Live medical congresses are happening again. Are they any better than they used to be?
We have now moved past the Covid lockdowns of the past few years. In-person attendance at medical congresses has returned to nearly pre-pandemic levels. Has anything changed for the better? Did we learn anything from virtual meetings? And what else could change?
Efficient meetings at medical congresses
Scientific Leaders (SLs) view medical congresses as a great opportunity to meet with colleagues and pharmaceutical representatives. That’s because it gives them a chance to hear the latest developments and to share insights. The pharmaceutical industry operates on the principle that more meetings are better. That’s because providers are more likely to prescribe medications for their patients if they are familiar with product data including the safety and efficacy profile. So pharma representatives request frequent meetings with providers and scientific leaders. And that results in providers often being overrun with meeting requests at medical conferences. To make matters worse, providers often have multiple meetings with representatives of the same pharmaceutical company - and with the same agenda.
But there's a better way for pharmaceuticals to work with providers and leaders. Here are some ideas:
Identify the key internal team members who need to attend a congress. Then assign specific topics based on individual knowledge, area of responsibility and expertise.
Build strategic internal sub-teams to coordinate between departments. These should take into account any compliance firewalls between medical, clinical and sales teams.
Invite Scientific Leaders (SLs) to “fireside chats” that include members of multiple departments. Doing so makes the best use of SL’s time by enabling meetings with multiple representatives from the same company at one time.
Ensure that all meeting requests include specific agenda topics. And ensure these topics match SLs’ specific areas of interest and expertise.
For SLs, this approach will reduce their overall number of meetings, and increase the value of each. It also makes pharmaceutical companies more valuable and respectful partners. It also assists pharmaceutical companies in identifying who actually needs to attend a congress. That saves on travel expenses - as well as reduces the carbon footprint!
Broadening the pool of investigators
The focus of pharmaceutical companies at congresses has been to meet with high-profile SLs. But many of these SLs spend less time in the clinic than practitioners who are earlier in their medical career. Pharmaceutical companies could benefit by broadening the pool to include meetings with emerging investigators and practitioners. They should especially target fellows and non-academic community-based practitioners.
There are several benefits of this approach. With fellows, it establishes relationships early in the career of these investigators. And with community-based practitioners, the pharmaceutical company can broaden and diversify its inputs. They can capture more real-world feedback from the patients, and from the providers who care for them.
Getting the most out of advisory boards
It’s common practice to schedule advisory meetings immediately before or after congresses. But this is a very busy time. Scheduling then impairs the ability of the board participants to fully absorb the impact of new data and focus on how this will change current treatment paradigms. How can we ensure that pharmaceutical companies derive the most value out of these boards while not making them a pain for the participants?
A better approach would be to wait for a few weeks to schedule advisory board meetings. The schedule should allow time for the participants to consider how new information changes their treatment strategies. And this time frame ensures that the topics are still fresh in everyone’s mind.
It’s also a benefit for the scientific participants of the advisory board. An ideal meeting agenda would be based on the relevant topics in the preceding congress. That gives the participants a chance to share insights and engage in discussion with each other in the context of new and emerging data.
Golgi can help
Are you unsure how to implement these new strategies? If so, the team at Golgi is ready to help bring these new approaches to your company. We are dedicated to helping pharmaceuticals work better and smarter by applying our broad industry experience and tested methods. For more information, please visit us at Golgi.