Summary
Country Medical Director is the lead medical representative for the country and has a strategic leadership role ultimately responsible for overseeing the medical function in a country. By this being responsible for driving medical excellence and ensuring that the country medical affairs part of the integrated brand strategy aligns with both global objectives and local market dynamics.
The Country Medical Director serves as a key scientific resource and as a leader for the medical team, particularly overseeing the Medical Leads, and ensuring that scientific narratives, knowledge transfer and understanding related to brand advocacy, and evidence generation are implemented effectively. In addition, this role emphasizes external engagement with Key Medical Experts (KME) and other healthcare stakeholders, creating bold strategic partnerships with the local healthcare system and governmental entities as well as externally shaping/influencing the health care system according to Novartis strategies.
This position reports to the Head of Medical Affairs, CMO Nordics.
About the Role
Your Key Responsibilities:
Your responsibilities include, but not limited to:
- Lead the development and execution of the country-specific Medical Affairs part of the integrated product strategy across therapeutic areas. Ensure alignment with global medical strategy while adapting to local regulatory, clinical, and market conditions. Drive best-in-class launch preparedness and launch execution locally as well as Overseeing life-cycle management of key products from clinical development to post-marketing phases, ensuring seamless integration of medical insights into business objectives.
- Ensure that all local studies are developed and timely executed based on integrated evidence gaps. In close collaboration with Global Drug Development (GDD), cultivates strategic and effective co-creation and collaboration plans, for allocation and execution of clinical trials within Nordics/country, as necessary. Ensure own engagement with key external healthcare stakeholders, fostering relationships with national guidelines bodies, key medical experts, and decision-makers across TAs in close collaboration with the broader customer engagement teams.
- Support Medical Leads in managing high-level discussions on pipeline assets, off-label use, and other scientific matters while maintaining compliance with local regulations. In line with the evolving healthcare ecosystem, building bold partnerships beyond the traditional Healthcare professionals and organizations by identifying opportunities for joint value creation deploying new engagement models of broader reach. Champion collaborative initiatives for evidence generation and driving impact through data, ensuring alignment with both local and global business objectives.
- Provide strategic leadership and mentorship to the Medical Leads. Focus on talent development, succession planning, and building a high-performing, scientifically rigorous team. Ensure continuous improvement of the team's engagement skills and scientific product knowledge to enhance their interactions with healthcare professionals.
- Ensure the medical team leads initiatives for the effective transfer of scientific knowledge to Key Medical Experts, enabling robust advocacy for priority brands. Coach and develop Medical Leads to ensure Medical Experts fully understand and engage with the latest clinical data and research in their respective therapeutic areas.
- Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams (Commercial, Market Access, and others) to ensure a cohesive approach to brand strategy and external engagement. Accountable for medical input into country-level business strategy, ensuring scientific leadership informs commercial decision-making processes.
- Actively coach and support Medical Leads, emphasizing the development of leadership capabilities and scientific expertise. Allocate sufficient time for individual field coaching activities to improve team performance in external interactions and knowledge transfer activities. Establish KPIs and performance metrics to assess team effectiveness, brand advocacy outcomes, and external engagement quality.
- Manage and optimize the medical team’s resources to ensure the effective execution of medical tactics and evidence generation activities. Engage in budget planning and ensure appropriate resource allocation to meet the country’s medical and business priorities. Drive all scientific activities in adherence to GxP as applicable and in accordance to local legislation. Ensure all medical activities comply with local healthcare regulations, global company policies, quality, safety measures, and the highest ethical standards. Serve as the compliance lead for medical engagements, ensuring adherence to industry best practices in all HCP interactions.
Essential Requirements:
- Education: Life Science degree.
- At least 6 years of experience in Medical from Pharma.
- At least 2 years of experience in leadership.
- Proficient Danish and English, both written and spoken.
- Deep understanding of the healthcare system, regulatory landscape, and the competitive pharmaceutical environment in the Nordic region.
- Excellent communicator.
Desirable Requirements:
- PHD or MD Degree.
- Prior experience working in Commercial and regulatory and/or pharmacovigilance.
Why Novartis: Helping people with disease and their families takes more than innovative science. It takes a community of smart, passionate people like you. Collaborating, supporting and inspiring each other. Combining to achieve breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. Ready to create a brighter future together? https://www.novartis.com/about/strategy/people-and-culture
Join our Novartis Network: Not the right Novartis role for you? Sign up to our talent community to stay connected and learn about suitable career opportunities as soon as they come up: https://talentnetwork.novartis.com/network
Benefits and Rewards: Read our handbook to learn about all the ways we’ll help you thrive personally and professionally: https://www.novartis.com/careers/benefits-rewards
Novartis is committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams' representative of the patients and communities we serve.