Board Certification for MSLs

The Board Certified Medical Affairs Specialist or BCMAS program. Hands down. It's considered the standard. I actually just got back from ACMA conference in Philadelphia and half of the speakers were all BCMAS and high level VP Medical affairs professionals etc.. One was an MSL with like 20 years experience in big pharma. He was raving about it too. Invest your time there, you won't be sorry believe me.

 

Sounds like you are jealous pal..

 

It seems to me that these meetings are salted with speakers selected because of their friendliness to a certification program. Meetings seem quite biased and full of croneyism.

 

Ok, 15 years Medical Affairs experience here - and I had to do this BCMAS. What a joke of a program! I'm ashamed to put it on my LinkedIn. I wholeheartedly disagree with a lot of the content in their modules and at times, it as just wrong.

Yes, it was a good review of the basics, but anybody who has been in a few company's - who have read and done all the SOPs time and time again, and who have delivered the leadership function that Medical Affairs has become will have to think this is a joke. There is still language in those modlues forexample that still talk to MA as being a "service" function!!! What is this 1999? Yes, MA is a Leadership function so as a passionate MA professional well, I found BCMAS disappointing.

To be honest, I had higher expectations. I did go in open minded but during module 1, it went down hill for me.

As for tenured MSLs who say this is great, really? I question the quality of the MSLs (I was once a MSL). Often in my career I have ran into "career" MSLs who were quite dumb in my opinion, with respect to their opinion. They have never executed a clinical study, or delivered a global medical plan or ever sat on a cross-functional launch team or even delivered a ad-board themselves!! They never contributed to Market Research, or HEOR projectes, or been part of a labeling team going back and forth with the FDA in near real time in the hours before approval, in summary they have no visablitity to what the higher ups are doing, they are rank and file (valued rank and file indeed, but still, rank and file) so..yeah...so when I hear their stupid comments, well one can see my view. Especially about this BCMAS stuff. What next certified MSLs? right.

 

The ACMA has tried six times to peddle this to the company where I am a Senior Director in Field Med and at two pharmacy schools where I teach. Our VP laughed them out the door and two Associate Deans couldn’t tell what they were trying to do with their program.

When I hire MSL staff, there are nu substitutes for good communications abilities, scientific acumen and clinical competence—and those all require time and experience and not some ersatz certification that health professionals don’t recognize. Sorry ACMA, but no sale here.

 

For those of us who want to break into the field, taking the DIA classes and the BCMAS seems like a first thing to do to get a basic idea. And given that getting an MSL position requires experience as an MSL, how in the world do you ever get in? Especially if you can't afford going the route of doing an internship (I need a permanent job to live).

 

Don't waste time on DIA. BCMAS has Street credibility in the industry. I was looking for an MSL role for 18 months. Couldn't get an interview.
Did BCMAS and within 3 months got an MSL role. It works. Recruiters started messaging me. Hope that helps.

 

Good to see a healthy debate on this and I think this is welcome for those who want to do it and a motivational step for people who may want to join the industry. These individuals spouting PhDs with PharmDs questioning the academic rigour need to take a look at themselves and why if they are so good they are not working with patients - go back to counting pills and selling shampoos if you are going to be so arrogant and critical.

 

Agree there are some very basic errors in the materials especially around reactive and proactive activities and compliance

 

Agree on the comms and scientific acumen - but clinical competence ?? I would put this under scientific acumen given no direct patient input and this may overstep the mark in my opinion

 

Not surprised! Speaking of compliance. The Acma (owner’s wife) , the chief academic officer faced disciplinary action by NJ Pharmacy Board for falsifying information. Credibility is zilch
https://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/Actions/20170508_28RI03480900.pdf

 

W

DIA has been around since 1964, it is a global organization supporting innovation and ethical conduct in the Healthcare Industry. It is nonprofit and fully transparent with its business operations.
Acma is for profit, formed in 2016 by owners of a private drug compounding business - Science Gladiators DBA as “US Pharmacy Lab”. How is profiting from drugs unapproved by FDA supporting unified standards?
The owner‘s wife is acma’s Chief Academic Officer- she was investigated leading her state pharmacist license publicly cited for disciplinary action by NJ State Board of Pharmacy. Is this who you trust for educational services?
Despite claims of setting standards, they can’t name any pharmas which actually require a bcmas and lacks evidence of success metrics.
Most acma board advisers and government do not have bcmas certificate. If it’s own board don’t want it- why should anyone else? How is this “board certification“ if the board doesn’t seem to value it? How is this board certifying anyone?

 

I don't think they're saying anyone is requiring it. I haven't seen that any where on their site. I don't know where you're getting that from.
I have spoken to their team and found them to be very passionate and knowledgeable about medical affairs. Their team is about 25 people globally and the Board aren't medical affairs people necessarily so that is probably why they don't have BCMAS. It wouldn't make sense. I think really what you need to look at is the value BCMAS brings. It's in the eye of the beholder. For many BCMAS Accreditation helps them expand their knowledge and for some it helps them break into pharma is what I have seen. You sound like a person who is dedicated to slandering the ACMA because I've seen this post about Suzanne Soliman put up a few times. It's almost as if you purposefully want to hurt them and that's just not cool. So whatever you say I would take with a grain of salt. As for DIA, they had the ACMA CEO speak at their conference last year. I've heard from their committee that they value ACMA contributions and impact on the industry. Plus they have been on Fox news, ABC news and even Forbes. You have got to admit that's impressive. No one else has done this. And
Their sales team told me they're coming out with a CRM tool and also have a predictive analytics tool for Medical. So they're doing a lot more than BCMAS buddy. Hope that helps all. Happy Holidays!

 

I agree with the last comment. Their team came to present to our medical leadership for the 2nd time. They've expanded their offerings significantly with their own AI driven analytics tool, Medical CRM and other services. So, yes definitely more than BCMAS. The team was solid and there was one guy in particular that was very sharp. Their team is global now with offices all over the world, India, UAE, EU and Brazil. In my humble opinion ACMA will dominate the medical affairs solutions space. It just makes sense because they're already entrenched within medical affairs.

 

Hello all,
Thank you for these insightful comments. We are currently in discussions with the ACMA and are exploring all of their solutions and I came across this forum. I was quite impressed with their capabilities. They're doing BCMAS, but as was mentioned in the last comment, are coming out with a medical CRM tool in the next 2 months as well as have developed a medical affairs predictive analytics tool. They demonstrated it in real time and I was very impressed with the technology they have. Apparently they have an entire software development team and for BCMAS they have a type of technology which allows them to tweak content by region globally for Medical Affairs and MSL professionals. For instance if you're an MSL in Japan you get a BCMAS Japan version, and if you're in India you get an Indian version. I thought that was clever because as you may know the regulatory and compliance landscape differs region by region. I think they're on to soemthing big.

 

I didn't know ACMA has a CRM tool. Interesting. We are currently in discussions with them. I do think that BCMAS will be the standard for our industry. It just makes sense.

 

CRM tool could be useful. How much does it cost per user?

 

HI, im the 15 year person posted above.

OK news to me re: person investigated by NJ, sorry but that's a credibility issue and shameful of one poster above trying to diminish it!! That's GARBAGE behavior! In Pharma we are held to a higher standard and folks like that don't get hired!! Hell, we found out once one of our MA members lost is their license to practice that initialy was not found in the background checks, he was let go. So very interesting.

CRM? seriously, some appear to be hearing of this for the first time? really? There are many good and expert providers of CRMs with years of experience for this. Many are integrated into the company's systems, can also be adapted and used for commericial field force with firewalls in place, and can be tailored to company need - one size does NOT fit all. I personally like Veeva offerings. AI ooo...that's not new, just a rebranding of something that was done before. Kinda like this "Real World Study" terminology crapola! We called them Registry, and Observational studies, data-consultancies, chart-audit reviews......, now its RWE!! yeah. right uh huh. yeah....

So back to the topic at hand, still useless. No one will hire you just because one has BCMAS. Its about observed behavior, and executing the role. Don't need to be certified at all. Has no legal weight, never will.

 

Wow. What a liar. You're so sneaky trying to tell people not to do BCMAS so you have a competitive advantage. Very slick..
Don't believe a word this putz says. The proof is in the pudding.

 

BCMAS is useless and for-profit
BCMAS is a useless and for-profit
BCMAS is a useless and for-profit