Reconvening once again in Washington, DC, the 19th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) took place from 24-26 April with the theme ‘Patients First’.

With a record-breaking 720 participants, the meeting theme explored the role of patients and patient advocates as collaborators in medical research and medical communications. Thought-provoking and engaging keynote addresses, oral presentations, interactive sessions, and roundtables addressed these topics, plus other issues relevant to medical publications and communications professionals.

A summary of the third day of the meeting is provided below to benefit those who were unable to attend the meeting, and as a timely reminder of the key topics covered for those who did.

Read our summaries of Day 1, and the morning and afternoon of Day 2.

Summaries of Day 3

 Breaking down barriers to ‘patient-first’ approaches

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Effective patient engagement requires transparency, health literacy, compliance, co-creation, and recognition of the value of patient communities.

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This informative panel discussion, hosted by Gavin Jones (OPEN Health), explored the fundamentals of patient engagement. On the panel were Ella Balasa (Patient Advocate), Alexandra Dubois (OPEN Health), Jenny Ghith (Pfizer), and Brittany Wolf Gianares (Pfizer).

Jones opened the discussion by explaining that if medical communications professionals get the fundamentals of patient engagement right, and engage patient communities thoughtfully and with compassion, patients will be more motivated to collaborate.

“[Patient engagement] is a critically important topic that permeates everything we do.” – Jenny Ghith, Pfizer

How can patients add value to the work of the pharma industry?

As a patient advocate, Balasa provided several thoughtful insights on how patient engagement can add value to the work of the pharmaceutical industry:

• Understanding the burdens, needs, and preferences of patients can enable industry to optimise and tailor their products or services to meet the needs of patients.
• By engaging with patients, there is likely to be less waste in terms of time, resources and finances, less need for protocol modifications, and more chance that patient education and marketing materials achieve their objectives.
• A collaborative approach empowers patients and improves their ability to make informed decisions about their care and how to move research forward.
• In rare diseases, patients are actively involved with monitoring and collecting data within their communities, which can help industry understand more about a disease.

Balasa concluded that the relationship between patients and industry is mutually beneficial as both communities are working together to improve patients’ lives, and it is important to keep this in mind to move patient engagement forwards.

What factors have been important for patients to feel comfortable about an organisation’s intent to partner?

Dubois brought both a patient advocate and industry perspective to the panel discussion on the transparency of intent. From a patient advocate perspective, she explained the importance of understanding a company’s true intent, whether it is self-serving or for the betterment of the community. Dubois highlighted several points that patient advocacy groups consider when navigating and building relationships with industry:

• Making sure that that the company understands the true burden of disease, comes with questions, and actively listens.
• Identifying their own objectives and aligning these with the company’s to create a mutually beneficial partnership.
• Understanding whether the level of involvement required is commensurate with the drug development stage (to avoid disappointment if the treatment does not make it to market).
• Ensuring information and outputs are shared so that patient advocates can ask questions and see how outputs could lead to improved patient outcomes.

Switching to an industry view, Dubois summarised the approaches industry could take when working with patient advocacy groups:

• Undertaking a patient advocacy landscape analysis to understand who the strong voices are in the advocacy community.
• Understanding and respecting that some advocacy groups may not want to partner with industry.
• Using patient journey mapping to understand a disease state before approaching advocacy groups.

Wolf Gianares reinforced the need for there to be a two-way dialogue and for patients to be involved every step of the way, explaining how companies should lead with empathy and actively listen to patients’ unique perspectives: it may be the first time a patient is opening up to an industry professional, so companies should respect this. Companies should take time to brainstorm how industry can meet patients’ needs and demonstrate how they have elevated patient voices when creating outputs. If an output cannot be implemented (for example, due to legal or compliance issues), then companies should explain why and show that it was considered – transparency is key!

Pharmaceutical companies should lead with empathy and actively listen to patients’ unique perspectives.

What approaches can we take to improve health literacy?

Addressing the question of what can be done to improve health literacy, Wolf Gianares made several interesting points:

• Companies should assess unmet needs and give patients what they want, plainly and simply.
• Resources to help patients get to the root of the science go a long way to giving patients the confidence to be part of their care team.
• It is important to reach out to patients using their preferred medium, and to consider format, access issues, and patient preferences.
• Provide plain language summaries (PLS) so that patients have access to emerging scientific information.
• Develop translations to serve different cultures and enhance publications to suit learning styles.
• Conduct surveys to find points of confusion and understand how these may be overcome.

Balasa added that individuals will vary in their speed of understanding and may need nuanced support to navigate their health and disease. The relationship between patient and provider is the foundation of how patients can improve their health literacy, so it would be beneficial for industry to support those interactions by providing assessment tools to help healthcare professionals (HCPs) understand their patients’ health literacy and resources to facilitate the dialogue with their patients.

How can we maintain compliance and independence? How do we get it right the first time?

Ghith explained that compliance and legal teams can support companies with the enormous responsibility of ensuring that trust with patients is maintained, and that companies listen to patients and patient advocates and respect the patient relationship with their HCPs. Understanding the ‘why’ behind compliance and legal decisions is crucial so that this can be fed back to the patients. Ghith advised engaging with compliance and legal teams early in the process so that they can understand why materials are being developed and support medical communications professionals with the ‘how’.

From a patient advocacy standpoint, Dubois noted that industry partnering with patients is still a new concept and there are grey areas regarding compliant interaction. Dubois referred to her experience with an industry-sponsored advisory session between patients/caregivers and industry, which was useful for the pharmaceutical company but also gave patients/caregivers the opportunity to meet with industry professionals and break down preconceptions. To support with compliance, the advocacy group provided a ‘concept deck’ detailing what the relationship with industry partners would look like and how it would work.

How do we effectively co-create with patient groups?

From an industry perspective, Dubois described how OPEN Health works with their industry partners on behalf of clients and patients/caregivers through patient engagement programmes, noting several important points:

• If you are developing materials that feature patients, use real patients.
• Start early and manage expectations, making sure patients have clarity around how long the engagement will last.
• Work to the patient’s schedule.
• Have a single point of contact: a patient relationship manager.
• Include a feedback loop by sharing outputs with patients.
• Compensate accordingly and compliantly.

In summing up, Balasa emphasised the patient and their wellbeing must be the focus of collaborative interactions. Empathy has to be the root of all healthcare transactions, and engagement should not be treated as a box-checking exercise. A true partnership should be built with patients with a communication loop, feedback, and explanation. Compensation is also incredibly valuable to patients to make sure their lived experience and expertise are given the same weight as other stakeholder input.

A true partnership should be built with patients with a communication loop, feedback, and explanation.

Keynote: The 4^th industrial revolution in life science: reshaping healthcare and medical communication with AI

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Artificial intelligence can be used to automate processes in a responsible, ethical, and explainable way that humans can understand.

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In the final keynote of the meeting, Loubna Bouarfa (OKRA.ai) described her journey with artificial intelligence (AI), which began when she developed a surgical ‘cockpit’ during her PhD. The tool monitored surgical instruments and utilised AI to infer the stage of surgery with 90% accuracy and could predict errors, length of patient recovery, and how complex the surgery would be based on patient data collected before surgery. Even in these early days of AI, Bouarfa realised that the biggest challenge to AI adoption was trust.

The biggest challenge to AI adoption is trust.

Unlike the 3^rd revolution (the development of the internet), which was based on a system of rules, the 4^th industrial revolution will see the development of AI technology that understands the intricacies or the ‘art’ of what we do – eg, the art of writing or the art of surgery – and we will need to make sure this technology is developed in the right way.

In the context of healthcare, Bouarfa explained how one-size-fits-all validation is at a tipping point where stratified medicine is not enough and we will need to move to individual, precision medicine and to look at the human body as a holistic system. Machine learning models learn from data and do not assume a normal distribution. This will allow us to better predict the right treatments for patients and will mean that we can move from a volume-driven to an outcome-driven healthcare system.

What do we want healthcare to look like in 2050?

Imagining what the healthcare system might look like in 2050, Bouarfa sees the role of AI as being transformative:

• The ability to leverage data from sensors/wearable devices/regular scans to assess risk and implement preventative medicine.
• The use of collated data from the population to determine the best course of action when someone does get sick.
• Collaboration between doctors and AI to support clinical decision-making.

To get to this point, we need to embark on a transformation, explained Bouarfa. Not to replace humans/doctors but to augment their capabilities and to achieve precision across the industry, including in medical writing. We are at the inflection point, and we are responsible for choosing which path we take. Will we embrace and guide or ignore the potential of AI?

“We need to embark on a transformation … … not to replace humans/doctors but to augment their capabilities and to achieve precision across the industry, including in medical writing.” – Loubna Bouarfa, OKRA.ai

How do we build trustworthy AI?

To build trustworthy AI, it must first be lawful, explained Bouarfa. Two additional criteria are:

• Transparency: understanding what data are used to train the AI system, how the model was designed and validated, and its level of accuracy.
• Explainability: getting to the point where AI can explain its methods to get to a prediction or decision. This requires deep knowledge and a lack of bias (data must be unbiased, diverse, and representative).

Bouarfa emphasised that it is our collective responsibility to help guide AI development for the medical communications industry in a compliant manner. Bouarfa noted that autonomous AI is not permitted in healthcare as it is a high-risk industry, so it will always be positioned where humans and AI must work together.

“Machines have huge computational power to get accurate solutions at volume, so we need to leverage this alongside human intelligence to drive optimised outcomes.” – Loubna Bouarfa, OKRA.ai

What does this mean for medical writing?

Medical writing will go through a similar revolution as in other professions, Bouarfa explained. Today we see AI automation of certain aspects of the process, such as formatting or organising text. By next year, we may see AI writing parts of scientific publications on critical care medicine. Over the next 5 years, we will see a huge increase in AI in scientific writing, but it will raise ethical concerns, and within 10 years, we will see responsible advanced AI that can automate scientific writing. A key challenge the industry will face is the creation of fake publications. We have a collective responsibility to define how the technology can be used in a responsible way. In the Q&A following Bouarfa’s keynote, she explained how the reinvention of medical communications through the use of AI should start with the industry itself. It will be important to define where automation can be used – where the risk and margin of error is not too great – and identify processes that are mundane and time consuming and focus on those to show usefulness and value.

“Over the next 5 years, we will see a huge increase in AI in scientific writing, but it will raise ethical concerns, and within 10 years, we will see responsible advanced AI that can automate scientific writing.” – Loubna Bouarfa, OKRA.ai

Patient-centric publication analytics: how to leverage new technologies, alternative metrics, and open access research to measure publication impact on patient outcomes

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Open access data and AI are revolutionising patient-centric publications and patients’ access to information.
• Understanding patient preferences is key to delivering impactful patient information.

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In this parallel session, Richard Graves (Sorcero) and J.R. Meloro (Pfizer) discussed the need to understand what patients want and how they interact with data to improve patients’ access to information and to measure impact.

Patient-centric publication requirements

Graves began by highlighting how diagnoses for rare diseases can be missed if disease information is not accessible and discoverable by both HCPs and patients. He explained that the publication field needs to focus on three key points:

• Patients need accessible medical literature — open access PLS are their preferred method.
• AI-powered analytics and alternative metrics should be applied for tracking provider and patient medical engagement.
• Data should be disseminated through patients’ preferred methods of PLS content from their HCP, patient advocacy groups, and peer reviewed journals.

Diagnoses for rare diseases can be missed if disease information is not accessible and discoverable by both HCPs and patients.

Graves noted that the range of open access research sources has increased hugely in recent times (citing Unpaywall, OpenAlex, OpenCitations, and Crossref as examples), so ways of measuring the underlying impact and quality of the materials accessed by patients is key to understanding what works best. Graves also noted publication analytics, including web and alternative metrics, publication clinical impact scoring, intelligent citation data, and thematic labelling, that can be used to track scientific and patient engagement.

Graves discussed how generative AI can be used to produce validated, reproducible PLS to enhance accessibility, and could also be used to track the impact and uptake of plain language and accessible content, including what patients and HCPs prefer and think of publications. He also highlighted that the US Food and Drug Administration is likely to require PLS for all articles in the next few years (as required now in Europe).

Patient preferences in publications

Outlining the three pillars of health literacy – information has to be accessible, understandable, and actionable – Meloro emphasised accessibility as a key pillar because it is a fundamental barrier to improving health literacy. Accordingly, a lot of effort has gone into making medical information more accessible via open access publications and PLS. Altmetrics are also important as they enable measurability in publications, with journal impact factor no longer being useful according to Meloro.

In order to understand what patients want, Meloro detailed how Pfizer established an advisory board in collaboration with patient advocates. Patients were polled on how they wanted to receive information, with patient advocacy group websites being the most popular resource, followed by full manuscripts with PLS. The preferred publication format was infographic PLS, and patients were most interested in patient-reported outcomes. Joint top trustworthy sources of information were HCPs and patient advocacy groups (pharmaceutical companies were low on the list).

Graves then talked about pick-up of medical publications on social media as described in a Pfizer poster published in 2020, which concluded that the highest degree of engagement was with open access articles. In consideration of this, and the impact of PLS on patient information, Pfizer consolidated PLS that had not been published by journals, added enhanced content and supplementary materials, and hosted it all on the online open access repository Figshare. The result was that 18 PLS garnered 6,000 views without promotion or actively driving traffic.

Graves concluded by reiterating that low health literacy correlates with poor outcomes, whereas better understanding leads to better use of medicines and better outcomes. Access is the fundamental component of health literacy.

Access is the fundamental component of health literacy.

The future of publications: evolving to match behavior

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Understanding the preferences and needs of your target audience can help to identify the best channels through which to communicate medical information.
• Publishing methods are evolving to meet the changing needs of patients and HCPs with a focus on shorter, more engaging publication formats.

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Caroline Halford (Springer Healthcare), Gary Burd (IPG Health Medical Communications), and Catherine Skobe (Pfizer) were the presenters in this parallel session exploring how HCP and patient preferences for the consumption of medical information are evolving.

Burd presented a behavioural analysis of oncologists and cardiologists, contrasting differences in terms of their demographic characteristics, different needs for understanding different diseases, therapies and prescribing information, and how they go about researching this information. Burd explained how this knowledge can help medical communications professionals to understand their target HCP audience, how best to reach them, and how to optimise our communications with them. Burd provided illustrative examples from the behavioural analysis:

• Cardiologists were less likely to use telemedicine, less likely to attend medical conferences, and less likely to educate their colleagues when compared with oncology specialists.
• Oncologists were more active than other HCPs on social media platforms such as Twitter, and YouTube, and preferred digital formats such as podcasts to learn about medical information when compared with cardiologists.
• Cardiologists preferred professional portals such as Medscape and professional associations for medical information and were more likely to read print journals compared with oncologists.

“We can tell a lot about doctors that helps us understand who they are, how we can reach them, and how we can optimise our communications to reach them.” – Gary Burd, IPG Health Medical Communications

Halford provided a perspective on how publishers have developed new solutions to meet the evolving needs of HCPs who are increasingly challenged by not having enough time to consume medical news and developments in research, and when they do have time, want engaging content that does not take too long to absorb. Publishers have responded to this need with shorter, more engaging formats such as Plan Language Summaries of Publications, podcasts, and infographic articles. Articles with these ‘digital shortcuts’ enjoyed higher engagement, with Halford explaining how articles that have a PLS are accessed more than those without, and that articles with video abstracts also gained more attention than those without. Research has also shown that digital shortcuts improve readers’ understanding of the information.

HCPs often have little time to keep up with developments in medical research and need engaging content that can be absorbed quickly.

Skobe closed the session by looking at how patient engagement is driving the evolution of publishing methods. Using results from a patient preference survey conducted to understand how patients consume medical-related content, Skobe established that after information from patient advocacy group websites, patients found a peer reviewed journal article with a supporting PLS to be the most valuable source of medical information. The format of the PLS was important to patients, with a preference expressed for PLS with visual and/or audio elements. Patients also wanted to hear about data from other patients, assigning greater value to patient-reported outcome data than eg, epidemiological research and health economics outcomes research. In terms of trustworthiness, patients identified physicians/HCPs, patient advocacy groups, and peer reviewed journals as the most trustworthy sources of health-related information.

The emergence of patient perspectives poster tracks: ensuring patient voices are heard at medical meetings

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Patient perspectives poster tracks are scientifically sound meeting sessions convened at medical congresses that allow patient advocates and patients to share their perspectives with the congress audience.

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In this parallel session, Jenny Ghith (Pfizer), Brittany Wolf Gianares (Pfizer), Thomas Bognanno (Creating Healthier Communities), and Jennifer Regala (American Urological Association [AUA]) discussed the value of patient perspective poster tracks at medical congresses. Ghith opened by highlighting that congresses offer opportunities to connect with others and have conversations that advance learning. She then outlined Pfizer’s journey with patient perspectives posters, which was triggered by the realisation that the patient voice was becoming more important, but that it was challenging for physicians to have relevant conversations with patients.

The patient voice is becoming more important, but it is challenging for physicians to have relevant conversations with patients.

Introduction to the patient perspectives poster track

Wolf Gianares explained that the goal of patient perspectives poster tracks is to overcome the disconnect between physicians and patients. A patient perspectives poster track is a scientific meeting session that is fully integrated with congress programmes, with submissions that are reviewed and curated by a scientific committee (they are not industry-sponsored meetings or sessions dedicated to anecdotal information). They represent an opportunity for patient advocates and patients to share their perspectives on research generated by surveys, focus groups, and collaborations. Wolf Gianares ended her presentation by showcasing testimonials that confirmed how these tracks have generated positive dialogue between patients and HCPs/others in the audience.

Patient perspectives poster tracks present an opportunity for patient advocates and patients to share their perspectives on research … … and have generated positive dialogue between patients and HCPs.

Working together with societies

Regala spoke about how Pfizer and the AUA worked together to develop the patient perspectives poster track at AUA2022. She explained each organisation’s role and stressed the importance of buy-in to the patient-centric approach from each stakeholder. A formal agreement was reached that allowed them to support patients’ travel to congresses and ensure that deliverables focussed on patients. Regala also emphasised the importance of building relationships to have the patients’ voices heard, explaining how this could be done via advocacy groups and social media, and producing accessible information such as podcasts, newsletters, and one-page insights.

Elevating the patient voice

Bognanno shared his personal experience as a patient with cancer and what it was like navigating the unknown territory with regards to treatment options and disruption caused by the disease. Bognanno explained how patients want to have an open conversation with physicians but it is challenging dealing with different specialists (eg, oncologists, radiologists, mental health practitioners) who may all use different language/terminology: it is intimidating and leads to a disconnect between medical professionals and patients. This is why use of plain language is so important for both patients and physicians. A physician’s willingness to chat with a patient means a lot to the patient, but some patients find it hard to talk to physicians. Bognanno concluded his presentation by saying that his work with Pfizer has made him realise that he wants to be at the table. He would like physicians to take the time to have meaningful dialogues with patients so that they get to know the person better and work collaboratively.

Specialist language used by different HCPs is intimidating and leads to a disconnect between medical professionals and patients. This is why use of plain language is so important for both patients and physicians.

Guided poster tour: Diversity & Accessibility

On Day 3, the guided poster tour called out 4 posters covering the theme of Diversity & Accessibility (presenting authors shown in bold):

• Guidance for social media posts on randomized clinical trial publications: A Delphi survey – Amy Ma, Alison Lovibond, John McGuire, Susannah Thornhill, Megan McNamee, Allison Solomon, Mark Lydiatt, and members of the BOLDSCIENCE Publications Working Group.
• Are conference presentations accessible? Insights from an online survey to improve equity – Emily L. Messina, Zen Faulkes, Noofa Hannan, Mike Morrison, Anja Petersen, Heather Robertson, Lauren C. Strother, and James L. Wells.
• Diversity in patient authors: a randomized bibliographic analysis – Karen Woolley, Amanda Boughey, Trishna Bharadi, Richard Stephens, Beverley Yamamoto, and Dawn Lobban.
• Access to graphical abstracts via Google Images search: a pathway to connect patients with research? – Patricia Phipps, Katherine Leavy, Sandi Lusk, Cara O’Meally, Jaclyn Mironov, and Alyson Rice.

Changing publishing world – straight talk from journal publishers

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• While AI may deliver efficiencies in medical publishing, it cannot totally replace the human contribution.
• Patients contribute across the spectrum of medical publications, and articles featuring patient authors have significant impact beyond traditional citation counts.
• Publishers continue to invest in platforms for enhanced publication content, but there are challenges surrounding the timing and discoverability of enhanced content with respect to the original article.

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In this discussion session, a panel of journal publishers comprising David Sampson (NEJM Group), Caroline Halford (Springer Healthcare), Angela Cochran (American Society of Clinical Oncology [ASCO]), Jennifer Regala (AUA), and Kelly Soldavin (Taylor and Francis) examined current and emerging trends in the scientific publishing landscape and looked at how the publishing world will evolve in the coming years.

Sampson opened the session with a perspective on the current state of scientific publishing. In his opinion, people remain central to high-quality medical publishing, despite the rapid evolution of AI. Sampson believes that while AI can deliver efficiencies, it cannot replace the intellect, judgement, passion, ethics, and commitment of humans.

“While AI can deliver efficiencies, it cannot replace the intellect, judgement, passion, ethics, and commitment of humans.” – David Sampson, NEJM group

Reviewing publishing trends, Sampson discussed the transition from the historical publishing model (ie, paper plus editorial) to the modern paradigm of publishing accompanying audio-visual media, one-page summaries, and educational articles alongside original research articles. NEJM is planning to launch an AI journal in 2024, as well as additional journals where the NEJM leadership voice can have a positive impact. David concluded that through innovation of the traditional publishing model, NEJM have made good progress over the last 10 years in extending the reach and impact of published materials to broader audiences.

Halford reflected on the drive to increase the accessibility, discoverability, and impact of scientific information, principally driven by a shift to open access, noting a comparative study of 70,000 open access articles versus pay-walled articles that demonstrated significant benefits for open access in terms of citations, downloads, and Altmetric scores for the open access articles. PLS can further improve the discoverability and understandability of articles and are now mandatory for several Springer journals and available in various formats (eg, text, graphics, infographics, and videos). Enhanced digital content is now also mandated by several journals, where videos and one-page infographic summaries have proven popular with both authors and readers. In addition to enhanced content, new formats for articles, such as infographics and podcasts, are proving incredibly popular. Halford closed by noting that the patient voice is gaining traction, with some journals including patients as editors, peer reviewers, and editorial team members.

“Patient authors now contribute across the spectrum of publications, and articles co-authored by patients typically enjoy high download and Altmetric scores.” – Caroline Halford, Springer Healthcare

Cochran outlined ASCO’s focus on better integration to enable HCPs to access content across journals. To achieve this, editors meet regularly to identify topics and content suitable for cross-journal exposure. Cancer.net is home for most of the patient-facing content, where 225 clinician volunteers work alongside internal staff to vet the content and ensure alignment with the latest research. Cochran noted that an opportunity exists to better align journal content with that appearing on Cancer.net and went on to discuss several observed trends in the publishing arena.

• Time-poor oncologists increasingly need to be able to access trustworthy and reliable information quickly.
• The combined use of social media plus multimedia improves discovery (noting the potential for promotion bias to influence this trend).
• Usage is growing: article views have increased by 28% and the number of unique visitors is up by 32%; notably, social media has not been a big driver of this growth.

Looking to the future, Cochran predicted that while journals will continue to play an important role in validating and disseminating information, curation will become increasingly important. It is likely that open access publishing will continue to grow, in part due to government mandates; however, this may have the undesired effect of exacerbating inequities in the research ecosystem by acting as a barrier to publishing for under-funded researchers. The publishing community also needs to consider how best to protect the public from mis/disinformation, a problem that is likely to get worse before it gets better.

“The publishing community also needs to consider how best to protect the public from mis/disinformation, a problem that is likely to get worse before it gets better.” – Angela Cochran, ASCO

Regala showcased the AUA’s open access title, JU Open Plus, which addresses a mandate for open access, and AUA News, which features content written by urologists or urology patients, with a continued focus on patient perspectives, diversity, and inclusion. Regala considers that visual abstracts are the future of accessibility, particularly for patients and lay readers. AUA also offer journal insights from the authors of every research article, with follow-up on social media; these insights are subsequently curated by disease state to improve accessibility for clinicians. Thus, Regala believes that the focus of publishing is shifting to post-publication activities including social media presence and videos associated with articles.

“Visual abstracts are the future of accessibility, particularly for patients and lay readers.” – Jennifer Regala, AUA

In summarising the outlook for the medical publishing landscape, the panel discussed an expanded role for patients in the publishing process, including involving patients as authors on research articles, clinical guidelines, and patient perspective articles, as well as representation on journal editorial boards and as peer reviewers.

The panel also discussed approaches to enhanced content and PLS, with Cochran explaining that there has been a real focus on and investment in enhanced content, video abstracts, infographics, and podcasts over the last 12–18 months, but noting challenges around the timing of dissemination due to the lag between publication of the original article and approval of the enhanced content. Halford placed an important emphasis on the discoverability of enhanced content, noting that the gold standard is to embed within the original research article or otherwise clearly signpost.

Why not also read the summaries of Day 1 and the morning and afternoon sessions of Day 2 of the meeting?

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Written as part of a Media Partnership between ISMPP and The Publication Plan, by Aspire Scientific, a proudly independent medical writing and communications agency led by experienced and dedicated industry experts.

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