Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. This is going to be a very special episode with my partner in crime, Katrina. Hallett, welcome back, Katrina. How are you? Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Exciting. Yeah. So Katrina and I just got back kinda sorta from San Diego. Fierce Pharma Engage Twenty Twenty Five. Great conference. We're gonna do a recap. We did this for maps. A lot of people liked it. So we were like, you know what? We're gonna do this again. We were at the show.
Some people you know, a lot of people missed it. They couldn't make it, and they wanna see what's the latest and greatest. So we're gonna do a recap, and we're gonna talk about AI today because Katrina did an amazing session on AI. So many people are asking about it, so we're gonna talk about that. Before we get to that, Katrina, why don't you tell me exciting news that we have from MSL Mastery about AI? Yes. If you guys aren't on our newsletter, definitely sign up for that.
MSLMastery.com/newsletter. The reason I'm mentioning the loo newsletter is because we officially launched our medical affairs chatbot. Her name is Mira. She is trained on all of our content, frameworks, ideas, and she is awesome. So think of her as a very knowledgeable medical affairs person that you can access and ask questions anytime. Mhmm. It's fun. It's actually a lot of fun. She's so smart. It's great. It's so I had so much fun with it.
Yeah. And so if you wanna access Mira, just go to MSLMastery.com. And on the home page, she's embedded in the bottom right corner. So you just enter your information, and then you can just start chatting away. Ask her anything related to medical affairs, whether it's about better training programs for MSLs, how to break into the industry, insights, whatever comes into your mind. And like I mentioned, she's trained on our specialized medical affairs knowledge. So this is not just any chatbot.
Oh, no. It's great. Like, people that listen to this show that are that always have questions and ask questions. Like, check it out. I I know you guys are gonna get a lot of value from it, and we're curious to hear what you think too. So let us know, but check it out. She's so cute too. She's, like, in the, like, lower right hand corner. She got glasses on. And Red hair. Like, red hair. Yep. Awesome. Yeah. So cool. Alright.
So let's talk about the conference, and let's start with, like, the background details. Like, can you tell everybody what is Fierce Pharma Engage? Like, who's it for? How many people were there? Where was it? All that stuff. Well, Fierce Pharma Engage is a rebranding or, apparently, Mass West and Mass East were purchased by Fierce Pharma. So this is the new format that they are doing these conferences around. It was like prior additions, versions, sessions of of MassWest was in San Diego.
But this time, what was really unique is that they combined four different tracks. So there was one room dedicated to medical affairs, but there are also two sorry, three other rooms that were dedicated to marketing, PR, and then BD and L. So we were intermingling with all these other people. So, normally, think about it as it would only be medical affairs. This time, it was four different groups of people that were distinguished by the color of the lanyards.
So me and Tom and all the medical affairs people were orange. Mhmm. Yeah. So it was interesting at some of the network session networking sessions because people are always looking for their lanyards color. Right? Like, oh, where are my medical affairs people? Additionally, this was at a very nice resort in San Diego, not too far for the from the airport unless you get stuck in traffic like me.
It's really funny because you I was coming from the airport, and it's only, like, one exit, and it took forever. But just That same That timing. Yep. Bad timing. But you walk in, of course, it's like this California cool minimalist hipster lobby. And then right through the building, you could see the pool. And then there was all types of buildings on the property. I thought it was funny that when you look out, you saw the fierce pharma signs by the pool. I was like, oh my gosh.
I didn't bring my swimmies. Like Yeah. What am I gonna do here? Yeah. The weather was beautiful. The center was pretty nice. The room's not so nice. Tom can tell you all about that. But what else would you add here, Tom? My room was haunted. Don't even get me started. It was awful. You always have the haunted room. I am telling you, man. I something is not right. I get the worst rooms. The venue, I thought, was very inviting because it was so, like, spacious, and it was a resort.
It was, like, it was a resort. So, like, the pool setting, like Katrina said, I'll tell you that I thought one of the things that really stood out to me was being a the weather was perfect every So nice. Being able to do a networking session the first night outside in this beautiful weather. They did a really good job with it, and they they had this the dessert, like, cookie tray was, like, epic. It was insane. It was beautiful. Stood out. It really was. So that was exciting.
Yep. Additionally, the resort was very dog friendly. There were dogs everywhere. People out walking their dogs. So that was kind of fun. Yeah. I Yeah. Totally agree with Tom. Very spacious, very spread out. So imagine everybody wearing the sunglasses in the California sunshine walking over to the sessions. And getting back to so this format is new.
It used to be Mass West, which was just medical affairs, and there were probably anywhere from a 50 to make maybe 250 people that would attend MassWest. All medical affairs people. Now you had, like, four times that. Mhmm. Maybe there wasn't as many medical affairs people as they normally do. I'm not sure. They said it was about the same. But it's again, you had to look at the lanyards and had to kind of figure out who was in your tribe versus who was in, like, the on the PR side.
Katrina, you've been to MassWest. Obviously, we went last year, but, like, what do you think of the new format versus, like, the MassWest format? I thought it was kinda cool, and I think they did a pretty good job trying to get people to mingle. So the vendor floor was one space. The breakfast, lunch, networking were all one space. So everybody from all the tracks came into one location. During my session, I saw some blue and purple lanyards. So that means people were cross pollinating.
And I talked to a few medical affairs folks that were actually going to the other talks as well. So I think that was pretty cool that we have the opportunity to go out and network. Did we? No. I mean, everybody's pretty clicky. Right? But I think it was cool. The idea was there. What did you think, Tom? Well, so here's the interesting thing that I think that was cool that they gave you the ability to cross pollinate and go to other sessions. A lot of people were getting confused Mhmm.
Yeah. And not thinking that they can go to other sessions. It was actually because I talked to the event planners after. It was encouraged. But the reason people got freaked out is because they were getting their badges scanned on the way in, but they weren't scanning to take to so that they didn't want you to go in. They were scanning to keep track of how many people went to different sessions, like, cross pollinated. They just wanted to see Yep.
How many medical affairs people went to PR and so forth. So for future reference, if they do this again, the idea and the concept is they encourage you and they want you to go to see other sessions, meet other people, and learn from the other groups. You don't have to stay within your own group. I didn't realize that. That was definitely a missed opportunity for me as well because I didn't realize that.
And we've all been to conferences where they're scanning you before you go in the room, so I thought it was gated as well. And to be perfectly honest, I didn't even look at the agendas for the other session. So I I wish I did, but, yeah, definitely a missed opportunity there. That's the feed that was the feedback that I gave to them. I was like, that should be communicated better upfront. Like, maybe even at the registration desk, let them know ahead of time on the way in, hey.
Feel free to go into some of the other sessions. Yep. Yep. Definitely. Okay. Let's talk about the sessions. Let's talk about, like, let's talk about the content. Like, what themes stuck out to you? Medical affairs theme stuck out to you most at this event? I love the sessions. So one thing that I've always really liked about Mass West and now Fierce Pharma is that it is pretty small, and there aren't a lot of different rooms. So everybody is going to the same sessions.
I thought that there was a really wide range. So we hit all the classics, right, measuring impact. Some unique ones that I liked were increasing impact in clinical trials. They had a great panel on that. A cool one that I thought was a little unique was how to build a medical affairs department on a shoestring budget. That was cool. The omnichannel panel was really nice as well.
So I would say all the classic topics we would expect to see at a medical affairs conference, but a little bit leveled up. Oh, one that I forgot, which I think was probably one of the best talks there besides my own, of course, was I took a for a keynote, they brought and they had two keynotes, but the second one, they brought in an HCP influencer. So this guy is I'm pretty sure he's still practicing ER physician and started this company to help HCPs become influencers.
One, he was a fantastic presenter. Two, he showed really great data, and it was just a really, really good presentation. And I thought that was really unique content. Yeah. Well and it was funny. I was gonna I was gonna ask you next, like, which were there certain speakers that stood out? And I know you told me that. Like, you literally came up. I didn't see it. And you came up to me after, like, that guy was great. That guy really stood was awesome. Yeah. His name is Adam Goodkoff.
You can find him on LinkedIn. His company is called med or Medfluencer. He had a another thing that was really cool was called it a MAT score. So this is an AI algorithm that they developed called medical accuracy test. So they actually run HCP influencers content through the algorithm to make sure that it's really accurate. Like, that's cool. That it was a really, really cool talk.
And then Rebecca Vermillion, I can't say that correctly, but she gave the other keynote and discussed the difference between patient centricity versus patient inclusivity. And she said something that really stuck with me. She said, if you write a clinical trial protocol and then ask patients for their feedback, that's not being inclusive. And so her point was really about bringing in patient's viewpoint or the patient voice early on and throughout the entire process.
And she's just also a phenomenal speaker too. She she came out roaring about how she's a morning person, and she already got her workout in. So that that was a fun session, a great way to kick off that day too. I saw her in the gym, actually. Oh, was she, like, pumping iron? Like She's she's a beast, man. She was, like, focused early in the morning. She was in there locked in. More like cardio, or is she more weight? Like, what was she doing? She was weight.
She was like I'm sure she did some cardio. When I when I was there, I saw her doing resistance training stuff. Oh, okay. Okay. Interesting. No. She's getting it out. She was I'm sure she's gonna love us having this discussion about She's perfect. It's awesome, man. She's a legend. She's amazing. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So let's talk about your sesh. So you did a session on artificial intelligence. Obviously, such a hot topic right now. And you guys, if you're not following Katrina on LinkedIn, please.
Her LinkedIn and medical affairs value, you should be following her because she is on the cutting edge of all things AI and medical affairs value. So what'd you talk about? I did a session with Ralph Reuers, who is the Yoda of medical affairs. If you guys aren't connected with him, also connect up with him on LinkedIn. He is just so knowledgeable. We joke that he was the original MSL from 1967 and Upjohn. But we gave a talk called AI in action.
And I had done something very similar a couple months back, and it was really well received. So we took several MSL use cases for AI and did live demos on ChatGPT. So I just had prompts ready to go, put the prompts into ChatGPT, and ran it live. And then we got reactions from Ralph and also people in the audience. The best part, in my opinion, was we did the hack on turning scientific papers into podcasts. I published on this last year. I got this hack from Vivek Makhalpra.
I can't say his name right either, but you should follow him on LinkedIn too. It's since been one of the most popular hacks on my blog, so definitely check that out. But we arranged with the Fierce Pharma AV guys to play it live. So instead of waiting for it to generate the podcast because this takes a few minutes, we have them play the clip. So I showed them, hey, guys. You can go to this tool, upload a scientific paper, click generate, and it'll make a short podcast for you.
Then we have them play the clips over the sound. Everybody's eyes just popped. They were like and then the best part was I had two clips ready. So one was kind of a generic podcast based off the paper, but then a second the second one, I had written prompt from the MSL perspective. So saying, you are an MSL going to have a KOL meeting to discuss this data. What would be some of the objections or questions that could come up?
So with the idea that an MSL could really use this podcast to help them prepare for the meeting. This podcast starts with, hey, guys. Big KOL meeting coming up. It's just so funny, like, how it starts out. Like, everybody loved that. So that was a very long summary to say. We did live AI demos of various MSL use cases. And it really for those that haven't heard this podcast and how it sounds, it really it's this, like, kind of an NPR style. NPR style. Two people talking back and forth.
And it's just so clear, and you're just like, oh, it's it's like just, like, popped. Yeah. Can you talk about or and I don't know if you if we're giving away trade secrets here, but I think one of the things that resonated with me most with, you know, your because I've seen you present a million times on this, and one of the things that has really helped me is your prompt framework. Can you talk a little bit about your prompt framework? Well, it's not mine. I stole it from somebody else.
Full disclosure there. But it's just a simple framework to help you ensure that you are getting useful results out of your AI chats. Really simple based off of four framework or four components, assigning the role, giving it instructions, defining the parameters, and then giving it some examples. So you attended the talk, you got more details on that, and it's just a really simple way to ensure that you get high quality outputs.
If you're the type of person where you've put something in the AI and then you didn't like it, it's probably because your prompts weren't very good. So invest in learning a prompting framework, and that's really gonna boost your quality of the output. That's made a big difference for me. And I'm not an expert, but I do use AI a lot. And the it's really it's all about prompting. So I think that's an important piece of it.
For those that missed your session and wanna not just follow you, but, like, is there a place where you wanna direct people to find more information as far as as far as AI goes specifically? Yep. So on the medical affairs value blog, it's medicalaffairsvalue.com. I publish almost weekly on various medical affairs related topics. And over the last several months, it's probably 85% AI related. So you can see all my new content there.
Additionally, through MSL Mastery, we have an AI for MSL excellence training. If you go to MSLMastery.com, there's a little bar at the top, and you could download the brochure there to learn more about our training program. So those are a couple different options for you to learn more about AI. Yep. Check it out. And that and a lot of people ask, so I just wanna make sure we're we're providing them with some direction. Everybody could just email Tom. Send Tom emails, and he'll write you back.
Yeah. Or just DMs on LinkedIn. He gets lots of messages. Yeah. Message. Over and over again. Okay. Topics were not covered? Like, was there something that you've was there a missed opportunity there? Was there some topics that you felt probably should have been covered that maybe weren't? Yes. There was one, and I wrote about this on the medical affairs value blog. I did a recap of Fierce Pharma in addition to this podcast that I'm doing with Tom. There was a lot about influence. Right?
And this comes up in medical affairs conferences a lot. We have to influence up laterally and externally and really build relationships. We hear this through insights and demonstrating value, and this was coming up especially in the session on how to have more of an impact on clinical trials. The topic that was missed or not discussed as much as I thought should have been was the fact that everybody internally at a company wants to own the HCP relationship.
So a lot of the advice for medical affairs is own the relationship. Own the relationship. But what we know from working with a lot of teams through training and consulting is that everybody wants to own the relationship. Right? Clinical does. Commercial definitely does. Market access and then medical affairs. And what we're seeing with the teams that we work with is that this leads to a lot of conflict. Right? Because everybody owns the HCP relationship. I think that was not discussed enough.
It was more of the conversation we normally have where we say, oh, medical affairs, you should own the relationship. Tom, what are your thoughts on that? Well and I you know, it's so funny. As you're saying that, I'm like, okay, Fierce Pharma folks. Like, they're gonna listen to this. And I think that that is something that they should be taking notes on because that's a that's a really hot topic right now.
And I really do think that it's going to be as relevant the next time they do this as it is right now. I I just think it's it's not there's not gonna be any less importance six months from now or a year from now. Their next event is going to be Fierce Pharma week, which is in September in Philly. I don't know if their agenda is finished yet, but that could be something that they may look into is maybe including this. We see that a lot. Right?
We have a training at MSL Mastery that we call InfluenceLab because we have so many team leads come up to us or come to us and basically say, we can't get along with interdepartment name. Can you help? Right? So sometimes it's we can't get along with sales. Clinical. We have all this conflict. We can't demonstrate our value. So, yeah, I would say, Tom, not just a call to Fierce Pharma to include it in the agenda, but also for medical affairs folks to have the discussion more.
Yep. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. What other takeaways? Like, what what did you leave there with? Was there a couple light bulb moments, or were there some takeaways that when you were, like, on the plane or you're heading home and you're like, wow. This really this was great. I think I don't have anything past what I said already. Let me think on it. What were your big takeaways? Yeah. Well, I'll tell you. And and I I I don't I don't mean to keep talking about your session.
And and but I I do think that the the AI stuff resonated most with me and fine tuning. So for me, fine tuning my process for what I'm putting into it's like, you know, you keep hearing that term garbage in, garbage out, but it really is true. Like, are you paying attention not only to what you're putting into your prompts, but how thorough are you in vetting your prompts?
Meaning, I think what I would do, like, before you're you know, seeing this last session is I would go to, like, ChatGPT, for example. I'd put in a prompt, and I'd be like, okay. And maybe I'd, like, tweak it a little bit. But now because I heard you say this. Give me five more examples. Yeah. That's Yep. Right? Switch this. Add that. Examples of this. Give me five more. Give me five more. Give me five more. That's not something that I was really doing enough of.
Like, I Yep. Like, you can pester chatty PT. It's not gonna get bad. Yep. For sure. Was like, I don't wanna be a pain in the ass. Like, you know? But, like Don't make the AI bad. Yeah. Like yeah. But that, like, that's not what it that's not what it is. Yeah. It it actually is it's like, it actually gets more excited the more you ask. It's like, oh, that's a great suggestion. So that I just think that that's really good advice in don't settle.
Don't settle for what you for something that you think may be okay. Get what you want out of it. You're using it. Get what you want out of it. Right? That is I get a lot of comments on that. So I published I can't remember when on this this prompt that Tom's mentioning, and I have so many MSLs reaching out that they love that. So just to summarize what it is, ChatGPT or AI should really be used to help broaden your thinking and get more ideas.
And so once you write a prompt and you get an output, you can ask it or tell it, give me five more, give me 20 more. Give me 10 more, and it'll just list more ideas. And it will, I guarantee you, after a few iterations of that, come up with something you didn't even consider. And so, yeah, if you if you get some output and you don't like it, give me 10 more. Give me five more, and just keep iterating.
Because I think the most powerful thing or way that you can use AI in medical affairs is as an MSL is to think more strategically and get more creative. So not that it's gonna do your tasks for you. You're not gonna copy paste. You're going to make yourself look really good, essentially. Yeah. No. I love it. I love it. So getting back to the Fierce Pharma folks. If you if you had to give them advice for next year and you wanted to, like, say, okay. Here's my input.
What topics or themes or advice would you give them down to the details of, like, food and coordination of the event? What would you say to them? Definitely the one we mentioned earlier, making it super clear that you can attend the other sessions. Like I said, I didn't know that. And then when you're in the thick of it, I I just couldn't even I didn't have the capacity to start looking through the schedule. They invest heavily in the food and the coffee there, and I think that really adds.
So outside of the break not the break room, the the sessions, there was always coffee there. There was a lot of food and coffee backed by the vendors. So I would say that's a good session or a good thing. In terms of topics, maybe hitting the the influence or who owns the HCP relationship or more cross functional collaboration stuff would be cool. But, otherwise, I thought it I thought it was pretty great. Yeah. Yeah. What what about you?
I would add that first of all, I thought the food was great. I love the fact that they had a full breakfast in the morning. I love that touch, and I'm sure it's just seen the pile of eggs Tom had, you guys. Like, he just comes in with eggs and, like, huge ketchup. And you know what he said about all the ketchup? He said, you don't wanna go back for seconds for ketchup. It's it's but she was like, dude, I came in. Right? And, you know, like, I fast. You guys know my my deal.
I fast, and then I try to get a lot of protein. So I come in, and I sit down next to her, and I have this mountain of scrambled eggs. And then right next to it is, like, a smaller mountain of ketchup. Foothills. She's like, dude, what are you gonna do with all that ketchup? I'm like, I'd rather have too much because I don't wanna go back and get more. Yep. And I did. I used it. I used it.
But I definitely appreciate that because there's nothing worse than going to a conference and you and they don't feed you, and and you're just looking for food. Like, I just don't like that. And I know it's expensive. I get it, but I think that that's really important. The other thing is they were talking about someone actually mentioned that they didn't think it was a good idea to have color coded lanyards. They're like, oh, you don't need that. It gets too confusing.
To me, that was a game changer. How are you gonna know who's in your tribe and who's not? So my advice is if you're gonna do a conference like this where you're gonna have three or four different groups, you're gonna I just think it's really important to distinguish who's in those groups. Not saying you can't encourage mingling within the groups, but you'd need to define who they are. So I think that that's really important.
I did not think that that venue I think they're going back there next year. I think they haven't Oh, really? There next I think so. Someone told me that they did. But the advice that I would have is I just the rooms, like, the Don't get the happy camper guys. The happy camper room. Don't get the I was in the happy camper room, and I was not a happy camper. Yeah. Yeah. It was awful. Well, Tom had the worst room too. His was all the way at the end where all the housekeepers were lining up.
There was a it was haunted. It was And it smelled. It was, like, smelly room, and it was just like there was no hair dryer. Right? I had to I couldn't blow dry my hair. It was catastrophe. Right? The last day, I had to get up super early to go catch my flight, and the coffee machine wouldn't work. It broke. Oh. It broke. Like, I'm like, dude, this place is haunted. I can't wait. So then I had to literally meet the Uber driver at 05:05 in the morning, rush to the airport. I get to the airport.
I'm there two hours ahead of time. My flight got delayed three hours. Like, man. Bad luck. Bad luck. Yeah. Yeah. But you got your hair dried. Right? Dude, seriously. Okay. You know what? Not a hair out of place. So alright. What what about last minute last piece of advice? Anything you wanna share with the folks before we say goodbye? If you have the opportunity to attend, I would highly recommend it. It was a a fun event. The sessions were really good.
Had a lot of food and coffee there, if that helps entice you. But if you haven't checked out a Fierce Pharma session yet, I highly recommend going. Yeah. And I like the people. I I it's it's the one thing I love about Fierce Pharma is the the staff. And I'm not just saying this, guys, if you're listening. Like, I've known these these guys for a long time. Z and Jessa and Andrew and Tom and just the the whole crew.
Like, they it's it's nice when you're working with an organization that, like, they're they've been around for a long time. They care. They put a lot of effort into it. You know, it's it's definitely it shows in the quality of their events. And they've been and, every event I go to, I feel like I walk away and, you know, equally as impressed and satisfied with what you're getting from going. So kudos to Fierce Pharma and Quest X. It used to be Quest X. Now it's First Pharma.
Guys, check them out. Now last thing I will say is this podcast is a co sponsor or copromoter of the Fierce Pharma events. So we are going to be involved in the promotion of Fierce Pharma week, which is in the first week in September in Philadelphia. So it's going to be a similar event. It's gonna be bigger, though. It's gonna be, like, 2,500 people, and it's at the Convention Center in Philly. So it might be something to start checking out and thinking about. I'll definitely be there.
Maybe Katrina will be there, and maybe we'll do another one of these. Yeah. Yes. Cool. Thanks for having me, Tom. Yeah. Thanks for being here. I love doing these. Thank you, guys. As always, thank you for your support of the show. Thank you for sharing, and we'll see you next time. Bye, guys. Bye.