MSL: The Career That is Attracting Pharmaceutical Sales Reps En Masse

In Partnership with APG

MSL (Medical Science Liaison) is a professional who serves as a bridge between the pharmaceutical industry and scientific, research, and academic circles. 

The work of the MSL is to identify Key Opinion Leaders (commonly referred to in the industry as "KOLs") that are likely to engage with the pharmaceutical industry for efforts such as conducting research or clinical trials that are rigorous and help a pharmaceutical company to obtain approval of its products in different countries. 

Key Opinion Leaders also play an essential role in pharma marketing as they can influence the opinions of other experts in their field. This ability is crucial to pharma companies as they rely on physicians prescribing their products to keep a healthy bottom line.

How Much Do MSLs Make?

According to the market analysis firm KOL, in the United States, the average MSL salary is approximately $170,000 per year, with entry-level posts starting at $125,000 and most MSL seniors earning up to $600,000 per year.

 In the United Kingdom, juniors earn between £80,000 and £90,000, whereas seniors earn up to £200,000.

What Does an MSL do?

The figure of the Medical Science Liaison is increasingly relevant in Healthcare, and their role is to establish and foster relationships with the KOLs in specific medical specializations. Most MSL professionals have advanced degrees related to health care (M.D., Pharm.D.), but recent technological advances make it possible for people from other industries to take on roles as MSL. 

According to the market analysis firm KOL, over the last 12 months, the MSL profession has seen an influx of pharmaceutical sales reps taking on MSL roles.

The critical skills required to take on an MSL role include keeping up with the latest medical advances, analytical skills, and excellent presentation and communication skills. 

An MSL career may be an attractive opportunity for those interested in medical science and the pharmaceutical industry. One of the areas that MSLs focus on is identifying experts in a specific area or specialization and ranking them by prominence. 

Image sourced from Shutterstock

How do MSLs identify experts?

There are three approaches MSL professionals use to identify and map experts (Key Opinion Leaders) to medical conditions: the "old school" approach, the "intermediate" approach, and the approach based on new Information technologies.

When using the "old school" approach, the MSLs rely on "expert panels," which are committees composed of senior physicians who recommend the names of prominent colleagues in an area. This approach is subjective, as humans (the physicians) make the recommendations.

Other MSLs use an "intermediary" approach. With this approach, the MSL relies on companies that use a "shared economy" model:

1. The intermediary company creates a survey and sends it out to medical students. The survey asks the students for the names of the doctors they consider prominent.
2. Since the students are going through Medical School, they must be reading medical papers. They are likely to recommend some names from those papers.
3. The intermediary company collects the responses, takes majority votes, and stores those names in a database.
4. The intermediary company delivers those names to the client (the MSL or pharma company) and resells the same list multiple times to multiple clients.

Although this approach involves more people and takes a majority of votes that dilutes subjectivity, it remains subjective, we are told.

Other MSLs use a technology-focused approach, using newer tools like the KOL search engine, Google Scholar, and LinkedIn, among others.

In the past, to become an MSL, it was necessary to have a pre-existing connection with the industry or to have completed an advanced academic degree. However, today, information technology democratizes access to research insights and allows any person with Internet access to access and make sense of these insights.

Do you know anyone who is a pharmaceutical representative and might be interested in taking on an MSL role? Please consider sharing this article.