The Role Of Medical Affairs In Combating Misinformation

The digital world is constantly progressing, with more information available at our fingertips than ever before. The web, especially social media sites, has democratized the creation and sharing of information by vastly lowering the cost of doing so. In the pre-digital era, physical resources like printing materials, ink, and paper, or broadcast equipment were required to share information broadly.

Today, creating and sharing communications is as simple as typing and clicking. Because online tools don’t evaluate the expression being created or shared, inaccurate and misleading communications can spread just as easily as accurate ones, if not more so. Rather than labeling everything as “fake news,” researchers have classified inaccurate data into three categories: misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.

Medical Affairs (MA) teams play a key role in combating all types of erroneous information and have an ethical responsibility to strive for precise, accurate communication at every stage of their work. To work against mis-, dis-, and malinformation, discover how MA teams can tap into misinformation-fighting resources generated by the broader medical and scientific communities.