Necessity has always been the most powerful catalyst of change in human history and COVID-19 is no exception, proving to accelerate the life sciences digital transformation.

Whilst the life sciences industry has stepped up as an important player in enabling patient care to continue and in the support of healthcare professionals (HCPs) during these unprecedented times, it has also been key to maintain consistent communication between various stakeholders in order to continue to promote scientific exchange and pursue knowledge.

Our blog explores how COVID-19’s physical distancing has created the drive to embrace new technologies and channels, underpinning a new model for HCP engagement.

Two Year’s Worth of Digital Transformation in Two Months…

For the last decade, many companies decided not to invest heavily (or in some cases at all) in communication via virtual meetings. The consensus was based on a perception that “they were not impactful enough” and therefore not valuable enough, as the engagement impact was considered to be lower than face-to-face.

Fast-forward to 2020 and the aforementioned catalyst of COVID-19: the necessity to provide business continuity shattered resistance to change overnight and once embraced, the benefits of digital channels of engagement became accepted by all.

In fact, the latest data shows that attendance at live virtual meetings account for two thirds of all meeting contacts now and this has increased by over 3,000% in Q3 2020 vs the same period last year, (Fig. 1). At the same time, average HCP response to live virtual meetings has become more positive:

• Net Promoter Score (likelihood to recommend the interaction to a colleague) has increased from -11 in 2018 to +29 in YTD Q3 2020
• Percentage of contacts who rated the event as ‘very useful and of value’ to their practice increased from 54% to 73% over the same period

It has become apparent that virtual meetings have always simply been different and come with their own unique set of advantages:

• They focus on carefully curated and targeted content
• They are time and cost efficient and can be deployed quickly
• They allow for a wider geographical reach and a larger audience attendance
• The content can remain available after the end of the event and be available worldwide

Virtual meetings also appeal to the new era of tech savvy millennial HCPs, with digital interactions not only enabling them to keep critical communication lines open but also in maintaining their ongoing diverse educational needs during a time of great pressure and change.

It’s safe to assume that once the pandemic crisis stabilizes, HCPs will expect that they can continue virtually attending short events without leaving behind their patients and also be given the opportunity to virtually attend multi day events that will still be happening face-to-face if they choose to do so. It will be unheard of for any big scientific event not to cater for online access.

Successful Virtual Meetings Require New Capabilities

In this new setting and to successfully manage scientific discourse, a different mix of expertise is needed. The potential to truly deliver effective and valuable virtual meetings requires a unique combination of experience and capabilities that transcends standalone platform technology. Best-in-class virtual meeting experiences are achieved by managing the full end-to-end lifecycle in a way that meets customer engagement strategy:

• Strategic alignment and planning
• Platform selection in line with engagement needs
• Project, speaker and logistics management
• Content development and curation
• Customer experience management and reporting
• Compliance controls including event monitoring

The future will be shaped by the organisations that are able to find the right partners to enable them to combine all the above on a global scale.

Scientific and medical content needs a bespoke approach that is tailored to the objectives that need to be achieved, while taking into consideration the demographic of the audience. Being able to convey the key points is of paramount importance, as it can affect the development or delivery of healthcare solutions. This means that it is also extremely important to be able to monitor the quality and consistency of the audience experience to be able to extract critical information that will allow organisations to keep improving the content and its delivery to HCPs.

The Proven Value of Virtual Engagement

“We originally wanted to cancel our event but decided to go virtual, we had three times more attendees then in traditional form. Attendees were very thankful, and overall it was a great success”, Customer Engagement Lead, leading pharma company.

The data collected from attendees is often the most comparable and evidence-based approach to assess the success of meeting events and this strongly reflects the value of virtual meetings too. Below analytics are based on a few recent cases studies:

• 85% attendance rate, as compared to the client benchmark of 40-50%
• 100% positive responses from attendees to attend a similar event in the near future
• 72% interaction rate from over 380 HCPs attending a meeting
• Over 52% of attendees voting to move to quarterly rather than annual events

In the era of engagement orchestration, being able to drive scientific content strategy globally and consistently is proving to be a unique competitive advantage that will be a key differentiator for companies who need to build relationships with customers within a busy digital marketplace.

Virtual meetings have become an important asset within the engagement toolbox that must be embraced now as a mandatory channel of communication, having successfully come of [digital] age as an immediate solution, with long lasting benefits.

To learn more on how virtual meetings can be more personal and impactful, visit this page.