Quantum² : InfoStars : Sonja Van Der Haeghen

Sonja Van Der Haeghen

Sonja Van Der Haeghen enjoys the chance to meet the challenges that her role as an information professional affords. Sonja's team, located in Brussels, Belgium, is responsible for answering product questions, providing scientific training, contributing to the successful launch and lifecycle of AstraZeneca's brands, and working in close partnership with the Drug Safety Unit to ensure that AstraZeneca's medicines are used in correct and safe ways — so the provision of reliable information is a must.

Sonja, Medical Affairs & Drug Safety Coordinator, and her team continually strive to provide physicians, pharmacists and other healthcare workers with up-to-date and pertinent information.

"This is the age of information overload," she said. "It is our responsibility as information professionals to identify relevant sources of medical information and filter out the 'noise.' By providing scientifically accurate, balanced and focused responses, Medical Affairs enables customers to improve patient care via the appropriate use of AstraZeneca products."

Thanks to the efforts of AstraZeneca's Discovering Information Department, Medical Affairs can access "raw" data from more than 100 commercial and non-commercial databases and e-journals, which it then analyzes and transforms into useful knowledge.

A key project, launched in 2006 to improve customer service, is the creation of a Customer Relationship Management program, which enables the Medical Affairs Unit to access key enquirer information quickly and tailor answers to customer needs.

Technological advances have steered many positive changes in the 10 years Sonja has worked in Medical Affairs. "When I started in this role, our team relied mainly on our physical library and local subscription-based databases," she remembers. "Today, most sources are available online — we spend much less time working with printed articles and can focus more on other activities."

Database searching has become a lot easier — where a specific language was once required to query a database, now most are quite user-friendly. Sharing information is also easier — online tools allow colleagues to access others' work and avoid duplication of efforts.

Despite these advances, Sonja considers the possibility that those in her field are nostalgic for more tangible data.

"Information is available faster than ever before, but I still wonder if people will get used to reading articles online or whether they will prefer to stick to the paper version," she said.

Sonja Van Der Haeghen is the Medical Affairs & Drug Safety Coordinator at AstraZeneca in Brussels, Belgium. With corporate headquarters in the UK and research headquarters in Sweden, AstraZeneca is dedicated to the discovery, development, manufacturing and marketing of high quality, effective prescription medicines to fight diseases in important areas of medical need: cancer, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, infection, neuroscience and respiratory & inflammation. AstraZeneca has over 65.000 employees worldwide.