What Do Medical Advisory Boards Do?

Medical advisory boards help address specific medical issues, write and review educational materials, establish research funding, and identify fundraising opportunities.

Why Do You Need a Medical Advisory Board?

Medical advisory boards are essential to health care/medical organizations, because they provide advice on specialized medical information.

What is the Difference between a Medical Advisory Board and Physician Advisory Board?

While medical advisory board members include physicians, they also include researchers, regulators, educators, and anyone with specialized industry knowledge and expertise. Physician advisory boards are strictly composed of physicians.

What is a Medical Advisory Board? (Overview, Roles, and Responsibilities)

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A medical board of advisors provides specialized medical advice to help a health care organization or business achieve its goals. Here's how they work.

Consulting an advisory board is considered a best practice for an effective board of directors to supplement their skills and expertise. This is particularly true for medical associations or a hospital board of directors, which require expertise in medical regulations.

Read on to learn what a medical advisory board is, its roles and responsibilities, and how to host an effective medical advisory board meeting.

What is a Medical Advisory Board?

A medical advisory board is a pool of health care professionals who can offer advice to your hospital, health care organization, or board of directors. The medical advisory board is headed by a chairperson who directs any meetings in adherence to a predefined agenda. Because health care requires specialized skills and compliance with strict regulations, it’s crucial for health care businesses, organizations, and nonprofits to consult with people who understand the industry.

Medical Advisory Board Roles and Responsibilities

A medical advisory board serves its organization by providing guidance and input that helps steer the organization to success and comply with legal regulations. This includes:

Serve as a resource on specific medical issues: Experts on a medical advisory board fill any knowledge gaps in the organization.
Write and review educational materials: As subject matter experts, the medical advisory board can help review or write reports, case studies, and more.
Assist in establishing research funding: Help write proposals and grants to secure research funding.
Identify fundraising opportunities: Seek out additional fundraising opportunities to drive the organization forward.

Hosting a Medical Advisory Board Meeting

To ensure meetings are productive, follow these best practices:

Establish an appropriate date, time, and location, and share them to advisors in advance.
Create a detailed agenda that identifies the meeting’s purpose and discussion topics. Send the agenda to board members a few days before the meeting to increase engagement.
Ensure every member has access to all crucial meeting documents.

Board management technology, like OnBoard, aids in medical advisory board meeting preparation with a drag-and-drop agenda builder that everyone on the board can access in real time.

OnBoard Powers Effective Medical Advisory Boards

OnBoard’s board management solution helps medical advisory boards of all sizes foster collaboration, hold smart meetings, and simplify the tough stuff. Among its many features that streamline board business are:

Agenda Time Management keeps your meetings focused and on-schedule, automatically issuing reminders 15 minutes before your meeting is scheduled to end.
Dynamic Voting allows boards to vote on measures directly in the platform.
Minutes Builder enables advisory board members to effortlessly make notes, create tasks, track attendance, and mark motions as the meeting progresses.

And location barriers are no longer a problem with OnBoard’s direct Zoom integration and secure messenger. The cloud platform is SOC 2 Certified and HIPAA-compliant to provide health care organizations with peace of mind knowing their sensitive organization is secure. Ultimately, the board portal platform uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to bring new insights to board work, increase director engagement, and clarify strategic priorities.

Download OnBoard’s free Meeting Minutes Template for an example of how the best boards write their minutes to accurately and legally reflect what occurred during the board meeting.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What Do Medical Advisory Boards Do?
Medical advisory boards help address specific medical issues, write and review educational materials, establish research funding, and identify fundraising opportunities.
Why Do You Need a Medical Advisory Board?
Medical advisory boards are essential to health care/medical organizations, because they provide advice on specialized medical information.
What is the Difference between a Medical Advisory Board and Physician Advisory Board?
While medical advisory board members include physicians, they also include researchers, regulators, educators, and anyone with specialized industry knowledge and expertise. Physician advisory boards are strictly composed of physicians.

Ready to upgrade your board’s effectiveness with OnBoard the board intelligence platform? Schedule a demo or request a free trial.

About The Author

Josh Palmer: Josh Palmer serves as OnBoard's Head of Content. An experienced content creator, his previous roles have spanned numerous industries including B2C and B2B home improvement, healthcare, and software-as-a-service (SaaS). An Indianapolis native and graduate of Indiana University, Palmer currently resides in Fishers, Ind.