The Real vs The Virtual

This article looks at the contrasting costs and effectiveness of investigator meetings and web-casts.

At a recent meeting to plan their annual programme of clinical events, a client mentioned the idea of holding only web-based meetings. These are generally known as web-casts or web conferences, and offer the opportunity for a meeting to be broadcast in real-time, with delegates taking part using dial-up or broadband connections to the internet. With opportunities for significant savings in terms of cost and time, web-casts gained a strong fan base in international clinical research when they became widely available. However, there have recently been some stirrings of disaffection. Given that our client was giving serious thought to the idea, I thought it was time for an evaluation of the effectiveness of web-casts, and an appraisal of their place in clinical trials.

What About the Cost

The complex nature of clinical trials means that those involved need to stay in near-constant communication with each other. Email and teleconferences are used where possible, but frequent physical meetings still take place. These cost money and time, and any study budget will include a significant allocation for such expenses. Take my client – their current pipeline drives an annual budget of £1m for study-related meetings, and they are a reasonably small company managing only a handful of Phase II and III studies.

Web-casting offers the opportunity to reach the individuals involved in a trial without incurring expenses for travel, accommodation etc. As such, the cost saving can be significant. For example, a conservative cost for an international investigators meeting is about £850 per head, 70% of which covers travel, accommodation and meals: money expended before even one investigator sits down to learn about the new trial.

Conversely, a five-hour audio web-cast with five speakers presenting to one hundred delegates costs approximately £250 per person. Speakers can present from several different places, totally eliminating the travel costs, and the audience can submit questions and receive answers in real-time. This cost saving of over 60% doesn\’t include the savings in staff costs and third party time charges.

Convenience

With a web-cast, your audience can view the meeting in the comfort of their own surroundings, either while it is taking place, or afterwards as a recorded session. Questions can be asked during the live broadcast, and a record of who has been viewing the session is available in the statistical analysis sent by the provider.

Furthermore, improvements in technology mean that connections are quicker and more reliable, and getting on-line is becoming much less expensive.

Purely on a cost and convenience basis then, it would be fair to conclude that web-casting wins hands down. But should we dispense with all physical gatherings? It makes sense financially and certainly saves time.

Clearly there are some occasions where face-to face contact is vital. But what about others that lend themselves more easily to web-casting? Clinical meetings, for example, are generally held to initiate the study, review its progress or share results. The inherent aim, to deliver information, can surely be achieved with a web-based meeting. In theory, of course, this is true, but in practice there are other factors to consider…

Equipment and Environment

A web-cast works perfectly with an audience who have at least broadband access, who are located in quiet rooms and can put aside enough time to watch your entire broadcast. However, our experience is that Primary Care centres, hospital departments and dedicated research centres spend their funds on research and staffing rather than internet capabilities. So, while you visualise your investigators and nurses experiencing \’web-cast utopia\’, the reality may be that they are dialling up on an expensive and possibly unreliable connection (for which, by the way, they will send you a bill) in a busy surgery, and experiencing frequent interruptions from colleagues or even patients. This is an unlikely atmosphere in which to pick up the essential points of your study.

Would it not be more productive to have your audience in conditions you can control: a quiet meeting room in a hotel or conference centre, for example, where they are away from their daily routines and you have their (relatively undivided) attention? Also, consider what would happen if you wanted to show a video of a procedure, or to use some other media more sophisticated than a simple presentation: the limited facilities of that poor, hassled investigator will go into meltdown!

Knowledge and Understanding

As part of your evaluation of an event, you will want to know that the protocol has been understood and that the study will be completed to GCP requirements.

This is perfectly achievable in a web-conferencing environment, where a questionnaire is distributed after the broadcast. However, it offers you no opportunity to repeat information that has not been understood, or to clarify ambiguous points. This is possible with a physical meeting, where the opportunity exists at any stage of the event. Such meetings also allow you to divide your audience into small groups for discussion about country-specific or specialist area issues, or to demonstrate a procedure in more detail. Recall that old Confucian proverb: \”I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.\” While a web-cast may allow one to see and hear about a specific procedure or requirement in a protocol, a physical meeting offers the opportunity for demonstration and practice, which tends to improve understanding and provides more scope for successful completion of your study.

Motivation

Pharmaceutical companies now tend to conduct more studies, but are chasing fewer investigators and patients. The recent move into new regions such as Eastern Europe and South Africa, where there are large numbers of well-trained and receptive medical specialists and willing patients, is a result of this. Perhaps then, in this market where demand outstrips supply, we should consider study centres as customers and adapt our approach to motivate those centres into working well with us. If you can build a strong relationship with a study site, they will be more motivated to achieve your recruitment targets, or to give your trial more attention than a competing study, or to take on that tough and unpopular study for you.

Using web-casts effectively

On the basis of the points outlined above, should we reverse the trend and dispense with the services of web-casts altogether? There is clearly a role for web-casts in distributing information, and saving time and cost. However, there is also a strong argument for the use of physical meetings to inaugurate a clinical trial and to keep it on track.

Perhaps the most effective answer is to combine the strengths of both media and to run web-casts alongside a physical meeting. This broadcast could be used by any delegate who cannot travel to the meeting, and recorded for reference and for use by new sites once the study is up and running. This approach can be used for any type of event and ensures that your staff, customers or study sites receive all the relevant information to help them run the study.

Are you wondering what happened to the client I mentioned at the beginning of the article? They have for now abandoned their idea of replacing meetings and events with web-casts. Instead, we\’re off to Monte Carlo for an investigators meeting next month, complete with the technical capability to broadcast the meeting to anyone who cannot attend. Now, that\’s an excellent use of technology and, of course, a good win-win compromise!

Author Bio: Sarah Dye is the Sales and Marketing Manager at Small Planet Meetings, experts in providing Pharma Events and Pharma Training. Click the links to find out how she can help you with your next event, or visit www.smallplanetmeetings.com

Category: Business
Keywords: Medical conferences,Health care conferences,Pharmaceutical conferences,Pharmaceutical sales training