In its “Pharma Medical Affairs 2020 and beyond” report, leading global consultancy McKinsey & Company describes “a rapidly changing world for medical affairs,” with a greater emphasis on defining “what value means from the perspectives of a broad spectrum of healthcare stakeholders” among the trends reshaping the healthcare landscape.
As outlined by the report, education, communications and strategic activities, both internally and externally, are critical tools for getting the word out on today’s “increasingly complex and specialized medical information.”
This has only heightened the role of medical, pharma, scientific and hybrid meetings as critical pathways to the knowledge, especially with McKinsey recommending the “recruitment of and collaboration with traditional key-opinion leaders (KOLs), speakers and investigators,” both in-person and online, plus direct and virtual liaisons and interactions with physicians and training including continuing medical education (CME) credits as key approaches.
Mirroring the changes sweeping the meetings industry at large, innovative new programs are sharpening the relevance, impact and ROI of medical industry meetings—and finding a strong pulse with medical professionals.
“Increasingly, the purely didactic, lecture hall approach is giving way to live, interactive experiences,” said Dr. James Reichheld, a Boston-area gastroenterologist who specializes in liver and pancreatic disorders and regularly attends conferences locally at institutions such as Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital, and at national meetings destinations like Las Vegas. “Whether in the room or via video conferencing from 1,000 miles away, I can ask questions and learn on the spot. That, in my view, is true value.”
From managing regulatory challenges to enhancing the attendee experience, three top event managers and industry experts share their views on today’s leading trends and practices for healthy meetings outcomes.
Pivotal Strengths
Access to key thought leaders, live clinical demonstrations and hands-on interaction were among the defining success factors for the 37th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Silver Spring, Md.-based American Urogynecologic Society (AUGS), the leading organization for practitioners of female pelvic medicine, including pelvic floor disorders and reconstructive surgery.
Held in October 2016 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, this increasingly popular week-long event set an attendance record of some 1,150 physicians, nurses, students, researchers, educators and other medical professionals.
“Unique programs included the live broadcast of three operations, two on living patients and one on a cadaver, by leading surgeons in the field,” said Cynthia Stubits, director of event services for leading Chicago- and Washington, D.C.-based association management and services company SmithBucklin, the event’s manager. “Participants were able to engage the surgeons, all AUGS members, in dialogue as they worked, providing an unprecedented learning opportunity.”
Also featured was video of surgeries completed months earlier, each representing an especially fascinating case.
“Narrated by the surgeons and edited for highlights only, these showcases offered the fuller, post-recovery view,” Stubits said. “As with the live sessions, broadcast from three clinics around the country, feedback on the Q&A session was incredibly positive.”
Featuring top talent and delivering relevant, actionable content are two essential components, Stubits noted, in helping to justify, if not validate, the time and expense of attending medical meetings. Keeping participants interested and engaged is another.
“True of larger meetings trends, medical delegates want hands-on, interactive experiences,” she said. “At the AUGS show, offerings like ultrasound workshops with live volunteers and the chance to test out surgical robots and other new equipment were immensely popular. Lecture-style abstract presentations have their place, but the trend is toward mixing up the show with different, even exciting, elements.”
Featuring digital downloads for CME credits—a meetings perennial, Stubits noted—the show also included programs geared for the 50-plus attending residents and fellows.
“These are the next generation of clinicians—and future meetings participants,” Stubits said. “Through pre-conference receptions, meet-and-greets and other activities, we focused on ways to raise their comprehension and awareness of the networking, learning, professional development and other opportunities that meetings vitally provide.”
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Content, Community, Experience
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) is the world’s oldest and largest single life science membership organization, with ASM Microbe as its signature event. Representing the world’s largest gathering of microbiologists, this singular global forum, introduced in 2016 with Bill Gates as keynote speaker, integrates ASM’s General Meeting and Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) into one program.
As ASM’s director of meetings, Kirsten Olean provides strategic leadership for ASM’s Meetings Board, which along with ASM Microbe includes the Clinical Virology Symposium, Biothreats meetings and the Conferences Program. Her team also manages operations for the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students and the ASM Conference for Undergraduate Educators, meetings that fall programmatically under ASM’s Education Department.
For Olean, three elements stand out for meetings success: content, community-building and attendee experience.
“Content is still king,” she said. “Attendees expect to receive cutting-edge, quality science, and with so many places to find information today, the meeting must be a current and credible source for that content. Having that reputation helps to attract attendance, along with great speakers and researchers who want to share their findings. The quality of the content is best measured through evaluation feedback, press coverage and consistent attendance.”
Community-building through networking comes a close second, or, as Olean noted, ahead of content for some meetings.
“Attendees come to connect with other attendees, speakers, exhibitors, sponsors and other participants,” she said. “This web of connections builds both the overall meeting as a community, and communities within the larger group.”
Critical, too, is shifting design thinking to the experience of the attendee.
“What is best for the attendee may not always be the easiest or most efficient process for staff or vendors, but how attendees experience the entire event, from invitation and registration through post-meeting, must be the priority,” Olean said. “This includes personal customization options for their time, navigating the meeting, consuming content and more.”
Looking ahead to ASM Microbe 2017, taking place this June at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Olean is building on lessons learned from 2016.
“ASM Microbe is a very large meeting, with nearly 12,000 attendees last year,” she said. “To help attendees find their ‘home,’ we are moving to more activity and content-based networking, such as roundtable discussions, meet-the-speaker opportunities and gathering spaces tied to specific areas or disciplines, plus activities like fitness classes and tours.”
To enhance the attendee experience, Olean and her team are making the programming track hubs, introduced last year as “village centers,” even more fundamental to the meeting.
“Integrated into the exhibit and poster hall, these hubs will be optimized connection points for finding people, delivering programming and more,” she said. “And because of the convention center’s long linearity, we are providing several ‘scan and go’ access points, rather than one central registration point.”
Smoothing the Way
Few challenges are as thorny as healthcare compliance laws and policies. In October 2016, Fenton, Mo.-based global event management leader Maritz Travel launched its new Maritz Travel Healthcare Solutions to help navigate and simplify this regulatory and reporting thicket.
Heading up the initiative as senior director of healthcare compliance is Pat Schaumann, whose unmatched leadership in the area includes founding the Healthcare Meeting Compliance Certificate (HMCC) program. Adopted by MPI, where Schaumann led the Healthcare Sector at the MPI Academy prior to joining Maritz, it’s the training that certifies meeting planners—and every person involved with healthcare at Maritz—on healthcare compliance.
“Lacking any form of standardization, consistency or predictability, healthcare meeting compliance and reporting is overly complex and fraught with changes, Schaumann said. “I’m sometimes tempted to hang signs saying ‘Road Work Ahead’ or ‘Road Closed’ on my door, but it’s how we react to these ‘bumps in the road’ that lessens the stigma.”
Fully supported by senior Maritz leaders, the new initiative, in partnership with key operational areas, assesses the risks in pivotal components most relied on by clients.
“These include contract management, speaker payment, concentration on the HCP meeting experience, internal healthcare certification training for Maritz employees, audit tools and methods, integrated spend track technology and analyzed data to help steer healthcare clients to accurate data collection,” Schaumann said.
In planning medical meetings, Maritz sets guidelines based on the Maritz Travel Healthcare Compliance process.
“As we work with a diverse group of clients, including big pharma, midsize pharma, medical device and biologics, we qualify each by getting a synopsis and executive summary of their business,” Schaumann said. “The next steps are to analyze findings, budgets and implementation, share significant regulatory updates, review policy management and understand the culture communication initiatives. We then create an operation model design, and complete a data quality analysis with the design, systems integration and change management.”
The sum of these steps, Schaumann added, fulfills Maritz’s goal of creating an effective and successful meeting experience for its clients.
