How Digital Marketers Can Navigate Medical Affairs Omnichannel

Medical Affairs organizations are adding dedicated digital and omnichannel roles, and many of the people filling them learned their craft on the commercial side. The skills transfer to Medical Affairs, but the rules for how scientific content can be used do not.

In this Acceleration Point webinar, Scott Thompson (CEO, Acceleration Point) and Justin Kulovsek (Head of Digital & Omnichannel Engagement, Acceleration Point) explain what changes when a digital marketer starts supporting a Medical Affairs team. Justin Kulovsek moved from agency and commercial digital marketing into Medical Affairs, and he describes four challenges he hit early: undefined outcome measures, compliance pushback on digital, terminology lost in translation between commercial and medical teams, and field teams who feel threatened by digital. Scott Thompson reduces most first-time compliance concerns to one distinction. Proactive content is scientific content approved for a Medical Affairs team to share without an HCP first asking for it, while reactive content is approved only in response to an HCP request. Scott Thompson also walks through how teams are expanding reactive engagement, including the standing information request, a documented HCP request for new information on a narrowly defined topic that often expires after one year. For context on the regulatory landscape, the FDA finalized its guidance on firm communications of scientific information on unapproved uses to health care providers on January 7, 2025. If your team is bringing digital into Medical Affairs for the first time, this session starts with the conversations to have in week one.

What You'll Learn

• Justin Kulovsek recommends three steps in a digital marketer's first week in Medical Affairs: meet with compliance, assess channel readiness, and start with one channel so expectations match what the team can deliver.
• Reactive engagement is being defined in levels. Requests move from live questions to standing information requests to digital requests, and responses move from live answers to personalized digital follow-up to automated digital. Scott Thompson notes that teams rarely skip levels: "it's about moving that conversation and developing organizational comfort one step at a time."
• A crawl-walk-run approach starts with one campaign and two channels, then adds channels and campaigns as the team learns. As Justin Kulovsek puts it, "It's not a revolution, it's a pilot."
• Digital can support MSLs in three ways. It can reach a digital-only audience that MSLs are not engaging with, build awareness of existing field medical programs, and extend an MSL interaction with planned follow-up that points to a portal.
• The four-question intake tool asks four things before anything is built: who the audience is and what the unmet need is, what the outcome is and how it will be measured, what content can be used, and which channels are allowed and who owns them.
• Campaign goals map to four stages of the scientific journey (awareness, understanding, belief, and practical application), and the metrics have to follow the goal. As Scott Thompson explains, "if the goal isn't an impact goal, then the measurement won't measure impact."

About Our Speakers

Scott Thompson is CEO at Acceleration Point. He has spent over 15 years helping Medical Affairs organizations build more effective engagement and insights programs. Scott Thompson works with Medical Affairs teams across about 35 organizations on deploying digital and omnichannel programs, including the first-time compliance conversations covered in this webinar.

Connect with Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/medical-excellence/

Justin Kulovsek is Head of Digital & Omnichannel Engagement at Acceleration Point. He began his career in agency digital marketing, moved to the commercial side of pharma, and then supported a Medical Affairs team before joining Acceleration Point full-time in January 2026. Justin Kulovsek designed the four-question intake tool presented in this webinar to help digital and medical teams plan campaigns before they reach compliance review. For more on his approach, watch his webinar on simplifying omnichannel strategy for Medical Affairs teams. For a Medical Affairs leader's view of building omnichannel one step at a time, listen to Scott Thompson's OnPoint conversation with Joyce Lo, PharmD.

Connect with Justin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinkulovsek/

FAQ

What is the difference between proactive and reactive content in Medical Affairs? Proactive content is scientific content approved for a Medical Affairs team to share without an HCP first asking for it. Reactive content is approved for use only in response to an HCP request. Scott Thompson explains that most digital channels, including social, mass email, personal email, and banner placements on society websites or private networks, are proactive by nature, so a digital team needs proactively approved content before committing to one of those channels.

What should a digital marketer do first when supporting a Medical Affairs team? Justin Kulovsek recommends three steps in the first week: meet with compliance, assess channel readiness, and start with one channel so expectations are aligned with the Medical Affairs team. Commercial skills such as audience segmentation, content architecture, channel strategy, performance measurement, and journey design still apply. They have to be applied under medical logic, which centers on education and scientific exchange rather than persuasion.

How can digital teams support MSLs instead of competing with them? Scott Thompson describes three starting points. A digital-only audience reaches HCPs that MSLs are not engaging with. A digital-first approach uses digital to build awareness of programs field medical teams already run, such as medical education programs, and to drive registration. An MSL-first approach follows an MSL interaction with planned digital touchpoints, such as follow-up emails that point to a portal where the HCP can find more content. Justin Kulovsek notes that starting with a digital-only audience also helps ease field team concerns early.

What is the four-question intake tool for Medical Affairs digital campaigns? The four-question intake tool is a planning framework Justin Kulovsek designed for reviewing every Medical Affairs digital request before anything is built. The four questions are: Who is the audience and what is the unmet need? What is the outcome and how will we know? What content can we use? Which channels are allowed and who owns what? Each question produces an output: an audience statement, a primary outcome with agreed measures, an inventory of proactive and reactive content, and a channel map with governance.

How should Medical Affairs measure digital and omnichannel campaigns? Measurement starts with the goal. Scott Thompson frames campaign goals in four stages of the scientific journey: awareness, understanding, belief, and practical application. Activity goals, such as the number of emails sent, can be tracked directly. Measuring a change in understanding or belief requires additional methods, such as knowledge assessments, MSL-captured insights, or HCP surveys. Justin Kulovsek cautions that commercial-style metrics can put medical teams on the defensive, so the measures should be agreed with the medical team and leadership up front.

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

About Acceleration Point Webinars

Acceleration Point webinars bring Medical Affairs and Field Medical leaders together to share practical insights, emerging strategies, and real-world perspectives on the challenges shaping the industry. Each session is designed to support the professionals driving scientific exchange, field medical excellence, and Medical Affairs transformation.

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