Successful Medical Excellence: Defining, Building, and Scaling High-Impact Teams

Michael Kahn (formerly of Spark Therapeutics) and Chris McNabb (Bayer) join Scott Thompson to define Medical Excellence and how they scoped it.

Medical Affairs teams are increasingly building dedicated Medical Excellence functions, but the term itself is new enough that no two organizations define it the same way. Across MAPS conferences and industry coverage, it has only emerged as a category distinct from "operations" in the past few years.

Michael Kahn (formerly of Spark Therapeutics) and Chris McNabb (Bayer) join host Scott Thompson to compare how they defined, scoped, and staffed Medical Excellence at two very different organizations: Spark's lean, pain-point-driven build and Bayer's larger, therapeutic-area-aligned structure. The conversation covers earning stakeholder buy-in, prioritizing competing initiatives, balancing new tools like AI against foundational operations, and branding the function so its value is actually understood. If you're building or refining a Medical Excellence function at any size organization, this conversation offers a practical blueprint.

Key Takeaways:

• Define Medical Excellence for your own organization. Kahn and McNabb agree there is no single industry definition; each organization should set a clear, org-specific definition with guardrails so the function doesn't get pulled into everything at once.
• Demand, not compliance, drives the need for the function. Both guests describe Medical Excellence emerging when the volume of work on individual contributors, MSLs, medical information leads, and medical communications leads, outpaces their ability to redesign how that work gets done.
• Look for what already exists before building something new. Both guests start new initiatives by finding what other teams have already solved and elevating it, rather than assuming Medical Excellence has to invent every answer itself.
• Scope around real pain points, then revisit the list regularly. Kahn built Spark's function around two clear early needs, medical legal review consistency and project management support, and expanded from there. McNabb's team ranks priorities as a group and admits they should rebalance that list more often than they do.
• Branding and an elevator pitch matter more than either guest expected. McNabb credits an early, deliberate elevator pitch, and settling on the title "Director of Medical Excellence," with preventing confusion about the function's scope. Kahn calls skipping that step at Spark a missed growth opportunity.
• Team structure follows organization size, not a fixed template. Spark's smaller team concentrates general roles (finance and contracts, medical legal review, library services) across therapeutic areas, while Bayer's larger team aligns individual members to specific therapeutic-area or regional teams for closer field contact.

About Our Guests

Michael Kahn is a Medical Affairs operations and excellence leader, formerly of Spark Therapeutics, where he built the company's operations function from the ground up several years ago, after starting his career in medical communications. He expanded Spark's scope into field medical insights and early AI applications, drawing on process-excellence principles including Lean Six Sigma.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kahnmichael/

Chris McNabb is Director of Medical Excellence at Bayer, where he leads the team known internally as the "DMXs." He started his career as an MSL and helped rebuild Bayer's Medical Excellence program, focusing on standardization, prioritization, and closer alignment with field teams across Bayer's therapeutic areas and regions.

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-mcnabb-ph-d/

Curious how this applies to your organization? Let's talk.

About OnPoint: The Medical Excellence Podcast

OnPoint: The Medical Excellence Podcast delivers insightful conversations on the most pressing issues facing top Medical Affairs professionals. Listen to stay ahead of industry trends and be inspired by leaders shaping the future of Medical Affairs.

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