Celebrating comms excellence

Small changes can make a big impact: being picked up by a friend instead of driving yourself; testing kits being couriered to you or childcare being provided on your behalf.

These changes remind us that being human is about sharing kindness and inclusion. In clinical trials, the ball of inclusivity is rolling, but is it gathering enough momentum?

Over the last decade, the trial landscape has been undergoing reforms to become more focused on enrolling a diverse population. The US set up the Diversity Action Plan as a requirement alongside drug submissions, and the UK is piloting its own diversity programme, both of which are truly meaningful developments. While we should celebrate every step in the right direction, there is no room for stagnation: the data paints a complex but telling picture. Under-representation of diverse groups in clinical trials remains. It raises the question: what can be done to bridge this gap?

Study protocols are built around data and research, but they also mean understanding the person they aim to serve and representing them. Reducing participant burden in clinical trials can support inclusion and diversity. If a clinic being open over a weekend means one more person can participate, that could change the outlook not only for them, but also for future individuals who might benefit from that treatment.

A reduction of the burden means fewer roadblocks for people who consider applying to clinical trials, which could lead to a higher inclusion rate and more accurate, real-world-like reporting in trials. Solutions need careful consideration – some work for one trial but pose challenges to another. Digital tools are an increasingly common solution, but only a solution if participants have reliable internet access. Study designs built around assumptions about access will quietly lose that human-centricity, excluding the very people they should be reaching.

Our industry understands that making the experience better for people living with a health condition begins by including them – in conversation, and in trials.

Noortje Vermeil is Senior Account Director at 67health

Engaging healthcare professionals (HCPs) remains a persistent challenge for pharmaceutical companies, not because of a lack of information, but because that information often fails to reach clinicians in a timely, relevant or usable way.

Field interactions are limited, digital touchpoints can add to cognitive burden and critical medical insights frequently arrive too late to influence decision-making.

Recently, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has introduced the potential to bridge these gaps by enabling more responsive, insight-driven interactions. It offers:
• Better understanding of HCP needs
• Improved timing of information delivery
• More context-appropriate communication formats.
One immediate application lies in intelligence synthesis. Pharmaceutical organisations generate vast volumes of insight from congresses, advisory boards, field interactions and digital channels, yet much of this information remains fragmented across teams and systems. GenAI tools can help synthesise these signals into clearer patterns, identifying emerging clinical questions, shifts in treatment preferences or unmet information needs among HCP audiences. This allows engagement strategies to evolve more quickly and with greater precision.

Another important capability is accelerating insight-to-action workflows. Rather than waiting weeks for manual analysis of qualitative feedback or market signals, teams can use GenAI-enabled platforms to surface themes in near real time. This creates a more agile engagement model. As new insights emerge, medical, commercial and field teams can adapt their approaches and evolve scientific discussions accordingly.

Content adaptation also becomes more scalable. GenAI can help tailor complex scientific information into formats that align with different HCP learning preferences, such as:
• Concise summaries for time-constrained clinicians
• Interactive digital formats that support engagement and exploration
• Deeper evidence discussions for specialist audiences.
This should be done within rigorous governance frameworks to ensure scientific accuracy and regulatory compliance.

Technology alone will not determine success.

Organisations that realise the greatest value from GenAI will be those that integrate these tools into cross-functional workflows rather than treating them as standalone solutions. When combined with strong medical oversight and high-quality data, GenAI has the potential to support more relevant, timely and meaningful engagement with HCPs, strengthening the exchange of scientific information that underpins clinical decision-making.

Phil Wakefield is Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer at Inizio Medical

How HCPs find information is changing: 60% now use AI tools daily – checking backgrounds, pulling evidence summaries or supporting note-taking.

They can ask follow-ups and narrow the topic at speeds hard to ignore. GenAI now sits between us and our audience.

While hallucinations dominate discussions, the real risk is subtler: omission; simplification; flattening and synthetic consensus. AI prioritises what is easy to reach and read, framing the rest as if it doesn’t exist.

In medcomms, we use formats that work for humans: videos; podcasts; webinars and live content. These work against AI discoverability. Although Google now recognises YouTube transcripts for Gemini and Search, and while multimodal models will eventually handle images and audio directly, significant gaps persist.

For medical affairs: Q&A pages mirror how HCPs search and these pages feed voice-search responses. Clinical evidence summaries should present claim, source, patient group and known limits in one scannable block – preventing AI from oversimplifying. When new data contradicts earlier summaries, create a ‘what changed’ page that walks AI (and HCPs) through the shift.
For promotional medcomms: disease education; product pages and sales-support materials should use consistent language across all touchpoints. When claim, evidence and context follow the same narrative, AI summaries preserve the story. Patient materials that explain why something matters help AI contextualise claims.

Across all groups: every video needs a clean transcript and summary. Format and metadata are as important as words. Tables, headings, descriptive text and links help AI extract meaning instead of flattening it. When medical affairs, brand and corporate pages say things differently, summaries get muddled. Sharing the narrative and source lists across teams prevent this.

Stop measuring only clicks. Track which sources AI uses, whether summaries are fair and where details drop. The question is not only ‘Did our content rank?’, but ‘Did our content survive?’. Success belongs to teams that make their work easy to find, easy to quote and hard to flatten.

Rosie Morland is AI & Data Science Solutions Manager and Rayman Vaid is SVP, AI Enablement & Strategy, both at Omnicom

How often do patient insights actually change what an organisation does next?

If your answer is ‘hard to know’ then that’s a problem – but you’re not alone. Measuring the impact of patient engagement is notoriously tricky. Outcomes are often long term, much of the value is captured qualitatively, and different stakeholders perceive patient engagement-derived value in different ways. While comprehensive tools exist – such as the PFMD Metrics Selector, with more than 100 potential metrics – they can easily overwhelm rather than clarify.

At a recent patient engagement conference, one point of convergence stood out: track how patient insights actually influence decisions, priorities and actions across the organisation. For senior patient advocacy leaders, this reflects a broader reality. Demonstrating the value of patient engagement internally now demands much more than high levels of activity, but rather evidence of influence. From a patient perspective, this is equally critical, as it shows that lived experience is driving meaningful organisational change and shaping how medicines are developed.

Academic literature and established evaluation frameworks consistently highlight the need to move beyond volume and satisfaction metrics towards indicators that capture learning, decision-making and organisational behaviour change. Measuring influence recognises that patient engagement is not an endpoint, but a catalyst – shaping choices, accelerating alignment and unblocking progress across the organisation.

This is not to suggest that influence alone should be the sole focus of evaluating patient engagement. Evaluation must be anchored to strategy. Mapping potential indicators against an organisation’s patient engagement objectives helps ensure that what is measured truly matters. In practice, this means considering three complementary layers: process indicators; outcome indicators and impact indicators.

Critically, prioritisation counts. Rather than tracking everything, we work with our clients to align cross-functional teams – and patient partners themselves – around a focused set of measurable indicators that accurately reflect the strategy. These become shared markers of progress, enabling patient engagement to be understood not only as the right thing to do, but as a powerful creator of organisational momentum

Stephen O’Farrell is Executive Director, Patient Engagement at Spectrum Science