We all know omnichannel is an important part of reaching as broad an audience as possible to educate providers. But knowing that doesn't get you any closer to an actual omnichannel plan.
In our recent MAPS webinar, "Advancing Omnichannel in Medical Affairs: Implementation Strategies You Can Use Today," I moderated a conversation with Kurt Mueller (Woven Health Collective), Kyle Patel (Johnson & Johnson), and Stephen Cofone (Bristol Myers Squibb). Here I'll recap the key points from that discussion that can help you start building your plan from a practical footing.
Kyle and Stephen came back to the same idea: you have to work from an overarching view. The channels, the stakeholders, the KPIs, and the content all have to be looked at together when you build your plan. You don't start with the channels. Before you design a single journey map, answer three questions:
What medical objective are we actually trying to achieve (eg, pre-launch education, evidence generation, addressing a specific care gap)?
What data and insights already exist across Medical Affairs, IT, and external partners?
Where do those data sit? What's locked in silos, and who owns access to them?
Most teams already have 60 to 70% of the data they need to personalize and orchestrate better engagement. They just haven't stitched it together across systems and stakeholders. A practical first step: get Medical Affairs, field medical, IT/digital, and analytics in a room, inventory the data sources you already have, and agree on what you will measure and why.
Segmentation came up again and again, and never as a theoretical exercise. Stephen made the point that Medical Affairs segmentation should produce a small number of segments or personas, usually two to five, that people can actually use in daily planning. That means:
Segments ladder up to medical strategy (launch status, evidence priorities, key scientific questions).
They blend adoption stage, scientific influence, engagement preferences, and channel behaviors, not just specialty and geography.
They drive different content, cadence, and channel choices, not just different labels on a slide.
Kurt added something many teams overlook: where each HCP sits on their learner journey. Early-journey HCPs may respond best to searchable, low-touch digital content. Mid-journey HCPs often need always-on digital plus trigger-based outreach. Advanced learners and emerging KOLs expect depth and relationship-driven engagement with MSLs.
If your segmentation doesn't change what you do, it isn't doing any work for you.
In many cases, the fastest path to omnichannel maturity is not creating more content but modularizing and repurposing existing content across audiences, formats, and channels. Once you know who you're trying to reach and where they are in their journey, run a structured content audit. Kurt described a simple approach:
Inventory everything you already have: field materials, congress content, web hub assets, videos, FAQs, even print.
Map it against a matrix, with learner stages on one axis, channels on the other, and key themes and topics as a layer on top.
Sort it into three buckets: content that is already fit-for-purpose, content that is 80% there and needs adaptation, and true gaps where you need new assets.
Kyle pushed us to add a future lens. Look at the evidence and publications you know are coming, not just what you have today. Wait until a major paper is accepted to think about modular summaries, short-form formats, or how it will show up across channels, and you're already behind.
So block time with your scientific communications and publication planning colleagues to line up upcoming data against your matrix. Decide in advance how you'll break each major data point into smaller, reusable modules across channels.
For example, a publication could be transformed into an infographic, webinar content, MSL discussion guide, FAQ, medical information response, and on-demand digital asset, each tailored to a different segment and stage of the learner journey.
We all have favorite channels. The panel kept coming back to the point that the data should drive prioritization. Kurt's advice: start with what your historical data tells you, including congress interactions, medical hub usage, email performance, on-demand video consumption, and chat logs.
One caution. Poor performance doesn't automatically mean a channel is useless. It may just mean the content, format, or placement is wrong. That's why Kurt argued for small tests and controlled experiments before you retire or scale any channel.
Kyle added another angle: think about owned, paid, and earned channels, and be honest about how much you truly need to own. In later stages of adoption, earned channels, meaning trusted third-party platforms where HCPs already spend time, can outperform purely owned properties. A lot of life science teams are still wired to control every surface. Omnichannel maturity means getting more comfortable with partnership and shared platforms.
On metrics, the panel aligned on one point: activity metrics are necessary but not sufficient. Stephen framed it as moving from "what happened?" to "did it matter?"
You still need leading indicators like reach, channel mix, and content utilization. But pair them with outcome-oriented measures such as:
Changes in HCP understanding of key concepts or pathways over time in defined segments.
Shifts in perceived confidence managing a disease area or applying new evidence.
Longer-term changes in care gaps, guideline alignment, or other surrogate outcomes appropriate to Medical Affairs' role.
Kyle offered a simple four-step ladder: reach, then engagement, then mindset shift, then patient or system outcomes. The practical ask for Medical Affairs leaders: make sure your omnichannel dashboards carry at least one metric at each rung, and review them by segment, not just in aggregate.
It wouldn't be a 2026 discussion without AI, but the panel treated it as a means, not an end. Stephen focused on AI's strength in pulling large, messy data sets into signals that tell you where to look, not what to think. That includes standardizing and deduplicating insights, spotting trends over time, surfacing potential next best actions, and tailoring narratives for different internal stakeholders, always with a human in the loop.
Kyle suggested a practical exercise. For any role or team, map the top workflows you own, such as congress planning, content development, or insight triage, then mark where AI can reduce friction, increase accuracy, or shorten time. Many organizations already have compliant tools in place. The gap is usually awareness and structured experimentation, not technology.
If there was a single message across the conversation, it was this. Omnichannel excellence in Medical Affairs has less to do with owning the latest tools and more to do with disciplined application of a few core principles.
You don't need five channels, a perfect journey map, or a brand-new tech stack to begin. You need clarity on your strategic imperatives, a workable set of segments, a content and channel matrix grounded in data, and a willingness to measure what matters, even when that means changing how you talk about impact inside your own company.
Inventory your available data sources
Create 2–5 usable HCP segments
Map existing content against learner journeys
Identify one channel to test and optimize
Organizations often overestimate the need for new platforms. In many cases, meaningful progress can be achieved through better coordination of existing teams, content, data, and channels. Improve even a single touchpoint in your next Medical Affairs initiative using the ideas above, and you've already started moving from omnichannel aspiration to omnichannel reality.