The State of Digital Maturity in Medical Affairs 2025

Medical Affairs is at an inflection point in its digital journey. Most organizations have moved well beyond experimentation; digital platforms are in place, AI pilots are active, and ambition for digital excellence is unmistakable. Yet progress remains uneven, and value realization is inconsistent.

This whitepaper brings together insights from the 2025 DEMA Medical Affairs Digital Maturity Survey and in-depth discussions from the Medical Affairs Digital Strategy Council, a forum of senior Medical Affairs, digital, and strategy leaders shaping the future of medical affairs digital strategy. Together, these inputs offer both scale and depth: quantitative signals from across the industry, and qualitative perspective on how digital transformation is actually unfolding inside organizations.

The findings point to a clear shift in the nature of the challenge. The question facing Medical Affairs is no longer “Are we digital?”. The questions now are “Where does digital truly work and where does it break down?” and “How effectively can we translate digital maturity into reliable execution.” While ambition remains high, satisfaction with progress has not kept pace. Capabilities exist, but they do not mature uniformly. Some areas, such as content, congress engagement, and analytics, have digital integrated into the process more routinely. Others, including MLR transformation and the ability to execute coordinated, data-informed omnichannel engagement, remain structurally constrained.

Council discussions help explain why Leaders consistently describe a gap between strategy and execution, driven not by technology limitations, but by governance complexity, unclear ownership, cultural hesitation, and uneven regional enablement. This tension is particularly visible in AI in medical affairs. While content-centric use cases are scaling, many higher-impact applications remain confined to pilots due to unresolved operating-model and accountability questions.

This paper is intended for Medical Affairs, digital, and enterprise leaders who sense that digital transformation has reached a more demanding phase. It moves beyond maturity scores and tool adoption to examine how digital actually operates day to day, where value is being created, or lost, and what leaders must do differently to close the execution gap.

To assess the current state of digital maturity in Medical Affairs, we applied an updated version of the Digital Excellence (DX) assessment framework developed through the Medical Affairs Digital Strategy Council. The framework evaluates core digital capabilities across Medical Affairs that directly influence scientific engagement, operational effectiveness, and customer experience.

The DX framework assesses maturity across key Medical Affairs capabilities, including congress and events, customer engagement and analytics, medical information and websites, content creation, and MLR review processes. Each capability is supported by a defined set of best practices that reflect increasing levels of execution complexity. These practices capture both HCP-facing activities that shape engagement experiences, including evolving models of medical affairs KOL engagement, and enablement layers that support planning, coordination, and measurement.

Using this framework, data was collected through an online survey of senior Medical Affairs leaders across global life sciences organizations. For each capability, respondents identified the practices their organizations deliberately and consistently apply. The responses were then used to calculate organization-level and industry-level Digital Excellence (DX) Scores, reflecting overall capability creation and adoption.

Survey findings were further enriched through structured, multi-hour discussions during the Medical Affairs Digital Strategy Council meeting, enabling validation of results and deeper interpretation of emerging trends, challenges, and priorities.

Just a few years ago, the central question facing Medical Affairs was straightforward: Are we digital yet? Digital maturity was largely assessed through adoption of tools, channels, and platforms, often accelerated by external pressures such as the pandemic. Progress was measured by activity: pilots launched, systems implemented, and new digital touchpoints introduced.

The 2025 reassessment reflects a fundamentally different moment. Comparing the 2025 findings with prior survey results reveals a clear shift in how leaders evaluate progress. Earlier assessments focused on building foundational capabilities and expanding digital reach. Today, the emphasis has moved to whether those capabilities work, consistently, at scale, and across regions.

Survey responses show that while priorities have evolved toward data-driven engagement, analytics, and AI-enabled workflows, the nature of reported challenges has changed. Technology availability is no longer the primary constraint. Instead, execution-related factors - culture, adoption, governance, and scalability now dominate.

This shift is reinforced by sentiment data. Organizational ambition to achieve digital excellence remains high, yet satisfaction with progress has not increased at the same pace, revealing a widening gap between intent and impact.

What the longitudinal data makes clear is that Medical Affairs has moved beyond a phase defined by adoption. Digital capabilities are no longer novel. Many are structurally embedded, but not yet operationally reliable.

Assessing maturity through adoption alone now risks overstating progress. The 2025 survey reframes digital maturity as an operating question: where digital delivers value, where it breaks down, and why execution, not ambition, has become the defining challenge.

For much of the past decade, digital strategy within Medical Affairs was often developed as a distinct roadmap aligned to the function’s scientific mandate. These strategies were not created in reaction to commercial gaps, but to address the unique requirements of scientific exchange—ensuring healthcare professionals had access to emerging evidence, data interpretation support, and balanced, non-promotional engagement models that help inform patient care.

As Medical Affairs expanded its role in evidence dissemination, medical information, and compliant engagement, digital capabilities were shaped around those priorities. Standalone digital roadmaps reflected the need for dedicated governance, scientific credibility, and workflows tailored to the medical function.

The 2025 survey data shows that this standalone model is becoming less common. The proportion of organizations reporting an independent Medical Affairs digital strategy has declined, while hybrid or enterprise-aligned models have increased.

Fig 1: How Digital Strategy Is Governed Within Medical Affairs Organizations

Survey results show a decline in fully independent Medical Affairs digital strategies, alongside a corresponding rise in enterprise-aligned and, in some cases, commercially led digital frameworks. Rather than owning separate roadmaps, Medical Affairs organizations are increasingly operating within broader enterprise digital agendas spanning commercial, medical, and data functions.

This shift reflects a maturing organizational posture and a broader recalibration of medical affairs digital strategy toward enterprise integration. Shared platforms, common data foundations, and centralized governance offer clear advantages, reducing duplication and enabling more efficient scale across regions and functions. At the same time, alignment materially changes how priorities are set, how resources are allocated, and how Medical Affairs-specific needs are surfaced within enterprise decision-making forums.

The Promise and the Trade-offs with Alignment -Council discussions reveal a nuanced picture behind the survey data. Several leaders described alignment as both necessary and overdue, particularly in areas such as analytics, CRM, and AI infrastructure. Few argued for a return to function-specific digital stacks.

At the same time, multiple participants noted concern that Medical Affairs is increasingly “looped into” enterprise or commercial digital strategies rather than actively shaping them. When digital priorities are defined primarily through commercial lenses, Medical Affairs risks becoming a downstream stakeholder adapting to systems and timelines that may not fully reflect scientific engagement, compliance requirements, or medical-specific workflows.

Governance as an Ongoing Area of Focus -, Governance has emerged as a critical determinant of whether alignment enables or constrains Medical Affairs effectiveness. Survey respondents and Council members emphasized that alignment works best when Medical Affairs has a clear seat at the table, both in strategy-setting and in the ongoing governance of digital initiatives.

Where governance models are ambiguous, alignment can dilute accountability. Decision-making slows, prioritization becomes opaque, and Medical Affairs may struggle to secure investment for capabilities critical to scientific credibility. Conversely, when governance is explicit, defining where Medical Affairs leads, where it co-owns, and where it consumes enterprise capabilities, alignment can accelerate maturity rather than impede it.

The move from ownership to co-ownership does not signal a retreat of Medical Affairs influence. It signals a transition to a more complex operating environment, and emphasizes shared responsibility for outcomes, active decision making and joint accountability.

For many years, “digital” in Medical Affairs was interpreted primarily through the lens of channels. Progress was measured by the availability of virtual interactions, digital content formats, or new touchpoints that complemented field-based engagement. While these capabilities remain important, the 2025 survey makes clear that this definition is no longer sufficient.

From Channels to Engagement Models - Survey responses show that the scope of Medical Affairs digital strategy has expanded beyond channels to encompass how engagement is designed, coordinated, and measured. The focus has shifted from where interactions occur to how scientific exchange, including more data-informed models of medical affairs KOL engagement, is orchestrated across touchpoints and over time.

Fig 2: Scope of Digital Strategy in Medical Affairs

Engagement models, defining when, how, and through which mix of channels Medical Affairs engages stakeholders have become central to digital strategy. This reflects a move away from isolated digital initiatives toward more deliberate, experience-led planning that emphasizes continuity, relevance, and scientific credibility.

Survey responses suggest a growing recognition that engagement quality and scalability are constrained as much by operational design as by strategy. Without integrated systems, consistent data flows, and reliable infrastructure, even well-conceived engagement models struggle to function effectively across regions and teams.

What Is Being Deprioritized - At the same time, the survey indicates a de-prioritization of highly fragmented approaches. Independent, function-specific technology stacks and localized digital experimentation appear less prominent than in previous assessments. Regional enablement remains important, but is increasingly pursued through standardized, enterprise-supported platforms rather than bespoke local solutions.

This does not signal reduced emphasis on local relevance. Rather, it reflects an effort to balance global consistency with selective localization, an issue that becomes more acute as organizations attempt to scale digital and AI-enabled capabilities.

Taken together, these findings point to a fundamental redefinition of digital in Medical Affairs. Digital is no longer best understood as a set of channels or tools layered onto existing ways of working. It has become the connective tissue linking engagement design, data, operations, and insight generation. An evolution where digital is now a strategic capability for Medical Affairs.

One of the clearest signals from the 2025 survey is that digital maturity in Medical Affairs is uneven. Capabilities have not progressed at the same pace, nor have they faced the same structural conditions. Assessing maturity as a single, monolithic state risks overstating progress in some areas while obscuring persistent constraints in others.

Viewed through the Digital Excellence (DX) framework, the data shows uneven progress driven by how work is organized rather than by missing capabilities. Progress is stronger where execution fits within existing structures, and slower where success depends on cross-functional coordination and shared ownership.

Fig 3: Differences in Digital Excellence (DX) Scores for Participating Organizations Between 2025 and 2021

Capabilities such as content creation, congress and event engagement, and customer engagement analytics show relatively higher DX scores and broader adoption. These capabilities are now being embedded more routinely in Medical Affairs operations rather than treated as transformation initiatives.

Their maturity is not accidental. Ownership is typically clear, execution remains largely within Medical Affairs, and value is visible and tangible. As a result, these capabilities scale more predictably across regions and contribute consistently to customer experience.

Fig 4: Barriers to Advancing Analytics Maturity in Medical Affairs

Notably, even in relatively mature areas such as analytics, the survey highlights persistent constraints, particularly around data integration, governance, and consistency. This suggests that maturity, while real, is not limitless when operating models remain fragmented. Incorporating AI represents an opportunity to explore these mature areas to potentially identify areas that could be designed more effectively.

In contrast, capabilities such as MLR transformation, advanced engagement orchestration, and true omnichannel execution continue to lag. DX scores and adoption levels for these areas remain lower despite sustained investment and leadership attention.

Fig 5: DX Score and Global and Local Adoption of 5 Digital Capabilities

What distinguishes these capabilities is not technology readiness, but structural complexity. MLR transformation challenges established compliance models and accountability structures. Omnichannel orchestration depends on alignment across Medical Affairs, Commercial, IT, Legal, and Data, often exposing unresolved tensions around ownership and decision rights. These capabilities require changes in how work is organized, not just how it is supported, making progress slower and more context dependent.

Fig 6: Perceived Impact of Digital Capabilities on HCP Engagement

This gap reinforces why maturity must be interpreted qualitatively as well as quantitatively. High adoption does not automatically equate to high strategic value, and lower maturity does not imply irrelevance. In many cases, the most constrained capabilities are those that could unlock the next step-change in Medical Affairs effectiveness, if structural barriers can be addressed.

Taken together, the DX results do not suggest that Medical Affairs is behind. They suggest that progress has followed the path of least organizational resistance. Capabilities that fit comfortably within existing structures have matured; those that challenge governance, risk tolerance, and cross-functional trust have advanced more slowly.

By 2025, the primary constraint on digital maturity in Medical Affairs is no longer access to tools or platforms. The survey shows that most organizations have already made the necessary digital investments. Yet expected outcomes, improved engagement, efficiency, and insight, remain uneven. The gap lies not in capability, but in unrealistic expectation of the technology and sustained adoption.

When Tools Exist but Usage Lags - Survey data indicates a clear shift in perceived barriers. Challenges related to culture, mindset, and execution now outweigh technology-related concerns when it comes to achieving digital outcomes, marking a departure from earlier phases of transformation, where infrastructure dominated the agenda.

Fig 7: Three main challenges that your organization is facing in achieving the expected results of the digital strategy

In practice, many Medical Affairs teams have access to digital tools but do not consistently rely on them in day-to-day work. Usage varies by role, geography, and individual confidence. Digital capabilities often remain optional, used selectively, and easily bypassed when pressure or uncertainty arises. This variability significantly limits the impact of even well-designed solutions.

Why “Launch and Train” Is No Longer Sufficient - Qualitative survey responses reveal a recurring pattern in how digital initiatives are introduced. New tools and processes are typically rolled out through communications and training, with the expectation that awareness will translate into sustained behavioral change.

Fig 8: Digital Transformation Actions Undertaken Within Medical Affairs

Fig 9: Change Management Actions Supporting Digital Transformation

In practice, this approach rarely delivers lasting impact. Once formal training concludes, teams often revert to familiar workflows, particularly in compliance-sensitive environments where expectations are unrealistic or unclear.  Immediate perfection is not realistic and cannot be a reason to return to status quo. The survey’s change management data reinforces this finding: while many organizations acknowledge the importance of change management, far fewer report taking deliberate, structured steps to embed new ways of working. Change efforts remain episodic rather than systemic.

Mindset Has Become the Primary Bottleneck - At this stage of maturity, resistance is rarely explicit. Progress is constrained instead by hesitation and inertia. Medical Affairs professionals are generally supportive of digital advancement, but uncertainty around expectations, accountability, and perceived risk creates friction. Leading and working in ambiguity is critical. All of the information will often not be available and will require agility and progress over perfection.

Council discussions consistently surface concerns around role clarity, accountability in digitally enabled workflows, and the risks associated with deviating from established processes. In the absence of clear direction, default behaviors prevail, and familiar approaches continue to dominate, even when digital alternatives are available.

Taken together, the findings suggest that digital maturity in Medical Affairs is now increasingly being shaped by leadership follow-through. Adoption improves when leaders clearly articulate why change matters, model expected behaviors, and align governance and incentives with new ways of working.

Without this alignment, even sophisticated digital strategies struggle to move beyond isolated pockets of success. Advancing from this point will require leaders to treat change management not as a supporting activity, but as a core strategic discipline, one that reduces ambiguity, reinforces accountability, and embeds digital execution into everyday operations.

Artificial intelligence is now one of the most closely watched areas of digital investment in Medical Affairs. The 2025 survey confirms that AI in medical affairs is no longer viewed as speculative. At the same time, it reveals a widening gap between demonstrated potential and sustained enterprise impact.

Survey responses show that AI adoption is most advanced in content-centric workflows. Use cases such as summarization and synthesis, translation and localization, template-aligned drafting, and structured information extraction are increasingly deployed at scale.

Fig 10: AI Use Cases Deployed at Scale in Medical Affairs

These applications share common characteristics. They address well-defined problems, fit within existing governance frameworks, and deliver immediate efficiency gains without fundamentally altering accountability or decision rights. As a result, they are easier to approve, scale, and standardize across teams and regions. For many organizations, these use cases represent a pragmatic and relatively low-risk entry point into AI.

Beyond content workflows, progress slows markedly. Survey data shows lower adoption and confidence in AI applications that influence decision-making, engagement orchestration, or insight generation. These use cases require deeper integration into Medical Affairs processes and raise more complex questions around compliance, validation, and trust.

Leaders described a growing portfolio of pilots that demonstrate technical feasibility but struggle to transition into sustained operations. This pattern, often referred to as pilotitis, reflects not immature technology, but unresolved organizational questions.

Why Pilotitis Persists - Survey findings and Council discussions point to recurring barriers to AI scale. Value narratives beyond efficiency gains remain underdeveloped, making it difficult to justify broader investment. Governance and compliance concerns introduce caution and delay. Workforce readiness, particularly anxiety about role relevance and accountability, further dampens adoption.

AI initiatives are most likely to stall when they are layered onto existing workflows without rethinking how work is organized. In contrast, adoption improves when AI is positioned as augmenting scientific judgment rather than replacing it, and when operating models evolve alongside technology.

The current state of AI in Medical Affairs mirrors earlier waves of digital transformation: technology has advanced faster than organizational readiness. The result is uneven progress, impressive demonstrations in controlled settings, but limited enterprise impact.

The implication is clear. AI success depends less on algorithm sophistication than on operating model design. The next phase of maturity will not be defined by the number of pilots launched, but by leaders’ willingness to redesign processes, clarify accountability, and address the human dimensions of change that determine whether AI becomes embedded, or remains experimental.

As digital and AI-enabled capabilities become more embedded in Medical Affairs, attention is increasingly turning to the workforce required to sustain them. The 2025 survey shows broad recognition that the Medical Affairs workforce will need to evolve. However, moving from acknowledgment to action remains challenging. Many organizations are still working to define how roles, skills, and operating models should adapt in an AI-enabled environment.

Awareness Is High, Readiness Is Uneven - Survey responses indicate that many organizations report having started discussions about the future Medical Affairs workforce. Leaders increasingly recognize that AI-enabled workflows, advanced analytics, and new engagement models will reshape how scientific work is performed.

Fig 11: Organizational Readiness for a Human–AI Workforce in Medical Affairs

However, this awareness has not translated into consistent preparedness. For most organizations, workforce considerations remain exploratory rather than operational. Few have progressed to defining how roles will evolve, how responsibilities will shift, or how accountability will be shared between humans and AI systems. This gap between intent and readiness mirrors earlier phases of digital maturity, where recognition preceded execution by several years.

Skills Move Faster Than Structure - Where action has been taken, it has focused primarily on skills. Training initiatives aimed at improving digital literacy, data fluency, or AI awareness are increasingly common and viewed as necessary first steps.

Far fewer organizations report redesigning roles, workflows, or performance expectations to reflect AI-enabled ways of working. As a result, newly acquired skills often sit atop unchanged operating models. Medical Affairs professionals may be trained on new tools, yet remain governed, incentivized, and evaluated through legacy structures, limiting the impact of those investments.

What Still Stands in the Way - A second workforce-related dataset clarifies why readiness remains constrained. When asked about unresolved challenges in enabling a future workforce of humans and AI agents, leaders consistently point to organizational rather than technical issues. It will be critical to ensure that the current workforce is motivated to engage with the evolving agentic AI landscape and adapt to new ways of working.

Fig 12: Unresolved Challenges in Enabling a Human–AI Workforce

Concerns center on role clarity, decision ownership, accountability in AI-assisted workflows, trust in AI-generated outputs, and anxiety about professional relevance. These responses do not signal resistance to technology. They reflect unanswered questions about how work will actually be done, and who will ultimately be responsible when humans and AI collaborate.

Fear and Trust as Structural Constraints - Qualitative responses and Council discussions suggest that fear operates quietly but powerfully. Fear of making the wrong decision, fear of losing scientific credibility, and fear of role erosion often manifest as hesitation rather than overt opposition.

Adoption improves when leaders explicitly address these concerns, by clarifying accountability, reinforcing that scientific judgment remains a human responsibility, and positioning AI as an augmentative rather than substitutive force. However, defining clear boundaries between human responsibility and AI contribution remains inherently challenging. Determining where AI-supported decision-making should stop, and how, when, and to what extent humans assume responsibility, will continue to require careful judgment. Where such clarity is absent, uncertainty fills the gap.

What Workforce Readiness Really Requires - Taken together, the findings suggest that workforce transformation in Medical Affairs is not constrained by lack of intent or awareness. It is constrained by the absence of clear operating models for human–AI collaboration. Until roles, responsibilities, and decision rights are explicitly redefined, workforce readiness will continue to lag, regardless of how advanced the technology becomes.

Across the survey and Council discussions, one theme emerges consistently: scaling digital and AI-enabled capabilities in Medical Affairs is significantly harder than envisioning them. Most organizations are no longer constrained by ideas or intent. What limits progress is the ability to translate ambition into reliable, repeatable execution across regions, teams, and markets.

Why Scaling Remains Difficult - Survey results show that while many digital initiatives demonstrate early promise, far fewer achieve consistent adoption at scale. Capabilities that perform well in controlled environments often struggle when exposed to the variability of real-world Medical Affairs operations. This is not a reflection of weak commitment. It reflects the inherent complexity of scaling in a function that operates across diverse regulatory environments, scientific contexts, and maturity levels. As initiatives expand, coordination demands increase, dependencies multiply, and execution becomes more sensitive to organizational design and governance.

Regional Enablement: Where Strategy Meets Reality - The survey highlights a persistent gap between global digital strategy and regional enablement. While enterprise platforms and centrally defined capabilities are increasingly common, many regional teams struggle to operationalize them effectively.

Fig 13: Regional Enablement of Digital Initiatives in Medical Affairs

Leaders pointed to recurring challenges: insufficient localization support, unclear ownership between global and local teams, and limited flexibility to adapt digital approaches to regional scientific and regulatory realities. In some cases, global standardization constrains relevance; in others, excessive localization undermines consistency and scale. This tension becomes more acute as organizations attempt to deploy more complex, AI-enabled capabilities.

As digital maturity advances, governance has emerged as a decisive factor in execution success. Survey responses and Council discussions show that ambiguity around decision rights, prioritization, and accountability slows progress more than technical limitations.

Earlier phases of digital transformation rewarded experimentation and innovation. Today, those same behaviors can impede progress if they are not paired with execution discipline.

The survey findings suggest that the next phase of maturity will be defined by fewer initiatives executed rigorously, rather than a proliferation of pilots. For Medical Affairs, this means shifting focus from launching new capabilities to embedding existing ones, aligning governance, enabling regions deliberately, and holding the organization accountable for sustained adoption rather than episodic success.

Digital success in Medical Affairs can no longer be measured by the number of tools deployed, pilots launched, or strategies articulated. The evidence shows uneven maturity, fragile execution, and inconsistent value realization. Leaders must therefore recalibrate expectations, from transformation milestones to operational reliability.

In this context, success looks less like innovation and more like consistency: capabilities that work predictably across regions and teams; decisions that are repeatable rather than heroic; and engagement models that are trusted, not improvised.

The most persistent gaps identified in this assessment are not technological. They arise where governance is unclear, ownership is fragmented, and accountability is diffused. Expanding scope without strengthening execution discipline risks compounding complexity rather than resolving it.

The next phase of maturity will be defined by fewer initiatives executed rigorously, not more initiatives launched. This requires clearer ownership, deliberate choices about standardization versus flexibility, and sustained reinforcement of how work is expected to get done.

Perhaps the most consequential implication of this assessment is that digital progress is now shaped primarily by leadership behavior. Tools exist. Skills are emerging. What lags is consistent adoption, especially where expectations are unclear and fear goes unaddressed.

Leaders who succeed in the next phase will be those who move beyond endorsement to active enablement: modeling expected behaviors, aligning incentives and governance, and creating the conditions in which new ways of working become the default rather than the exception.