Medical Affairs Professional Society 2025: Key Themes From This Year’s Meeting

The Acceleration Point team attended MAPS 2025 in New Orleans and came away with three standout themes shaping the future of Medical Affairs. Here's what the conversations on the ground revealed.

The Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) 2025 Global Annual Meeting once again delivered a meaningful experience to the global Medical Affairs community. More than 1,500 Medical Affairs, pharma, biotech, and MedTech professionals gathered in New Orleans for MAPS 2025, across more than 100 sessions spanning AI, insight generation, and strategic impact. The Acceleration Point team was able to connect with pharma leaders at both large organizations and emerging biotechs and came away with several key themes while in New Orleans. If you weren't able to attend this year, our blog shares the big picture from this year's meeting.

Key Takeaways

• MAPS 2025, the Medical Affairs Professional Society's Global Annual Meeting, drew more than 1,500 Medical Affairs, pharma, biotech, and MedTech professionals to New Orleans.
• MAPS 2025 sessions centered on three themes: communicating Medical Impact, embedding generative AI into the insights process, and improving the quality of insight generation.
• Medical Affairs teams are moving from isolated AI pilots toward embedding generative AI into core insight-generation workflows, with human-in-the-loop review as a standard safeguard.
• Acceleration Point's Kwello platform, including its ElsieAI insights assistant, helps Medical Affairs teams connect field insights, social listening, and advisory board data back to strategic objectives.
• Acceleration Point hosted a mixer for more than 50 Medical Affairs professionals during MAPS 2025, reflecting the meeting's emphasis on cross-organizational connection.

How Are Medical Affairs Teams Communicating Impact?

At the heart of this year's conversations was a focus on measuring and communicating Medical Impact. Attendees shared real-world frameworks linking insights to strategy, defining key success factors and showing how actions taken from medical insights are directly tied to improved outcomes. A consistent discussion was the need to demonstrate how Medical Affairs drives strategic decisions across the organization and with key stakeholders.

Workshops emphasized the value of "impact storytelling," where insights don't just sit in dashboards but fuel strategic shifts, such as earlier intervention in disease progression or adapting education strategies for HCPs. Conversations also tackled the paradigm shift toward coaching for specific, measurable insight outcomes, reinforcing that generating value starts with clarity in roles, expectations, and follow-through.

Through our Accelerated Insights Method™, Kwello empowers Medical Affairs teams to connect field insights, social media data, advisory board discussions, and publication analyses back to strategic objectives. The method doesn't just collect insights — it transforms them into stories that demonstrate value across stakeholder groups, including KOLs, DOLs, and even patients. Learn more about our point of view surrounding communicating medical impact.

How Is AI Being Embedded into the Medical Affairs Insights Process?

Another highlight was the continued significant role of Artificial Intelligence in Medical Affairs. MAPS 2025 sessions urged organizations to move beyond isolated AI experiments and instead embed generative AI into core capabilities. Generative AI was shown to reduce time-to-insight, improve literature summarization, and enable real-time engagement planning.

Several workshops dispelled the myth that only "Digital Leads" can drive AI innovation. Instead, cross-functional collaboration between Medical SMEs and digital teams is essential to build scalable, compliant solutions. Attendees explored real use cases, such as leveraging AI for content modularization, social listening, and summarizing KOL discussions — and even translating scientific insights into clear, actionable narratives for internal and external stakeholders.

MAPS also highlighted the critical role of human-in-the-loop (HITL) review, ensuring AI outputs maintain scientific accuracy and contextual relevance. Prompt libraries, document chunking strategies, and quality benchmarks were hot topics for those integrating LLMs into their Medical operations.

Kwello is at the forefront of this evolution with ElsieAI, a Medical Affairs Insights Assistant designed to help teams extract meaning from their insights data and convert observations into actionable steps that inform strategy. ElsieAI allows teams to summarize KOL engagements, analyze insights data quickly, and support faster, more informed decision-making.

What Does High-Quality Insight Generation Look Like?

MAPS 2025 reasserted that insights are only as valuable as the action they drive. Several workshops emphasized quality over quantity, urging teams to resist the temptation of insights dumping. Strategic medical insight generation needs structured frameworks, stakeholder alignment, and consistent coaching to create a big impact.

Participants explored multi-modal data collection — including field insights, social listening, and medical information inquiries — with a keen eye on transforming insights into clear, prioritized actions. The growing complexity of the therapeutic landscape, shifting HCP expectations, and digital transformation were cited as the biggest influences reshaping insight generation.

Kwello's Connection to Pharma Leaders

Beyond the sessions, the most memorable moments came through personal connections: hallway conversations, late-night idea swaps, and new partnerships that promise to shape the future of our field. Whether reuniting with familiar faces or forging new collaborations, MAPS reminded us of our collective purpose: to elevate patient care through Medical Excellence.

On Tuesday night during the meeting, Acceleration Point hosted a mixer for over 50 Medical Affairs professionals. While mingling with pharma leaders in roles across field medical, Medical Affairs leadership, and Medical Excellence, the above themes resurfaced. It's in these moments that Kwello's mission comes alive.

We partner with Medical Affairs teams to help them operate more effectively and communicate their strategic value across the organization. Whether it's helping support a team's insights process or helping measure and communicate the value of Medical Affairs, Kwello is embedded in the success of our clients. To learn how we can help your team across insights management and social monitoring, visit our website to schedule a meeting.

If you're looking back further, see our recap of Highlights from the 2024 MAPS Conference for how these themes have evolved year over year.

FAQ

What is MAPS 2025?
MAPS 2025 is the Medical Affairs Professional Society's Global Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, bringing together the global Medical Affairs community for sessions spanning AI, insight generation, and strategic impact.

What were the key themes at MAPS 2025?
MAPS 2025 centered on three themes: communicating Medical Impact, embedding generative AI into the insights process, and improving the quality of insight generation.

How is generative AI being used in Medical Affairs insight generation?
At MAPS 2025, generative AI was shown to reduce time-to-insight, improve literature summarization, and enable real-time engagement planning, with human-in-the-loop review to maintain scientific accuracy.

What is Kwello's ElsieAI?
ElsieAI is a Medical Affairs Insights Assistant from Kwello that helps teams extract meaning from insights data, summarize KOL engagements, and convert observations into actionable steps that inform strategy.

Why does insight generation quality matter more than quantity?
MAPS 2025 workshops emphasized that insights are only as valuable as the action they drive, urging teams to resist insights dumping in favor of structured frameworks, stakeholder alignment, and consistent coaching.