CME Spotlight: Reshaping the healthcare conversation
pharmafile | September 2, 2010 | Feature | Medical Communications | CME Spotlight
In a recent conversation with the head of an international group of medical agencies, I was somewhat surprised to hear that one of the advertising agencies in his group now saw ‘traditional advertising’ comprising less than 20% of their revenue. So what is it that they do for 80% of the time?
When I was working for an advertising agency in the early 1990s it underwent a rebranding to reflect the change in the advertising landscape and the word ‘advertising’ in its title was replaced with ‘communication’ – the first time I came across the term in the industry. It seems that all agencies are now ‘communicating’, but communicating a whole host of different things in an ever changing environment.
The benefit of hindsight shows the industry has undergone a substantial revolution, with many new developments influencing how it ‘communicates’.
These include an enforced increase in transparency (including greater controls on ‘ghost writing’), the rise of evidence-based medicine, social media, and the public thirst for medical information and so on. And let’s not forget the question pharma wrestles with itself – whether it is a research or marketing led industry.
There has also been a huge change in the way research and medical opinion is brought to the readership, with new online publishing models including the innovative Open Access publishing, we can see how publishers are now firmly entrenched in the ‘communication’ fold of agencies, and not just as sister companies or divisions that once delivered ‘added value’ offerings to pharma clients.
As my own focus is in CME I am most interested in which agency-types are most suited to potentially partnering with in delivering ‘education’. This is highlighted as CME accreditation bodies regularly seek further information about the differences between the various types of agencies that exist in Europe; are all agencies just ‘agents’ of pharma companies? Is it appropriate for a medical education agency to engage with Continuing Medical Education?
Medical education
‘Medical education’ activities have been recently well defined, it is even possible to win awards in it, however while fulfilling an important role in delivering disease specific messages to a target audience, this type of medical education is firmly routed as a tactical activity that supports a marketing plan controlled or overseen by the pharma company – clearly not CME. An obfuscation is that while some of these activities are accepted in the UK as CPD, it is far from what constitutes ‘good’ CME as broadly understood across Europe. So what is medical education? Perhaps the distinction does not rest with the label or function of the company, but by the type of work it carries out.
There is a shared vocabulary across all communication activities and broadly similar objectives used by agencies, yet the approaches are subtly different; one group clearly persuasive, focusing on the brand, the other more factual with an eye on the molecule and disease area. Could this be the point of differentiation? That agencies that deliver tactical education, unbiased or not, that supports a pharma marketing campaign should be considered to be promotion (and not education) and that ‘high brow’ activities, mindful of transparency regulations and robust data-driven arguments that look at changing clinical practice towards guidelines – whether or not it ties in with the marketing objectives of the supporting company – should be the only activities to be termed as ‘medical education’? This would certainly clarify the situation for external observers.
The position of agencies in this setting is however still jeopardised from a CME perspective, as they clearly remain ‘agents’ of the pharmaceutical client – perhaps publishers less so as they carry out many activities independently of a client brief. The main problem is that if the provider of the education is answerable to a pharmaceutical company, then how can it act in an unbiased way and truly serve the learner, the target audience?
Working and transparency
From a Good CME Practice perspective all would need to adjust their relationships with pharma financial supporters, and be able to primarily serve the faculty in fulfilling their objectives, addressing the educational needs of the learners. A role that would require the company to work in a highly transparent setting, with full accountability of the message that comes from a consensus of expert opinion, far from the controlling hand of a pharma company supporter.
The emerging transparency expectations, robustness of scientific communications and other topics will be discussed at the upcoming meeting of the MedComms Forum in Oxford on 30 September.
A group of educators, communication experts, patient representatives, pharma executives, social media experts and other interested parties – under the watchful eye of Professor Trevor Jones, will meet to present and discuss how the communication environment and relationship management expectations is changing in the medical sector. Also to attempt to define the changing roles of the various types of agency to be able to clearly demonstrate their roles and functions within the promotion-education spectrum.
The meeting will also examine whether any agency types can engage within European CME, or possibly highlight that CME in Europe will be reliant on a completely new independent group of organisations to provide expert support in delivering accredited programmes, and identify from where they may emerge.
It is important to offer further definition of the different agency types especially to clarify to experts and external observers who they are engaging with, and if there can be an explicit shorthand that can give an immediate clue to how closely they are associated with promotion, or education. We may even find out precisely what each type of agency does 80% of the time.
• More information about Strategic MedComms Forum 2010: Reshaping the healthcare conversation can be found here: www.medcommsforum.com.
Eugene Pozniak is Managing Director of Siyemi Learning and Programme and Director of the European CME Forum. Email: epozniak@siyemi.org. Information about the Good CME Practice Group can be found at www.gCMEp.eu
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