Pharma has invested heavily in Medical Science Liaisons, hiring highly educated scientific professionals to engage physicians on increasingly complex therapies. Then it often does something remarkably unsophisticated: it measures their value by counting activity.
How many HCPs did they see? How many interactions did they log? How many congress meetings occurred? How many follow-ups were completed? Those numbers make great dashboards. They don’t necessarily tell you whether an oncologist got anything valuable from the interaction.
A new 2026 ZoomRx study provides some provocative evidence that pharma may be measuring the wrong things. But there’s a big caveat that shouldn’t be buried in the fine print:
ZoomRx surveyed only 51 oncologists—27 academic and 24 community physicians.
That’s nowhere near enough to assume the findings represent oncology as a whole. Oncology is extraordinarily heterogeneous across tumor types, institutions, geography, and practice settings. ZoomRx appropriately describes subgroup findings as directional.
Still, when you compare the results with other MSL research, some interesting patterns emerge.
ZoomRx found that scientific depth and responsiveness accounted for 37% of the importance assigned to MSL performance. Even more telling was what oncologists wanted from MSLs: 55% cited pipeline and investigational data, versus 31% for clinical evidence and 31% for scientific narrative.
Physicians can find published clinical data. They can read a label. They can attend congress presentations. An MSL becomes valuable when he or she can add scientific context—emerging data, pipeline developments, unanswered questions and sophisticated interpretation.
An independent 2026 Konovo survey of 100 U.S. oncologists points in essentially the same direction. It found 76% valued clinical-trial updates, 69% valued real-world evidence and 58% valued competitive-landscape discussions.
And here’s the number Medical Affairs leaders should put on the wall:
71% said scripted, one-size-fits-all MSL visits were the leading reason an interaction felt like a poor use of their time.
That’s the problem with treating MSL engagement like another reach-and-frequency exercise. A mediocre interaction doesn’t become valuable because you generate more of them.
Only 20% of interactions were initiated by physicians
One ZoomRx finding deserves more attention than it will probably receive: only 20% of MSL interactions were initiated by HCPs. MSL-initiated outreach accounted for 55%, while conferences accounted for 51%. That doesn’t mean oncologists don’t value MSLs. But it does suggest a much better KPI for Medical Affairs:
Do physicians actually want to talk to your MSLs?
Imagine measuring repeat requests, unsolicited HCP outreach, scientific follow-ups and physician-requested engagements instead of simply counting calls.
Separate research suggests demand exists when the interaction is worthwhile. Australia’s 2026 So What? Doctor Engagement Barometer surveyed 500 physicians, including 250 specialists across more than 20 specialties. Among medical oncologists, 90% rated their MSL interactions as good or great and 57% wanted more MSL contact. Different country. Different methodology. Different sample.
But it reinforces an important distinction: physicians may want more valuable MSL engagement, not simply more MSL engagement. Pharma has an MSL measurement problem
ZoomRx asked oncologists what actually resulted from MSL interactions. The leading responses were closing knowledge gaps (41%), stimulating research activity (39%), and facilitating peer networking (37%).
Those are outcomes.
Calls, meetings, presentations, and days in the field are activities.
Yet organizations still find it remarkably easy to confuse activity with impact.
A Canadian study of MSL leaders found that HCP interaction counts were the most frequently used metric despite being viewed as only moderately valuable. Qualitative measures were used less often even though respondents generally considered them better indicators of impact.
And the problem hasn’t disappeared.
A 2026 global study involving 1,023 Medical Affairs professionals found 76% struggle to define and measure the quality of MSL activities, 61% believe quantitative standards don’t adequately reflect MSL value, and 67% consider measuring MSL performance difficult or very difficult. Only 40% said their organizations measure MSL impact.
That’s remarkable.
Pharma has built sophisticated Medical Affairs organizations staffed with PhDs, PharmDs and MDs, yet many companies are still struggling to answer a basic business question:
What did all those scientific interactions actually accomplish?
One MSL strategy probably doesn’t fit every oncologist
ZoomRx also found differences between academic and community oncologists. Academics placed the greatest importance on scientific depth and showed greater interest in pipeline information, research collaboration, and guideline developments. Community oncologists prioritized responsiveness and practical clinical application.
That makes intuitive sense.
The academic oncologist running trials at a major cancer center may want to debate biomarkers, mechanisms, and investigational compounds. The community oncologist with a packed clinic may need something different: I have a difficult patient. What does the evidence say, and how quickly can you get me an answer?
But here’s where pharma needs to resist turning a PowerPoint chart into strategy.
Those conclusions come from 27 academic and 24 community oncologists.
That’s interesting hypothesis-generating research—not proof that all academic and community oncologists behave this way.
The manufacturer rankings deserve even more caution.
ZoomRx reported a huge performance spread: Roche/Genentech scored 80%, AstraZeneca 79% and Pfizer 31%. AstraZeneca combined 63% reach with 79% performance versus study averages of 28% and 62%.
Interesting? Absolutely.
A definitive ranking of oncology MSL organizations? Not with 51 respondents.
These are physician perceptions based on recent interactions, not an audit of MSL capabilities or objective measures of scientific impact.
Still, there’s an intriguing external validation. Konovo’s independent 100-oncologist study also identified AstraZeneca and Roche/Genentech, along with Merck and Novartis, among companies physicians associated with leading MSL teams.
That doesn’t validate ZoomRx’s rankings. It does suggest the underlying signal deserves further investigation.
Stop counting calls. Start measuring value.
Perhaps the biggest warning comes from another finding. In the Australian research, nearly one-third of specialists couldn’t clearly distinguish an MSL from a pharmaceutical sales representative. Among specialists who could distinguish the roles, 67% rated MSL interactions as highly valuable. Among those who couldn’t, only 21% did.
That’s a flashing red light for Medical Affairs.
An MSL shouldn’t be a sales representative with a PharmD and a more complicated slide deck.
The entire value proposition is supposed to be different.
So instead of obsessing over how many interactions occurred, Medical Affairs should be asking harder questions:
Did we close a knowledge gap? Did the physician learn something they couldn’t easily get elsewhere? Did the engagement generate a meaningful scientific follow-up? Did an HCP insight influence evidence-generation strategy? Did the physician request another interaction? Did the MSL facilitate legitimate research collaboration?
Those metrics are messier than counting calls.
They’re also much closer to why MSL organizations exist.
ZoomRx’s 51-oncologist sample doesn’t prove pharma is measuring MSLs incorrectly. Neither does a 100-oncologist survey or an international specialist study.
But multiple datasets are pointing in a similar direction.
The future of MSL effectiveness isn’t more interactions. It’s better interactions.
Pharma doesn’t need to prove its MSLs are busy.
It needs to prove they’re useful.
