In 2023, ExtendMed collaborated with a biopharmaceutical company and its medical communications agency to optimize their staff's limited time, including the CEO and Chief Medical Officer and maximize engagement with KOLs attending two major medical conferences.
Over 1,600 of the biopharma’s Principal Investigators focused on clinical studies were set to attend the ASCO conference in the US and the EHA conference in Europe. The biopharma company's advisory council and medical affairs team compiled lists of these global investigators. ExtendMed segmented those lists into 22 targeted communities for engagement based on the clinical trials each were involved in.
To facilitate these engagements, ExtendMed customized the HEC platform to enable the biopharma company to engage with investigators in three ways: dinner reception programs, 1:1 meetings and poster presentation sessions.
In the following sections, we dissect the components of this conference program to demonstrate how ExtendMed successfully addressed the challenges of engaging with KOLs at scale, ultimately enhancing the biopharma company's presence at the conferences and fostering valuable connections with KOLs.
The biopharma company, in collaboration with its medical communications agency, faced an array of challenges ahead of these conferences.
One of these challenges was maximizing engagement during short windows of opportunity with limited time and resources. With the ASCO and EHA conferences just days apart, the biopharma company needed to tightly coordinate and control its management team's schedules to ensure these individuals could meet in person with as many KOLs as possible at both events.
This required a thorough understanding of the KOLs' availability and a tool to schedule and reschedule appointments as necessary. With a desire to interact with KOLs in multiple settings to foster deeper relationships, a tailored approach and capable scheduling system were crucial to accommodate the varying preferences and availability of the KOLs.
Another challenge was communicating and coordinating with KOLs at scale. The opportunity to engage with 1,600 investigators presented particularly challenging logistical obstacles; the company needed an efficient way to amalgamate contact lists from 12 different clinical studies and schedule 1:1 meetings between these KOLs and the company's small staff.
With limited conference room capacity and investigators' varying availability, the process for handling inquiries, RSVPs and logistical details for various events and meetings had to be manageable for both parties.
Before implementing ExtendMed's solution, the company relied on large email blasts to hundreds of investigators requesting suggested meeting times during the conferences. This created major logistical problems, as the team received numerous overlapping time preferences, complicating appointment scheduling.
Other challenges included:
To tackle these challenges, the biopharma company and its agency turned to ExtendMed for its customized engagement platform, HEC. The resulting conference engagement program included the following elements:
Below, we provide a closer look at how HEC was configured into a comprehensive platform solution, offering a superior alternative to manual planning and organization methods, such as spreadsheets, emails and phone calls.
The platform united lists from the company’s 12 clinical studies and stored them in a single accessible location. In addition, the platform loaded the client's internal team data, creating a comprehensive and organized database. This function eliminated the need for manually sorting and merging various datasets, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing the risk of errors.
The platform then provided centralized scheduling and calendar management—streamlining planning and coordination with KOLs. By integrating with KOLs' calendars via Calendly, the platform facilitated real-time updates on availability and automatic appointment rescheduling, optimizing the limited time at the conferences. This replaced the inefficient and error-prone method of manual email coordination.
Without ExtendMed
Without centralized scheduling and calendar management, teams often resort to manually managing schedules and calendars for KOLs. This leads to more administrative work and a high likelihood of errors. Accomplishing these tasks otherwise requires using separate scheduling tools or relying on back-and-forth email communication to coordinate appointments, which is time-consuming, inefficient and invites mistakes.
The platform offered customizable modules for each engagement venue, allowing the biopharma company to create tailored approaches to engage KOLs based on preferences and availability.
Without ExtendMed
Without the platform's customizable modules, teams often have to create their own ad hoc systems for managing different engagement opportunities. This typically involves a combination of spreadsheets, documents and email chains, making it difficult to track and coordinate the various engagements.
HEC enabled efficient communication between the biopharma company, agency and KOLs. Features such as automated invitations, text reminders and RSVP management ensured effective event and meeting coordination. To engage a large international audience, WhatsApp was offered for message reminders. The platform also provided a centralized repository for all relevant documents, facilitating easy access and sharing.
Without ExtendMed
Without the platform's communication features, teams have to rely on individual email threads, phone calls, or text messages to coordinate with KOLs—a cumbersome and disorganized alternative. Document sharing and collaboration would likely be spread across multiple tools and platforms, leading to inefficiencies and the potential for lost information.
The platform emphasized privacy and data security with robust data protection features, meeting compliance requirements for both the US and Europe. End-to-end encryption and strict data handling policies ensured the security of sensitive information.
Without ExtendMed
Without the platform's built-in privacy and data security mechanisms, companies have to independently ensure their communication and data storage methods meet compliance requirements. In practice, this means investing in additional security tools and resources, which can be costly and time-consuming to implement and maintain.
The platform's white-label capabilities allowed full customization with the biopharma company's branding, creating a consistent and professional appearance. An intuitive interface and user experience enabled easy navigation and engagement for KOLs.
Without ExtendMed
Without the ability to white-label a procured engagement platform, companies have to either develop their own branded interface for KOL engagement or use generic tools that lack personalization. This can result in a massive (and expensive) development lift, a less professional appearance and a more challenging user experience for KOLs who’ve come to expect digital conveniences.
By tracking key metrics such as attendance rates, meeting outcomes and KOL satisfaction, the biopharma company and agency could assess their approach and identify improvement areas. Live presentations at ASCO had attendees scanning QR codes to answer questions, offering client insights.
Without ExtendMed
Without the platform's reporting and analytics capabilities, companies have to manually gather and analyze data from various sources to assess the success of their engagement efforts. This process is time-consuming and may not provide the same level of insights or accuracy as a centralized platform.
The customized conference management platform not only addressed logistical challenges faced by the biopharma company and agency but also led to several value-added outcomes and benefits, summarized below
ExtendMed’s platform not only resolved the logistical challenges faced by the biopharma company and the medical communications agency at the ASCO and EHA conferences but also led to enhanced KOL engagement, improved compliance reporting and ongoing collaboration beyond the conferences. The platform's extensive capabilities allowed the company to establish and maintain valuable relationships with KOLs, ultimately supporting their clinical research and drug development initiatives.
ExtendMed's Health Expert Connect™ platform is an ideal solution for medical communications agencies and pharmaceutical companies looking to optimize their engagement with KOLs and maximize the value of their presence at crucial industry events. By leveraging the power of ExtendMed's technology, companies working with us establish themselves as industry leaders, foster meaningful relationships and drive their strategic initiatives forward.
Experience the benefits of ExtendMed's platform for yourself. Contact us today to schedule a demo and see how our platform can elevate your company's presence in the competitive world of healthcare and pharmaceuticals.