Uniquely positioned as the link between life sciences companies and health care providers, Medical Affairs professionals are responsible for the exchange of a wealth of information. They are at the center of numerous meetings every year and are well-versed in hosting virtual, hybrid and in-person formats. The Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) and Array recently gathered several MAPS members for a roundtable discussion of how the technologies have worked with collaborative solutions. Jeannie Griffin, VP of Product for Array, facilitated the roundtable discussion “State of Virtual Collaborative Meeting Technology” to learn more about experiences with the technology and the potential path forward.

Setting the stage

A pre-meeting survey was distributed to attendees asking how many collaborative solutions they currently use. Most respondents regularly used one or two solutions across five prevalent meeting types: advisory boards, HCP clinical meetings, sales trainings, technical workshops and seminars. Asked about the future state of meetings, 86% anticipated a move to hybrid in the future and 14% predicted a move to in-person. They indicated virtual meetings would remain a tool that could be used, but participants didn’t anticipate using them exclusively in the near future. The caveat to that was that global teams still need and widely use the virtual option for internal meetings.

Varied Solutions for Ad Boards

Since no two ad boards are the same, there was unsurprising dissention among panelists as to the format (virtual, hybrid or in person) they preferred to use to host these meetings.

One senior medical affairs director said her company has gone almost completely virtual. She explained they used to rely on an annual full-day meeting with 10 people that cost $150,000. Instead, they now have a standing advisory committee with two to three people attending virtually over a two-hour period, and they do several of these. The budget has been reduced to $50,000. She shared that she believes the company is unlikely to ever go back to in-person because they don’t get as much value from in-person ad boards and hybrids are too costly.

For Joshua Ziel, VP of program development with Aerami Therapeutics, in-person ad boards provide greater value and he’s instructed his teams to go back exclusively to in-person as much as possible. “The rare disease community we work with prefers it,” he explained. “Our key opinion leaders don’t get the opportunity to gather often and like the opportunity to meet with and learn from each other through the discussion, which ultimately helps us get deeper feedback from the panel.”

Ultimately, everyone wants their HCPs to be comfortable and willing to participate. A Medical Affairs manager on the panel explained they used a digital engagement platform previously, but field teams were worried about how HCPs would react to it and many weren’t comfortable downloading something external. She pointed out that the level of familiarity and comfortability was prohibiting new technology solutions.

Agreeing with the need to use technology that will engage rather than dissuade, Joba Adeogoke, Medical Affairs manager of Becton Dickinson, shared her use of technology varies to match the preference of the participants.

Room for Improvement

For all types of meetings they lead, panelists generally rely on the technology available within their companies, often Teams or Zoom. They agreed the health care providers they work with are often also most comfortable with one or the other of these, and reluctant to learn new technology. “Ease of use is still a challenge, and HCPs often don’t want to take the time to learn more complicated interactive tools for a single meeting,” says Ziel, who tends to default to Zoom for external meetings because most people have it and it represents the path of least resistance. “It’s easier to create interactive opportunities in-person but, virtually, people just want to be asked a question. It would be beneficial to have more interactive tools internally, specifically making whiteboarding better and having an easier user interface.”

One MAPS member indicated she works with presenters ahead of time to ensure that they won’t have issues with the platform, but often sticks to Zoom for ease of use and familiarity.

Many of the panelists said they’d have to go through rigorous procurement processes within their company that makes the prospect daunting.

Given that they are working with what they have, then, all panelists agreed they aren’t getting everything they’d like from the technology for hybrid collaborative meetings. Among the key concerns:

• Reduced quality of communication because people tend to talk over one another.
• Tendency to record virtual and hybrid meetings potentially impacts transparency and people’s willingness to speak up.
•  Limited to using tools and apps, such as whiteboards, that come with the technology, versus being able to incorporate one they’d prefer.
• Current options for recording ideas aren’t great and sometimes require expensive licenses as well as often being kludgy.

Two panelists shared they would also find it beneficial to have the ability to incorporate asynchronous material into the meeting. “I find solutions to be lacking in the asynchronous aspect,” said Christine Castro, director of MA excellence and communications for Lundbeck Pharmaceuticals. She’d like participants to be able to tap into material before, during and after the meeting, and even in subsequent meetings where it serves as history or background information.

The difficulty to cue off body language on screen also was often cited as lacking with the technology. For one panelist, this is among the reasons they are moving to an almost 100 percent in person model. Castro agreed, “There’s no ability to ‘read’ body language in a virtual environment. I find myself scrolling to see heads nodding or see if people look like they want to say something. I want a larger capacity for visualization of the participant vs. the content being shared,” she said, adding they’re moving toward a more purist model of either all virtual or all in-person.

Gathering Feedback and Metrics

It’s important that technology be capable of both presenting information to participants and allowing stakeholders to gather insights from them (either in words or actions). After every meeting, it was noted, the stakeholders seek a transcript. For an ad board or roundtable, this includes references and what was discussed. 

The ability to record everything was what one panelist found to be among the advantages of virtual and hybrid options because, even with a person in the room taking notes, sometimes something that was said gets missed. However, she’s concerned that virtual meetings don’t make lasting impressions. She felt like people just often show up for virtual meetings and then turn it off like a TV show without thinking about it again.

All panelists found measuring engagement qualitatively to be much more difficult (and potentially less impactful) than were they able to measure quantitatively. One MAPS member expressed her frustration that “metrics have been very elusive, depending on the program.”

“Meeting the objective of the meeting is important,” said Adeogoke. All agreed, and stated a mix of qualitative and quantitative metrics is much more indicative of whether or not the objectives were met.

When discussing engagement tools included in the technology, one person said she was looking for engagement in ways that create new ideas. Ziel, on the other hand, was more focused on tools that would indicate if the organization gained insight in the areas that were most important  and whether or not HCP advisors remain open to further interaction on the basis of a two-way dialogue.

“HCPs don’t worry too much about the company getting all the answers being sought, because sometimes we ask the wrong questions, but they do care that the company hears their input,” he said, expressing that ad boards should be focused on cultivating a deep and nuanced dialogue with clinical experts. For this reason, he doesn’t believe polling is beneficial in this environment because it anonymizes responses.

Room to Grow

Ultimately, the panelists seemed to be working with what they have available in terms of the technology and platforms. Whereas some capabilities, like whiteboarding, have to be cobbled together in these technologies, they are familiar and have very little learning curve. There is a room – and desire—for the technology to advance. Panelists expressed hope for a future where they can see more of their participants on the screen, work collaboratively and in real-time more similarly to the ways they can in person, and gather actionable insights from qualitative and quantitative data.