How hybrid virtual engagement is accelerating oncology communication

COVID has revolutionised the way pharma engages with healthcare stakeholders – but to be truly successful, digital engagement needs to move away from an overreliance on real-time meetings, say experts from Within3.

By making virtual meetings a necessity, COVID has forced pharma to adopt a more flexible, digitally-driven approach to stakeholder interaction – but in many ways the industry is still on the back foot when it comes to making the most of its engagement strategies.

“Pharma has been one of the last industries to move into digital,” says Natalie DiMambro, vice president of Learning and Development at Within3. “Before COVID, these companies were still mostly doing meetings in-person, just because they’d been doing it that way for decades.”

This is despite in-person meetings having many obvious drawbacks.

“Bringing a global group together is a massive undertaking – not only from a logistics point of view, but from a time point of view, a compliance point of view and a carbon footprint point of view,” says Sarah Diffen, senior director, client relationships lead at Within3. “Because of that, companies are under a lot of pressure to get a return on investment from these meetings.”

• Read the full article in pharmaphorum's Deep Dive digital magazine