Oxford PharmaGenesis joined this year’s International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) Annual Meeting, which attracted more than 550 publication professionals from the pharmaceutical industry, medical communications agencies and publishers. The meeting, which was held 1–3 May 2017 in National Harbor (MD, USA), was titled ‘Global publication practices: advancing ethics and scientific integrity in an era of data-sharing’.
Major discussions focused on recent developments in key areas such as data sharing, peer review and payer requirements. The packed agenda featured a mixture of plenary sessions, round-table discussions, and poster and parallel sessions. Themes included hot topics such as: guidelines, regulations and data sharing; upcoming trends and challenges in the field of medical publications, including digital offerings; and learning from stakeholder perspectives, including those of publications department heads, biostatisticians and patients.
Several Oxford PharmaGenesis team members from the US and UK offices attended: Brian Falcone, Sumedha Bagga, Marcel Kuttab, Ruvini Jayasinghe, Jenn Davis, Laura Hendrickson, Amy Eves Walder and Megan Weigel from the US office, and Richard White, Sophie Berry, Paul Farrow and Tim Koder from the UK office.
Richard and Brian presented a parallel session called ‘Prospects and challenges in using patient-reported outcomes’, which focused on how patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures are included in clinical trials. It aimed to provide a better understanding of how PROs are used in drug development and how a patient-centred approach will improve strategies to publish PRO results and to integrate PRO studies and results in publication plans. We also chaired a round-table discussion on PROs.
During Wednesday’s keynote session, Richard served as a panellist for a health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) discussion: ‘Communicating value to payers, physicians and patients: HEOR panel discussion’. This interactive session provided an understanding of the challenges involved in HEOR study publications and what organizations should be doing to benchmark their HEOR activities. It also offered insight into how well the industry is utilizing real-world evidence and comparative effectiveness research for market access.
Among its many activities at the meeting, Oxford PharmaGenesis showcased several well-received posters.
- Monitoring the social-media footprint of newly published articles to assess short-term impact.
- Involvement of medical writers in the development of health economic and outcomes research publications in inflammatory bowel disease – a systematic literature review.
- Surveying the evolving models of digital publishing: where does pharma fit?
- Trends in digital access to congress presentations: what can we learn from 4 years of download data?
The exhibitors’ hall was crowded during the breaks, and the company booth was popular.
In addition, Oxford PharmaGenesis supported an oral presentation titled ‘Commitments to data sharing by pharmaceutical companies: the evolving environment’. This presentation was given by Antonia Panayi, PhD, of Shire International GmbH.
Finally, the company is pleased to announce that our Managing Director, Dr Chris Winchester, was voted Chair-Elect of the ISMPP Board of Trustees. As Chair-Elect, Chris will serve as Parliamentarian and Vice-Chair at all meetings of the Board of Trustees.
