On Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26 January, Oxford PharmaGenesis colleagues hosted, moderated or presented at seven sessions on topics ranging from AI to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and were co-authors on eight posters. In addition, Oxford PharmaGenesis were sponsors of the meeting, supporting its aim to drive leadership and best practices in medical communications.

Day 1 brought a timely discussion on the transformation of medical publications practice – and how medical communications professionals can best adapt to the new and shifting landscapes. Our CEO, Chris Winchester, moderated the session, which looked at how the principles of medical publications have evolved over time and the important role we have as medical communications professionals in maintaining trust in our industry. Discussions centred around how we can help our colleagues to navigate this changing world, engaging with an increasingly broad range of stakeholders and driving improvements in transparency, accessibility and equity. The key takeaway was to ensure we “do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons”.

Three round-table discussions were hosted by Oxford PharmaGenesis colleagues on Day 1 and ran concurrently. They focused on recent initiatives designed to address the practical challenges for pharma of creating and disseminating plain language summaries; the increasing importance of CSR within companies as a success factor; and the use of digital enhancements – such as audio or video attachments – with publications. Plain language summaries featured heavily across the ISMPP agenda and virtual poster hall; in the round-table sessions, discussions largely focused on best practices and guidance for producing and disseminating high-quality, credible plain language summaries.

On Day 2, Oxford PharmaGenesis hosted a hot topics session on the SCARF model – a psychological approach to resolving conflicts in interpersonal relationships. Our Global Learning and Development Director, Cathy Kirk, and Chief Operating Officer, Richard White, explained how the model can be used to enable successful cross-functional collaboration within the business environment.

In the final session of the meeting, Director of Innovation Tomas Rees took part in a lively panel discussion on precision medicine and AI in medical communications. Tomas Rees commented: “Recent advances in language analysis have opened up new opportunities for medical communications professionals to tap into vast amounts of digital information. The application of these new AI tools to generate better insights and understanding of the medical landscape is now an exciting reality.”

As well as being involved in the sessions, eight of the 45 posters presented at the virtual meeting were authored by Oxford PharmaGenesis colleagues together with some of our clients. We were incredibly proud to come home with two ISMPP Europe 2022 poster awards: Oxford PharmaGenesis won the award for ‘Most Innovative Digital Poster Format or Enhancement’ and, with Open Pharma, we won the award for ‘Best Original Research'.

Chris Winchester said: “The 2022 European Meeting of ISMPP facilitated two full days of discussion and reflection on some of the key challenges and opportunities that medical publications and communications professionals face today – and those we can expect to see in the coming months and years.

“We at Oxford PharmaGenesis are proud to play our part in helping to advance our sector and prepare it for the future.”