Medical information teams receive questions by phone, email, web forms and through colleagues in the field. A pharmacist may ask about storage after a power cut. A physician may ask about use in a patient group the label does not cover. A patient may ask about a side effect. Each answer has to be accurate, balanced, consistent with what the company has said before, and supported by references.
Most teams maintain a library of standard response documents for common questions and write custom responses for the rest. Questions about uses outside the approved label can be answered when they are unsolicited, meaning the person asked without being prompted, and the answer must be scientific and non-promotional.
Medical information teams are also an early warning system. Any inquiry may contain a possible adverse event or a product quality complaint, and these must be passed to drug safety or quality within defined timelines. Trends in the questions themselves are valuable too: a rise in questions about a particular topic often signals an evidence gap or a misunderstanding worth addressing.
The pressure on the function is speed and consistency: answering faster, with the latest evidence, and giving the same answer whoever responds.