Medical communications in a changing world

Amanda Smith explains the effects of the movement towards evidence-based medicine.

“I see increasing demand for medical communications coming from the push to improve transparency and reputation”
-Amanda Smith

Over the next three to five years, what will drive medical communications programmes?
Amanda Smith. The world of medical marketing and communications is changing fast. In this environment medical communication agencies will need to understand how to help the pharmaceutical industry achieve clinical positioning that is not only credible and well-founded, but impactful. I see increasing demand for medical communications coming from the push to improve transparency and reputation. The continued move towards evidence-based health will need increased leverage of evidence-based information and assets, including expert opinion. At the same time, the ongoing expansion of the stakeholder base influencing treatment decisions will drive a greater need for educational support, especially in the area of disease prevention. This broader and more heterogeneous mix will include not only healthcare professionals at all levels but also patients and carers, all needing the evidence base to be interpreted and communicated in ways that are meaningful for them.

Will this affect the range of products and services on offer?
AS. Increasingly complex targeted therapies need educational support to help healthcare professionals and others to understand their place in clinical practice. The need for high-level scientific communications at international congresses and in peer-reviewed journals will therefore continue. Taking the messages to local levels, however, will require a different approach. There will be growing demand for integrated programmes that provide a consistent thread from global to local level, while also ensuring that key messages are appropriate for the markets in which they are delivered.

Examples of such programmes include integrated payer programmes to reflect increasing payer power, as well as the need for payer insight and engagement, and activation of evidence programmes that connect evidence, education and behavioural change. We are already seeing a need for validated decision-making tools to support personalised healthcare, and I foresee increased use of education programmes targeted at improving adherence to treatment, optimising both the clinical and economic value of a given therapy. Reflecting these changes, there will be increased emphasis on educational initiatives designed specifically for nurses and pharmacists, to reflect their growing role in patient management. We may also see a need for medical communications for non-prescription drugs.

Do you see an impact in Europe from the ongoing legal investigations involving pharmaceutical and medical communication companies in the US?
AS. The retrospective nature of these cases demonstrates the need to think ahead of regulatory requirements to ensure that we are operating in a transparent and ethical manner now. The updated guidelines for Good Publication Practice (GPP2), due to be published in late 2009, have been designed to establish high levels of integrity for all those involved with communicating clinical trial data, and I expect that they will rapidly be accepted as the ‘gold standard’. Before long, failure to comply with GPP2 will be assumed to mean unethical practice. Agencies and their clients therefore need to start working to these standards as soon as possible.

Do you think that there will be further regulatory changes affecting medical communications programmes?
AS. It is clear that regulatory bodies want to ensure that scientific publications remain free from marketing influence. This will also be driven by the need for greater transparency, such as the conflict of interest disclosures mandated by GPP2. In practice, this will lead to increasing separation of relationships with external experts. Experts who work on clinical trial programmes will author the scientific publications and work with clinical or medical departments, while the marketing department will work with a separate group of experts, at company-sponsored meetings and elsewhere, to explain the relevance of the data for clinical practice. Pharmaceutical companies will have to expand their network of external experts beyond clinical trial investigators and ensure that they invest additional time and energy working with professionals whose endorsement will be influential with their peers.

For more information please contact amanda.smith@caudex.com.

Amanda Smith is Global Head of Caudex Medical. She has a background in nursing and has over 20 years of industry and agency experience in a variety of commercial roles, encompassing sales, marketing and communications. Moving to medical communications in 1990, Amanda has worked with European and globally based pharmaceutical clients, including GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis, Merck Serono and Johnson & Johnson.