#MedCommsDay 2023
Meet Gerard D'Angelo
Gerard D’Angelo, is a Senior Scientific Director who is located in the US. His background includes academic research as well as drug discovery within the
An interview with Gerard D’Angelo, Senior Scientific Director
In this interview, Gerard shares his motivations for pursuing a career in medical communications (Med Comms), his passion for educating and empowering others through strategic communications, and the pride he feels when developing impactful campaigns.
Please introduce yourself
I’m Gerard D’Angelo, a Senior Scientific Director at OPEN Health. My background includes academic research as well as drug discovery within the pharmaceutical industry. I considered entering Med Comms a few times over the years, but finally took the plunge in 2013. I joined decile.ten 3 years ago, before it was acquired by OPEN Health.
I would like to think that having those different aspects to my background gives me a different set of perspectives. When it comes to drug development, I understand the whole process of what it takes to get a compound from the very beginning through to a clinical trial.
I started my career as a medical writer on the publications side of the business, then moved over to promotional medical education in 2015. That means I support accounts for investigational products that are still going through the clinical trial process, as well as drugs that have received approval from the regulators, so they have gone through the whole clinical trial program and come out the other side — the success stories.
What motivated you to pursue Med Comms, and what keeps you engaged and excited about your work?
I have always thought of myself as an educator. That can take many forms: you can do it in the lab using the results from your experiments; in Med Comms, it's more about preparing tools and presentations that other people can use.
Doctors, nurses, and laypeople all need different levels of information, and my role is to help them get it. When a drug is in Phase 1/Phase 2, the work is more about spreading awareness about the disease itself and the need for new therapies within that disease. But after approval, it's: “Why is this the best drug to treat this disease?”
The real beauty of what I do now is that I get educated too. I think it is a lot of fun to move beyond your comfort zone and learn something new.
What are you most proud of in your career thus far?
I think I’m most proud of a project I worked on years ago, developing a narrative for a treatment for primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS). We developed the whole rationale for the campaign, which took a mixture of steps from strategic planning to coming up with the promotional message and working on the creative design. It was the first drug indicated for that type of MS, so I knew getting the message out was important.
As Senior Scientific Director, what trends do you foresee shaping the future of medical communications?
After 10 years in the business, I think the most obvious trend is a shift from a strictly didactic approach to a more interactive one, especially with the incorporation of digital components. Now we are going to be putting something online, we have to think about how it can be engaging rather than static.
We have the opportunity to take the lead and help our clients to innovate. I always see something new when OPEN Health’s Design and Digital Solutions team join me on pitches — I haven’t yet found a limit to what they can do.
Finally, what do you think is the key to a long, successful career in Med Comms?
You have got to be open to new opportunities and be willing to move outside of your comfort zone. Period. You do not have the luxury of saying “I'm only going to do this.” I think the key is to be open to new opportunities and to take that as a chance to improve. Of course things you haven’t done before can be daunting, but don’t be afraid to teach an old dog new tricks.