Updated 2026-10-11 by Patrina Pellett, PhD

The short answer: most MSL insights never reach leadership because they aren’t tied to the medical strategy, they get lost between the field and headquarters (HQ), and they arrive without the context anyone needs to act. In Veeva’s recent interviews, biopharma executives said 70% of insights are never used to drive strategy. All 3 causes are fixable this quarter.

You’ve probably seen it happen. An MSL walks out of a KOL meeting with something important. A decision-grade insight in how physicians are thinking. They log it in the CRM. And then it goes right into the black hole. No follow-up, no discussion, no decision. It just sits there.

That’s not a small problem. Gathering insights is one of the most valuable things MSLs and Medical Affairs teams do. It takes hours of relationship building to get to the conversations that actually produce them, and more time to analyze and report them. When they go nowhere, the field loses motivation and leadership loses the one view of the market nobody else can give them.

The numbers back this up. In Veeva’s 2026 white paper on medical insights, executives said 70% of insights aren’t leveraged to drive strategy. And KOLs believe only 30% of what they share is ever used. Your experts notice when nothing happens.

Why do MSL insights never make it to leadership?

3 reasons come up again and again:

1. MSL insights aren’t tied to the medical strategy

This is the biggest one. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard a medical director say, “What am I supposed to do with this?” When an insight doesn’t connect to a current medical objective, nobody knows who owns it or what decision it should change. So it gets filed and forgotten.

No clear medical strategy? That makes it harder, but not impossible. You can still gather valuable insights by working from the product life cycle.

What MSLs can do:

• Know the strategy cold. Review strategy documents, listening priorities and key insight questions before every meeting. Pre-meeting planning is where relevance starts.
• Use the listening priorities. Build them into your conversations so what you bring back answers a question someone is already asking.
• Filter hard. Not everything a KOL says is an insight. Ask yourself: could this change a decision?

Not sure where the line is? Here are examples of what MSL insights are not.

Details fade fast after a meeting. These 4 tips to capture MSL insights right away help you log them while they’re still sharp. And when MSLs understand what commercial and R&D care about, their insights get picked up faster. That’s why cross-functional training leads to better insights.

2. Insights get lost between MSLs and HQ

Insights get submitted, but they don’t get discussed. No one asks a follow-up question. No one tells the MSL what happened next. After a few months of that, MSLs stop putting effort into their write-ups. Why would they?

What MSLs can do:

• Own your best insight. Don’t just log it. Bring it up in team meetings and ask who needs to hear it.
• Ask what happened. A simple “Did that insight from last month go anywhere?” keeps the loop open.

3. MSL insights arrive without the why

An insight like “KOL is concerned about dosing” tells leadership almost nothing. Concerned how? Compared to what? How many physicians feel this way? Without the why, anyone who wasn’t in the meeting has no idea why it is important or how to act.

What MSLs can do:

• Always gather the why. What did they say, why does it matter, and what could the company do about it?
• Use how questions to dig deeper. Asking why can make people defensive. Try single barrel or “how” questions to help you get past surface-level comments.

Gathering the why starts before the meeting, not after. Learn how pre-insights help MSLs walk in knowing what a decision-grade insight looks like. And remember: AI won’t make bad MSL insights better. The why has to be included. Otherwise AI will just amplify noise.

Start Having More Strategic Conversations with This Pre-Meeting Checklist 👇

Where AI fits: an MSL insights coaching AI agent

AI can’t fix a bad insight. But it can make good insights the norm. If you or your team are struggling with number 1, not relevant to strategy or number 3, missing the why, specialized AI agents can be your best friend. 

My absolute favorite AI agent for this is our CWI insights coach. An MSL drops in an insight and gets instant feedback:

• A score on how well it covers Context, the Why and Implications
• Why it got that score
• Coaching questions to tease out the details (MSLs often know these but forget to add them)
• Questions to ask in the next KOL meeting to fill the gaps

Another great example of this is how we build coaching agents modeled on each MSL lead and how they coach. One MSL lead told us her 1:1s are better now. She doesn’t repeat herself all the time, so they spend that time on strategy instead. And her global insights lead told her that her team’s insight quality was 10x better than the year before. The MSL lead was so proud telling this story. So was I!

AI also helps you prove that training or AI interventions are working. We use a prompt that scores a team’s insights before and after training, using the CWI framework. Leaders get a clear before-and-after picture of insight quality, not just a feeling that things got better.

The MSL insights coaching AI agent is a huge deal. MSLs get coached on every insight, not just the ones a manager has time to review.

What Medical Affairs HQ teams and MSL Leads can do this quarter

If insights aren’t making it to leadership, insights quality and what MSLs are gathering are only a small portion of the problem. The tips above geared toward MSLs will help. Here’s the root cause of the problem though: If insights are not driving decisions, it’s a leadership problem. If you lead an insights program or an MSL team, start here. This is what is going to get insights across the finish line.

The teams that get this right treat insights like a conversation, not a submission form. That’s when the field’s view of the market starts driving strategy.

Keep reading

• The definitive guide to turning MSL insights into impact
• MSL insights done right: a guide for Medical Affairs leaders
• 6 hidden drivers of MSL insights excellence
• The struggle to show value in Medical Affairs
• Why course correction is a must for your stakeholder engagement strategy

Frequently asked questions

Why do MSL insights get ignored? Usually because they aren’t tied to a strategic question, nobody discusses them after they’re logged, or they lack the why behind the insight needed to act. Fix the strategy link first. It solves the most problems.

What percentage of medical insights are actually used? Few. In Veeva’s 2025 interviews, biopharma executives said 70% of insights aren’t used to drive strategy, and KOLs surveyed believe only 30% of their input is ever used.

How do you get field insights in front of leadership? Hold a regular insights meeting to discuss what’s strong, then put the top 2 or 3 field insights on the leadership agenda in plain language.

What makes a good MSL insight? Use the MSL Mastery CWI framework: Context, the Why and Implications. Context is who said it and in what situation. The Why is the reasoning behind it. Implications are what it could mean for the medical strategy. Without all 3, it’s information, not an insight.

Can AI improve MSL insight quality? Yes, if it coaches instead of writes. A CWI insights coach scores each insight, explains the score, and gives the MSL coaching questions plus questions to ask in their next meeting. AI won’t fix a weak insight on its own, but it helps MSLs build better habits fast and know what good looks like.

How do you measure the impact of insights training? Score a sample of the team’s insights before and after training against the same framework. We use an AI prompt that rates each insight on our CWI framework, so you can show leadership exactly how much insight quality improved.

Want your team’s insights to actually reach leadership?

MSL Mastery trains MSLs and HQ teams to gather, analyze and share insights that drive decisions. Talk to us about insights training.

Patrina Pellett, PhD, is Co-CEO of MSL Mastery. She’s spent her career helping MSLs and Medical Affairs leaders get out of the weeds and into the strategy meetings. Ask her about AI, storytelling, or why your congress follow-up keeps falling apart.

Sources

• Veeva, “Closing the Listening Gap: Turning Medical Insights into Impact” (2026): 70% of insights not leveraged for strategy (executive interviews, n=8); KOLs believe 30% of insights are used (KOL survey, n=50).

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