Session wrap up

Presented below are brief highlights from the diverse and engaging roundtable and parallel sessions.

Optimizing video abstracts in peer-reviewed literature

Marc Swift, Client Services Director, provides the key take-aways from this roundtable, highlighting the need for more creative and interactive video abstracts, the importance of where the abstract is hosted, and how measuring metrics can help to determine real-world impact.

Hand-in-hand: How to work with rare disease patients, advocates and caregivers to advance medical publications

Leveraging the patient voice to help shape the direction of clinically meaningful endpoints in rare disease trials

This year's rare diseases roundtable discussion included two tables, both brimming with industry and agency representatives seeking to explore how engagement with rare diseases communities can be improved to advance medical publications. Members who had attended the first ever ISMPP meeting recalled only a handful of participants who were interested in learning more in this space.

Participants were invited to share an honest assessment of the senior leadership commitment to driving change in the way pharma engages with the rare diseases community in their own organizations. Discussions gravitated around organization and culture; if senior leadership teams do not have a personal interest or express their emotional investment to support rare disease communities, then these initiatives may fall short.

Participants agreed that a wide range of activities had been explored but the role of the patient/advocate in helping to redefine clinically meaningful study endpoints is where the greatest impact could be seen. Changing the dialogue away from purely clinical markers to focus on patient quality of life may help to accelerate access to treatments, while also driving more meaningful discussions between patients/advocates and their HCPs.

The group concluded that more sharing across communities may help to define frameworks that can be used to support existing and emerging stakeholders working in rare diseases to effectively engage communities and demonstrate a return on investment, particularly in ultra-rare diseases where patient numbers are low.

Virtual plenaries and their potential impact on publications planning

Takeda & Ashfield case study

Owing to the recent trend for virtual meetings, congresses such as ASCO and ESMO are offering monthly virtual plenaries, which allow a small number of abstracts to be presented between annual meetings.

Takeda highlighted ESMO and ASCO as case studies to evaluate the impact and reach of virtual plenaries

Reference: Enwemadu V, Ojaimi C, Kuttab M et al. Congress Virtual Plenaries and their potential impact on oncology publication planning. Available at: https://n2qslsbksl.preview-postedstuff.com/V2-ZZdU5-ZyF1k-SIZk-zvVK/ Accessed 26 May 2022.

Pros:

Allows for presentation of pivotal between key annual meetings, without having to target smaller meetings and/or wait until the following year
Plenaries are open access, allowing them to reach a more diverse audience who may struggle with travel or registration costs for conventional meetings
Short lead times allowing rapid publication – may be useful if anticipating regulatory approval and data need to be made publicly available
ESMO shares altmetrics so you can monitor the reach of data (ASCO does not yet)
Do not preclude presentation of data at annual meetings; however, virtual plenary abstracts appear in a different section from other presentations
ASCO offers rapid review at JCO for virtual plenaries that are expanded to s full manuscript

Cons:

Only one or two spots are available per plenary, and so only strong Phase 3 data are likely to be considered
Only clinically significant, groundbreaking, or practice-changing data have been accepted
Zoom/virtual meeting fatigue – may gain more traction once in-person congresses become more common, as virtual meetings will seem novel
Short turnaround time
Budget implications – short lead time might require starting presentation development 'at risk'
Even though there is a Q&A session (ESMO offers three Q&A sessions to accommodate various time zones), less opportunity for engagement than at an in-person congress
Subsequent submission to an annual meeting results in inclusion in the Virtual Plenary Debate Sessions, not the general sessions
ASCO does not share altmetrics

Ask the publishers/editors

This roundtable session was a lively discussion, where participants were encouraged to “fire away” with questions for the publishers.

The key take-home message: for most issues/questions relating to publication, the authors, sponsors, or agency representatives are encouraged to contact the journal editor (not the Editor-in-Chief, but the editor contact who manages submissions). The following topics should be raised with the editors before medical writing begins (or as soon after as possible):

Development and submission requirements for publication extenders; peer review of extenders
Pre-submission inquiries relating to suitability of the manuscript for the journal or to coordinate publication alongside a congress. In general, pre-submission inquiries are encouraged by journal editors and may be in the form of a letter, content outline, or abstract

Extending the reach of virtual congress posters

This roundtable was focused on two entwined questions: 'Are scientific posters a dying form of communication', and 'How can we reinvent posters to better communicate our science?'

Some questioned the return on investment, arguing that both virtual and physical poster halls are seeing a decline in audience numbers, to the point where even 10 views for a virtual poster was seen as positive.

Others expressed regret at a missed opportunity: during the pandemic-based pivot to virtual meetings. we should have taken steps to break free of traditional poster layouts and try more daring approaches. The shift back toward live and hybrid meetings may mean that the chance has passed.

Several attendees agreed that attempts to innovate with top-line content or more visual approaches were often stymied by authors gradually reintroducing detail until the content became just as dense as before.

Attendees voiced frustration with the wide and varied range of virtual meeting platforms used, with each supporting different features, and congress organizers not always familiar with the possibilities and limitations of each. This has led to 'eleventh-hour' alerts that creatively produced posters have lost functionality or are displaying bizarrely. Limitations on the types of supplemental content that posters can be linked to using QR codes are also extremely constraining.

Tight timelines were also seen to limit creativity, with some questioning why congresses needed the often very early submission deadlines.

Supercharging with social: Tips for engaging experts and amplifying medical communications

Cardiologists (24%), oncologists (14%), and neurologists (10%) make up almost 50% of HCPs currently on Twitter

This panel discussion explored the value of social media platforms to science communications, considering the hesitancy regarding their use within our industry. With different types of content suited to different platforms, and some more dominant in certain countries, it is vital to consider where your audience will seek their data, especially given the ease of obtaining metrics. Even TikTok currently has an estimated 3.4 million HCP users and could soon surpass YouTube in number of views!

Several successful case studies were shared: the OlympiA trial data shared at ASCO saw HCP mentions amplifying the content far more than traditional publications; the NEJM achieved a reach of >10,000 people by releasing data on a livestream; and a “Tweetorial” series with a digital expert achieved a reach of 22,000+, with 86,000+ impressions.

Delegates were reminded not to overlook the social aspect, as timely replies are essential to keep conversation lively. The panel suggested pre-preparing a decision tree to allow pharma companies to provide rapid responses to different types of feedback or critical reactions.

Ultimately, effective social media use requires selecting the right data, the right channel, and the right experts – those passionate about the content, happy to put things in their own words, and willing to take responsibility for what they say.

Listen and learn: Uncovering unmet patient needs through social listening

A key focus of ISMPP this year was the inclusion of the patient voice in our publication efforts. One way to include the patient voice that may not immediately spring to mind for most of us is the use of social media listening. Using the old story of the blind and the elephant to highlight the limitations of our often-singular perspective of disease states, Chrissy Stanojev described recent efforts to use this methodology to reveal insights into the patient experience of atopic dermatitis, and contrasted this with the language used by healthcare professionals in publications. Chrissy illustrated how, with the use of artificial intelligence and natural language processing, a huge swathe of data from Twitter could be distilled into key insights on the symptoms that patients most frequently mentioned when speaking negatively about atopic dermatitis. These terms differed substantially from those most frequently described in the scientific literature. Although obvious caveats exist in terms of selection bias and self-identification, the session highlighted how we can use these tools to gain a unique insight into the patient perspective of almost any disease.

Breaking dawn: The future evolution of the medical publications ecosystem

Pfizer’s “bold moves” initiative aims to “unleash the power of the people” by encouraging idea generation to transform the organization.

One idea emerging from the initiative was a recommendation for a publications platform ecosystem that contains all aspects related to a publication, including:

Data sources
Study completion dates
Journal targets
Publication status
Tracking/KPIs
Routing for review/approval
Measurements/altmetrics
Automated final check process

The overall aim is to allow for better collaboration across organizational lines rather than working in silos.

Total users = 8125
Authors and reviewers = 7500

Pfizer had used the same publication management system for 15 years so “change management” was very important (focus groups, contest across Pfizer to name new system, training)

Key elements:

Build the plan – compelling story/reason to gain executive endorsement
Capture requirements – host focus groups and workshops to gain input
Confirm solution – survey marketplace and assess options
Build & test solution – build solution and develop training materials
Launch & support – provide training and implement solution