quarterly reporting to senior leadership.

How common is impact measurement in Medical Affairs?
Activity tracking is close to universal, while deeper impact measurement is far less common. ZS estimates that 90% of Medical Affairs organizations consistently track activity, about 50% measure changes in external stakeholder knowledge and beliefs, and fewer than 10% routinely measure behavior change. A 2025 global survey of 1,023 Medical Affairs professionals found that 92% of respondents' organizations use the number of KOL engagements as an MSL performance metric, and only 3% of respondents rated current MSL KPIs as very effective.

Statistics sources: ZS, Measuring Medical Affairs' Impact in the Third Era (2025); Global survey of 1,023 Medical Affairs professionals on MSL KPIs (PMC, 2025).

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