Services
Plan and Deliver:
- Patient Engagement plans
- KOL Engagement plans
- Patient Insights
- Advisory Boards
- Patient narratives
- Scientific Communications strategy, narratives & planning
- Scientific Communications Framework development
- Medical and Patient Education programs
- Compliance and risk management – global medical affairs
- Congress Events – scientific and patient symposia, exhibition content, delegate meetings planning
Connect:
- Patient and Patient Groups engagement skills development
- KOL engagement skills development
- Strategic partnerships & collaborations development planning
- Medical Society partnership working
- Collaborative research and publications
- Thought partnership on Medical Affairs Strategy and transformational change projects
- 1:1 mentoring and coaching
- Team coaching and change support
- Multi-stakeholder collaborations and partnerships
1. Insights
Useful Situation
Bringing deep insights from external stakeholders is critical to maximise the potential of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for patients and those who care for them.
Irrespective of lifecycle stage, from early to late stage development, with HCP or patient communities, we have the skill-set needed to design, develop and deliver in line with your needs. Whether you require input into key development decisions, a better understanding of the evolving treatment landscape, evaluation of clinical data, expertise to co-design educational content or test key messages, we will generate the required insights. This may be a standalone activity or equally establishing a working group for engagement over a longer time period.
What happens
We will partner with you to:
- Understand your objectives and help to define key questions
- Define and design the best approach based on your goals and target group(s)
- Identify and facilitate engagement of advisors
- Design the engagement plan to guarantee productive interactions
- Facilitate interactions to guide discussions
- Create report with actionable insights
Expected Outcome
Timely, insightful, actionable advice and insights from the patient and / or healthcare expert community, giving you the confidence to make informed decisions, progress your plans or simply co-develop your disease awareness and educational materials.
2. Advancing Medical practice through Strategic Partnerships
Useful Situation
As part of your annual planning cycle or at any point in the development of your asset/disease portfolio, being thoughtful as to your short, medium and long term approach to external collaborations is critical. Collaborations and partnerships with other stakeholders broadens the scope of what can be achieved for your patient community. As Biopharma you may act as a sponsor, a partner in a broader collaboration with disease consortia, patient advocacy organisations, professional societies or indeed work alongside other Biopharma companies. If you are about to embark on this as part of your planning, whether it’s to build an initial plan or refresh an existing one, we can help.
What happens
We will partner with you to:
- Review individual asset and / or multiple asset strategies in a given disease area, to identify synergies
- Collate a landscape view on existing external investments – scope, costs, timing, and expected outcomes
- Bench exercise to understand and map shared strategic priorities and potential opportunities for collaboration
- Where required, development of a single disease/asset narrative to support you in articulating priorities and opening discussions for collaborative opportunities
Expected Outcome
Development of a 3-5 year fully costed external investment plan based on one or more asset strategies within a disease area, with associated lead and lag impact measures. If required, a core communication plan to support delivery of your engagement strategy.
3. Understanding and communicating patient lived-experience
Useful Situation
Listening to and learning from the patients living with or at risk of that condition brings invaluable and sometimes unexpected insights to inform your Medical and Scientific Communications plans. Furthermore, these compelling patient stories can be re-produced for Healthcare Professional and Patient education purposes; ideal for use at scientific congresses, as social media posts, on your website, as email content and / or to enhance engagement by MSLs by bringing the necessary clinical and patient context to scientific data.
What happens
- Engagement of External Experts and Patient Organisations to identify and connect with patients willing to share their lived experiences
- Engagement of patients representing different communities around the world sharing those lived experiences
- Creation of a ‘Patient Diary Series’ comprised of written, spoken or video accounts from patients and caregivers
- Development of actionable insights reports
Partnership with award winning creative agency to develop educational content tailored for priority channels
Expected Outcome
Patient voices to inform key decisions and plans, irrespective of the stage of development of your medicine, vaccine or medical device. If required, engaging material for medical and patient education purposes as well as for internal training.
4. Ensuring a consistent approach to your scientific messaging across channels
Useful Situation
To enable a consistent approach to asset communications whether in development or in-market, it is critical that all written information associated with your asset is clear and consistent in message. Having a unified scientific communications resource which sets out clear communication objectives enables your teams, irrespective of role and function, to engage in a consistent way. The foundation will include details of the overall ‘intent’ for the asset, summary of unmet needs, the current & desired future treatment approaches along with the aspirational value it will bring to patients, caregivers and other prioritised stakeholders. Whether you need a comprehensive communication strategy to prepare the market for launch, or simply to educate on the disease state or new therapy, whether you are embarking on your first communications framework or in the process of refreshing an existing resource, we can help you.
What happens
- Engage with your cross functional team on development of a draft scientific basis for your asset. . Team members may include medical affairs, patient engagement professionals, communications, commercial/marketing, R&D. This is the groundwork for your asset and will illustrate your overall objectives and ‘intent’ for the asset, a summary of the existing unmet needs, the current & desired future treatment approach along with the aspirational value your asset will bring to patients, care givers and other key stakeholders. Workshops can be used to develop and test the outputs along with work on the asset’s key scientific messages
- As the framework is developed we would recommend seeking external stakeholder validation of the framework. Engagement of experts, patients and patient group leaders to ensure the language, intent and objectives are relevant and meaningful.
- Development of scientific and patient-relevant narratives and an associated lexicon
Expected Outcome
A comprehensive communication strategy and fully referenced narrative(s) comprising of cross-functionally aligned key communication messages. (Optional) proposed communications activity plan for publications, scientific congresses / symposia and field-medical activities, to support story evolution over time.
5. Scientific congressing strategy and planning
Useful Situation
Medical Society conferences and international congresses are an important channel for communication and discussion on the latest scientific data and evidence, and a key component of any Scientific Communications strategy. Such events also provide the opportunity to learn; unmet medical needs, data gaps, clinical practice, patient journeys etc. With effective pre-event planning unprecedented levels of engagement can be achieved with prioritised stakeholders. Whether your company is new to a therapy area or well-established, we have the knowledge and expertise to ensure you maximise the potential of professional society-organised scientific meetings.
What happens
- Engage with your cross-functional team on development of your congressing strategy
- Facilitate development of your congressing plan to maximise successful delivery of your strategy
- (Optional) negotiate sponsorship contract agreement with Medical Society / conference organiser
- (Optional) procure services of agency partners (logistics, medical communications, exhibition booth(s), competitor intelligence)
- (Optional) engage expert faculty for sponsored symposia
(Optional) schedule of meetings with key stakeholders (KOL delegates / patient group representatives / Medical Society leadership)
- (Optional) internal plan for updates and briefings
- (Optional) engagement skills training for medical exhibition booth staff
- (Optional) development of post-conference engagement plan
Expected Outcome
A bespoke scientific congressing strategy and plan, relevant to your strategic priorities and budget.
6. Expert Speaker Training
Useful Situation
Rapidly build the knowledge and skills to effectively and compliantly educate the speaker community, with a connected and consistent approach across key markets.
What happens
- Develop expert speaker engagement roadmap for global and national company-organised meetings
- Develop speaker training programme plan which can be delivered in-person / online / hybrid
- Provide criteria to inform identification of relevant experts in scope
- Provide subject matter expertise for engagement approach, including how to contract with HCPs for paid services
- Provide strategic partnership for client’s development of training materials / speaker slide decks
- Facilitate and moderate program delivery
- (Optional) Scientific storytelling / communication skills expertise
- (Optional) measurement plan (impact, reach, tools for tracking scientific share of voice )
Expected Outcome
Knowledgeable and informed expert available for global and in-country educational or promotional, either as part of your product launch plan or to enhance impact and reach beyond the launch phase.
1. MSL Training
Useful Situation
Whether you are needing to build an entire new team or enhance the effectiveness of an existing one, we bring the relevant expertise to ensure MSLs can communicate impactfully to gain insights, shape management of disease and ultimately improve outcomes for patients.
What happens
- Define or work with already agreed key competencies required of your MSLs in line with your medical plan
- Design comprehensive training program for use at global or national level
- Deliver program tailored to the defined knowledge / skills / behaviours required for your business
- Provide recommendations for continued in-field learning and development, including impact measurement.
Expected Outcome
Knowledgeable, confident and engaged MSLs who are well-practised in communicating scientific data and evidence in a meaningful and impactful manner, together with recommendations on next steps to embed development and high performance over time.
2. How to run a successful Advisory Board
Useful Situation
Whether your team are new to organising and delivering advice seeking activities, or requiring a reminder or inspiration to advance their engagement and facilitation skills, we can tailor our offering to meet your needs.
What happens
- Capability needs assessment to align on project scope
- Proposal development
- Align on program details – content, format, delivery channel(s)
- Program delivery
Recommendations to embed capability development over time
Expected Outcome
Knowledgeable, confident and skilled Medical teams who have the required knowledge and capabilities to plan, develop and deliver advisory group meetings, in-person and / or in virtual settings.
3. Integrated KOL Engagement planning
Useful Situation
Global Key Opinion Leaders are potentially being engaged by a significant number of individuals, from various functions across a company with medicines / vaccines from early to late-stage development. In particular within large organisations, it is not clear who is engaging who often and for what activity or what the outcomes and next steps are. There is a compliance risk here, with over-reliance on the professional services of a small group of KOLs, as well as potential duplication of effort, wasted budget and missed insights. If you recognise this as a challenge in your business, we can help with our tried and tested integrated engagement planning approach.
What happens
- Review of current approach to KOL engagement planning, by function
- Identification of KOLs requiring an individual integrated engagement plan
- Development of planning tool with worked ‘live’ example
- (Optional) creation of briefing material for use with team members engaging identified KOLs
(Optional) delivery of briefings for relevant team members
Expected Outcome
~ 12-15 global expert engagement plans in place, teams engaged and inspired to plan and deliver engagement together and KOLs confident that the company is engaging them in line with global and local regulations on topics and services which will help to advance patient care in that therapy area.