HIGHLIGHTS
As
research and investment are going on a fast track, the pharmaceutical industry needs
new tools to share feedback and improve healthcare products.
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| Image by: www.eluxurytouch.com |
Share
feedback and ideas through face-to-face meetings, but this is not fast enough,
they need to share information and knowledge faster, to keep up with innovation
and research.
Digital
meetings would allow practitioner to communicate more instantaneously, more
often, with less costs. It can react to market changes almost instantaneously,
which allows them to be more competitive.
Know your venues
Today’s
meeting organizer has two general digital venue options: online conferencing (also
referred to as webcasting); and Web-based discussion forums:
-Web casting or online conferencing, which is
closer to traditional meetings since the participants are able to see the
speaker in live and can interact with him either by phone lines (when low
number of participants) or via questions sent to the moderator and answered by
the speaker (for larger meetings).
-Web-based discussions forums which resemble an
online community. Participants have to be invited to be member of the forum in
which they can create their own profile and discuss about topics managed by
moderators, who ensure that participants are not going the wrong direction.
This
new type of venue offers multiple advantages:
- It can be planned in a shorter time frame
- Eliminate the costs and hassle of travel and hotel logistics. It has no need to rent a venue, to accommodate the participants
- It allows to having a greater audience. Comparing to traditional meeting, not all the attendees of the digital meeting need to be invited
- It is accessible through numerous electronic devices (computers, mobile phone, tablets) thus from more different places worldwide
- It allows getting more feedback from participants than during traditional meetings. Moderators can perceive if the discussion is going the wrong way more quickly which allow him to be more effective
- Encourage interactions through an online community
- Provide the broadest amount of flexibility, convenience
- Maximize regulatory transparency on the topics
Another
advantage is that as medical teams don’t need much time to organize a meeting
with digital venues, they can better manage the length of the discussion and
get rapid feedback about urgent topics easily.
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| Image by: Smartmeeting.com |
The main inconvenient
is that it is much more difficult to create relationships between participants;
there are not many opportunities for networking. Plus the issue of
confidentiality is raised when using this type of venues.
Determining the mix of venues
The challenge is to determine
which venues are more appropriate for the discussions the event planner wants
to hold. It is a common mistake to believe that event planner must rely only on
one. Event planners tend to think it is more difficult go through digital
venues as they don’t really know how to manage it. But in fact they are much
more convenient from an administrative and legal point of view than traditional
venues.
However it might be more
difficult to drawn participants to a meeting through digital venues, to get
them interested and encourage them to
stay and keep discussing about the topic.
To sum up, nothing can replace
the value of face-to-face meeting. However, digital meeting offers a lot of
benefits to participants with flexibility and convenience. All three
venues—live, webcast, online community—have their place and meeting planners
should look to understand and integrate all three into a successful program as
needed. Each venue has its strengths and weaknesses, and these can be aligned
with the program’s goals.
Key word: digital meeting, event
planning, event planner, pharmaceutical industry
Resource: Success
Strategies for Digital Meetings
Posted by: Miki XIE, France ALLEMANDI
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