The 2030 Vision for Medical Affairs with Pascal Vande Gucht

McKinsey's 2030 vision for Medical Affairs lays out five priorities pharma organizations are expected to hit before the decade closes, and most teams are still early in the work. This conversation gets specific about what that work looks like day to day, not five years out, but for the person actually building the roadmap right now.

Pascal Vande Gucht (Medical Affairs Digital Lead at UCB) joins Scott Thompson to unpack what that roadmap looks like inside a global pharma organization several years into the work. Pascal has led UCB's medical affairs digital transformation for more than three years, and the conversation covers how his team uses real-world and claims data to identify care gaps (measurable differences between actual practice and the standard of care), why closing those gaps depends on shifting HCP beliefs before behavior follows, and how UCB built shared understanding between medical affairs and its technical and IT partners along the way. It also touches on McKinsey's own "A vision for medical affairs 2030: Five Priorities for Patient Impact", which notes that HCPs and patients now have access to 75 percent more treatment assets per indication than they did a decade ago, part of why the complexity Pascal describes keeps compounding. If you're the one being asked to build this roadmap for your own organization, this is a working example of how it gets done. mckinsey mckinsey

Key Takeaways:

• Real-world data reveals care gaps, not just targets. Pascal's team uses claims and real-world data to map patient pathways and surface care gaps such as delayed diagnosis, delayed treatment initiation, and patients staying on a treatment longer than they should.
• Insight generation explains the why behind the data. Quantifying a care gap only shows that it exists. A structured insight generation program built on field medical interactions, advisory boards, and MedInfo data surfaces the reasons behind it.
• Clinical practice change follows a belief-change chain. Data and education shift HCP beliefs first, beliefs drive adoption, and adoption changes practice and patient outcomes: a multi-year process rather than a single campaign.
• Digital transformation succeeds or stalls on mindset, not technology. The biggest hurdles at UCB were positioning the work as more than a targeting exercise, shifting the assumption that claims data is only for commercial use, and building shared fluency between medical affairs and its technical and IT partners.
• Omnichannel starts with coordination, not channels. Before adding new digital touchpoints, UCB focused on becoming value-driven and internally consistent, then built visibility across the medical community before connecting medical, clinical, and commercial views of HCP engagement.
• Leading the function forward means staying enterprise-facing. Pascal's advice for future medical excellence and digital leads is to track the accelerating vendor and Gen AI landscape while also securing enterprise-wide investment and buy-in beyond medical affairs alone.

About Our Guest

Pascal Vande Gucht is Medical Affairs Digital Lead at UCB. He is a bioengineer by training, with a background in cell and gene technology, and has spent more than 20 years in the pharma industry across manufacturing, technical operations, QA, and IT before moving into medical affairs seven years ago. He has led UCB's medical affairs digital transformation for more than three years.

Connect with Pascal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-vande-gucht

FAQ

What is a care gap in Medical Affairs?
A care gap is the measurable difference between how a treatment is actually being used in practice, such as diagnosis timing, treatment switching, or ongoing steroid use, and what current guidelines or standard of care recommend. Medical Affairs teams identify care gaps using real-world and claims data, then investigate the underlying causes through insight generation.

How does Medical Affairs change clinical practice without influencing prescribing directly?
Per Pascal Vande Gucht, Medical Affairs Digital Lead at UCB, change happens through a chain: data and education shift what HCPs believe about a treatment or unmet need, that belief shift drives adoption, and adoption is what eventually changes clinical practice and patient outcomes. It is a multi-year process, not a single engagement.

What is the biggest challenge in building Medical Affairs analytics capabilities?
Per this episode, the challenge is more often mindset than technology: positioning the work as more than a targeting exercise, shifting the assumption that claims data is only useful to commercial teams, and building shared understanding between medical affairs and its data and IT partners.

What are McKinsey's five priorities for Medical Affairs by 2030?
McKinsey's whitepaper outlines the 2030 vision under five priorities: boosting Medical Affairs leadership, integrating end-to-end data and analytics, differentiating medical strategies, aligning evidence generation with stakeholder needs, and orchestrating medical engagement. LinkedIn

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