Leading the Evolution: Reflections from MAPS US 2025
The MAPS 2025 Global Annual Meeting brought together over 1,400 Medical Affairs leaders in a record-breaking event focused on integration, impact, and innovation. Held against the backdrop of a healthcare landscape undergoing rapid transformation, the conference served as a powerful reminder that Medical Affairs is not just keeping pace—it’s driving the change.
From Support Function to Strategic Pillar
The sessions and conversations at MAPS 2025 made one thing clear: Medical Affairs is stepping decisively into a central role across life sciences. Whether it’s personalized HCP education, omnichannel engagement, early development involvement or outcomes-based measurement, the shift from reactive to proactive is already underway.
The recurring message? Medical Affairs is not on the sidelines. It’s leading cross-functional collaboration, shaping evidence strategies, enhancing access, and delivering on health equity. And crucially, it’s doing so with the important goal of improving patient outcomes as the focus.
Prime at MAPS US 2025
We were delighted to take part in the conference, which was as energizing as it was impactful. Our Prime booth—conveniently placed next to a coffee and beignet station (and the popular ‘puppy park’!)—became a natural meeting point for new conversations and meaningful reconnections. We met with a diverse mix of Pharma, Medical Devices and MedTech organizations, other solutions providers, and MAPS leadership. Beyond branded swag and sweet treats, the real draw was our thought leadership—especially conversations around measuring meaningful impact, fueled by interest in Mikko Figura’s whitepaper.
What stood out most this year was the movement from theory to action. MAPS isn’t just discussing transformation—it’s doing it.
Key Themes and Takeaways
Here are some of the key themes that emerged across sessions, panels, and workshops:
1. Social Impact and Health Equity
The opening keynote set the tone, urging Medical Affairs to prioritize not just innovation, but who benefits from it. Patient centricity, access, and sustainability are now business imperatives.
2. From Service Provider to Strategic Partner
Medical Affairs has been undergoing an identity shift from an executional function to a strategic co-pilot. But it is now, more than ever before, that this shift is truly being put into practice with organizations investing in vision-setting, capability audits, and structured change to enable this evolution—working to integrate across functions and lead the way in strategically partnering with healthcare providers.
3. MedTech: A Space Ripe for Innovation
Sessions on MedTech revealed a growing appetite for Medical Affairs excellence, but also a gap in scalable tools and strategy. There’s an open door here for tailored support.
4. Omnichannel Strategy and Personalized HCP Education
HCPs are demanding relevance and convenience. The future lies in audience segmentation strategies that integrate attitudes, clinical behaviors, and channel preferences—and co-created content that is relevant and delivers clear value. This will also lead to us being able to truly measure the impact of our work with effective use of data and technology.
5. Competency Frameworks for the Future
Adoption of the MAPS Competency Model can help teams speak the same language across markets and functions, aligning capabilities with evolving needs and tech advancements.
6. Impact Measurement That Matters
There’s a growing appetite to move beyond activity metrics towards outcomes-focused KPIs. It’s time to break the myth that compliance blocks innovation—education and cross-functional alignment are key.
7. GenAI—Exciting, But Early Days
AI remains top of mind, with a strong focus on practical use cases like insight mining and content generation. While comfort levels remain low, the momentum is building.
8. New Audiences, New Influence
Medical Affairs must communicate not only with HCPs, but patients, payers, policy makers, and digital influencers. We are now seeing that the ‘physician’ is not necessarily the only ‘influencer’. Platforms like Pfizer’s Health Answers show the direction of travel—one where credibility and creativity must coexist.
What This Means for Prime
MAPS 2025 reinforced the value of the work we do at Prime, and the growing need for partners who can navigate complexity, integrate strategy, align cross-functionally and deliver impact. Our omnichannel frameworks, measurement approaches, and deep cross-functional understanding with an effective system that integrates medical, market access, patient and commercial, were echoed across the sessions we attended.
The Bottom Line
The evolution of Medical Affairs isn’t theoretical, it’s happening. And the opportunity to shape it is now. From defining what ‘impact’ truly means, to delivering it at scale, MAPS 2025 confirmed that Medical Affairs has become a driving force in the future of healthcare.
At Prime, we’re proud to be part of this transformation—and even prouder to be partnering with the teams leading it.
Authors: Amy Sturges (Client Services Director), Gaurav Kumar (SVP, Integrated Medical Communications) and Valerie Moss (Chief Scientific Officer).
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