Job Description Summary
The Medical Affairs Head serves as the lead medical representative in the country and a trusted advisor to the Country Leadership Team. The role defines and delivers the country medical direction, translating regional and global direction into effective local execution. It drives scientific and medical excellence across disease areas, supports launch readiness, and enables credible engagement with the healthcare ecosystem in line with country scope. The role leads and develops the local medical organization to meet evolving scientific, business, and external environment needs. Accountability includes coordinating and executing country contributions to integrated evidence plans, in alignment with regional and global governance, to support access and improved patient outcomes in real world settings.
Job Description
Major accountabilities:
- Leadership & Country Medical Direction
- Shape, lead, and execute the country medical direction aligned with global & international priorities
- Serve as the scientific, ethical, and medical authority on the Country Leadership Team
- Contribute to health policy, guidelines, and care standards through proactive engagement with authorities, payer bodies, scientific societies, and ecosystem partners
- Translate complex scientific and market insights into directional recommendations and impactful actions
- Create trusting relationship and contribute to regional/international and global medical
- Medical Governance, Excellence, Evidence Generation & Scientific Leadership
- Ensure full scientific integrity and medical accuracy across all internal & external engagements
- Lead integrated evidence generation plans addressing local data gaps, in alignment with regional/global governance and NPhS scope
- Oversee MAPs requests and programs
- Ensure country readiness and execution of implementation science activities aligned with regional/global plans
- Champion innovative and digital approaches for data generation, insights, and stakeholder engagement
- Launch Leadership & Product Lifecycle Support
- Drive early, end-to-end launch readiness (diagnostics, biomarkers, KOL mobilization, medical education, evidence requirements)
- Co-lead launch excellence with TA, access, and regulatory teams
- Ensure medical input to value story and evidence supporting access in HTA and reimbursement
- External Engagement & Ecosystem Partnership
- Build partnerships beyond traditional HCPs (e.g., payers, policymakers, digital health partners, patient groups)
- Represent Novartis at key medical, governmental, and scientific events
- Shape external perceptions and scientific leadership of Novartis in the country
- Build collaborative networks to accelerate quality of care, reimbursement, and health system innovation
- Organizational Transformation & Capability Building in collaboration with EE
- Lead ongoing transformation toward a future ready, agile, digitally enabled medical organization
- Define capability direction based on future TA needs, scientific trends, and evolving healthcare dynamics in close collaboration with EE
- Drive medical excellence frameworks, quality standards, and operational efficiencies
- Ensure robust governance, compliance, and risk management
- Leadership & Culture
- Lead and coordinate cross-functional teams to execute priorities
- Build a high-performance culture, manage recruiting, performance, and coaching; develop critical capabilities and talent pipelines
- Attract, develop, and retain top talent; strengthen succession plans and capabilities across the country organization
- Role-model Novartis Leadership Expectations & Behaviors, inspire transformation and performance, and demonstrate self-awareness with a growth mindset
Key performance indicators:
- Medical Excellence
- Execution rate of Country One Brand Plan KPIs
- Quality, scientific rigor, and compliance metrics (audit readiness, risk indicators)
- Field excellence and customer engagement metrics
- Launch Success
- Launch readiness metrics across TAs as per Novartis launch readiness guideline
- Contribution to Value & Access and reimbursement
- Ecosystem Collaboration
- Impact of external partnerships on policy, access, and guideline evolution
- Medical engagement quality and reach (incl. new models & digital channels)
- People & Culture
- Talent development, retention, and internal mobility
- Succession bench strengths (both internally & externally)
- Medical capability uplift and training completion
- Engagement and leadership index scores
- Operational Excellence
- Budget adherence, process efficiency, and operational improvements
- Effectiveness of medical governance & compliance processes
Education:
· MD preferred; PhD/PharmD or comparable advanced scientific degree acceptable depending on country regulation
Languages:
· English
· Local country language required
Experience/Professional Requirement:
Experiences:
- 10+ years of experience in Medical Affairs, preferably including 3–5 years in senior medical leadership roles (e.g. Medical TA Lead).
- Demonstrated leadership associates in Medical or scientific roles, with a track record of building and developing high performing teams.
- Deep knowledge of local healthcare systems, payer dynamics, policy frameworks, and therapeutic area science.
- Proven success leading multiple pre‑launch and launches across therapeutic areas.
- Experience shaping HTA, reimbursement, pricing and access, including integration of local evidence requirements.
- Extensive engagement with KOLs, scientific societies, policymakers, payers, regulatory bodies and broader healthcare ecosystem partners.
- Experience leading organizational transformation, including digital enablement and capability building within Medical Affairs
Functional & Leadership skills:
- Navigating Complexity: ability to translate complex data into clear and relevant insights, executive presentation skills and ability to build compelling scientific narratives to support internal alignment and external advocacy; and strong knowledge of product LCM.
- Delivering Impact: Demonstrating TA depth with ability to interpret and communicate clinical trial results, RWE and guidelines updates and strong knowledge of the regulatory and compliance frameworks such as GCP, PV, promotional vs non promotional standards; fully immersed in the business landscape demonstrating high business acumen, leverage data driven insights to inform decisions and cross-functional collaboration
- Leading People: Demonstrated ability to lead transformations and changes while leading continued efforts on managing resources, performance and launch preparations; expertise of building and maintaining relationships with medical experts, medical societies, regulators, guideline boards, and policy makers
Skills Desired
Cross-Functional Collaboration, Data Analysis, Drug Development, Employee Development, Health Sciences, Influencing Skills, Innovation, Inspirational Leadership, Medical Affairs, Patient Care, People Management, Pharmaceutics, Product Launches, Real World Evidence (RWE), Regulatory Compliance, Research Methodologies, Results-Oriented, Stakeholder Engagement, Statistical Analysis