Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. This episode is the first ever live broadcast of the MSL Talk podcast, which took place in Philadelphia at the Medical Affairs Excellence Summit, which was hosted by Momentum Events, moderated by myself in front of a live audience. And the topic was mastering communication skills to improve business relationships and maximize internal and external engagement. And the panelists were Brian Bischel, Ruth Phillips, and Michael Kahn. Really interesting stuff.
I hope you guys like this. It was also, broadcast on LinkedIn live, so you can actually find it there as well. Don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram and TikTok, and check us out on LinkedIn live, where we do the MSL talk live broadcast, which is the 1st Tuesday of every month at 1:30 PM Eastern time. So I hope you guys really enjoy this. Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical. Alright.
So, looking forward to this discussion, the, you know, I'll let Tom introduce the panel members. The the important part I wanna acknowledge here is that it is talking about the master communication skills to improve the business relations. You know, this is also to maximize our internal and external engagement. I think this is something in the medical community we all talk about.
We experience it, and, I'm looking forward to discussion by this expert panel to tell us more and share the tricks of the trade. Tom, back to you. Alright. Thank you, Mandeep. Appreciate it. Thank you, everyone. We are really excited. This is kinda groundbreaking for us. So we are actually doing a live podcast right now. Never done this before, so bear with us. Hopefully, it goes well. I'm sure it will. Let me start by introducing our topic and introducing our, panel.
So the topic is how to master communication skills to improve business relationships, and maximize internal and external engagement. And our panel consists of Michael Kahn, who's medical affairs operations leader at Spark Therapeutics, Ruth Phillips, who's vice president medical affairs of BlueSpark Technologies, and Brian Bischel, who's field director of medical science liaisons for AbbVie.
We were gonna have Desiree Owen that you might have seen on the LinkedIn invite that Desiree Owen was gonna be here, but she had a family emergency. So Brian is filling in, so we gotta go easy on Brian. Please. And just to give you a little more clarity, when I say live podcast, we are now streaming live on LinkedIn, but this will also be available on Spotify, YouTube, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts. And it's through the MSL Talk podcast.
So if if you are unfamiliar with the podcast, you just go to any of those streaming services, type in MSL talk, and you will see this. And you can listen to it, share it with your friends. So, again, we have, we have a great, discussion. Now we are limited for time. So what I do wanna do is get right into some of the questions, and then we're gonna actually poll you guys, and we'll have a little bit more of an interactive discussion.
So first question that we wanna talk about is what training practices, techniques, or trends have been effective for you in developing communication skills for cross functional influence? And I think what I'd like to do is start with you, Ruth, because you're right next to me. Of course. And, you know, I think this is a really great topic. There is so much need for communication, and, I think, really, the thing that makes the biggest difference is active listening.
Whether I'm dealing with internal or external customers or clients, really listening to understand what's being said and then asking questions to make sure that you've you've actually understood what you think you understood. I think someone in the audience earlier said something very similar. You know, you hear something, and you process it through your own lens. And so asking questions to ensure that you're, answering or responding to something appropriately is very important. Great.
Excellent. Mike, what about you? I think she took my answer, but I wasn't. The single most effective training technique I ever experienced was, in my graduate business school training, and we were required to substantially research how to deliver a TED talk. And then on a topic of our choosing, with the author of the book who wrote the book, how to deliver a TED talk, deliver a TED talk to the entire group, and we were graded on everything from content to persuasiveness to communication style.
The preparation for that and the experience of doing that was so moving the needle for me, that I've used it very selectively. You have to be make sure that the the person you're trying to train is willing to do that. But when they are, it's it's extraordinarily effective. Great. The, the books something like how to deliver a TED talk. The author's name is Jeremy Donovan. Highly recommend it. Alright. It's a great technique. What about you, Brian? Anything you guys do in AbbVie? Absolutely.
And, just a a quick disclaimer if you'll indulge me. All comments and and remarks that I make are my own personal opinion and and don't represent that necessarily of AbbVie, just so you know. And and I think Ruth said something that is a phrase a lot of us are aware of, and that's this idea of active listening. And it's certainly something that is important, but I almost feel like people have heard it so much. They tend to ignore it right now as one of those cliches.
So I like to actually work with my teams on something called aggressive listening. And what that means is you're listening with an intensity and a purpose as if there will be exam on this material in about 5 minutes, and it's important you score a perfect score or something like that. Not staring at somebody in a creepy way with, you know, breaking without breaking eye contact, but really hanging on every word and tailoring your response appropriately.
Because especially new people traditionally in the field, they tend to give an answer they want to give that they training as opposed to the answer to the actual question. And so it's important to listen aggressively for that reason so you are tailoring your response specifically to what is asked, not what you memorized. And what about the good old fashioned role playing? I mean, does that exist anymore? Do you guys do that with your teams and and give them an up?
It sounds like with the TED talk, it's it's almost similar to that. You're giving them an exercise. I'm a big fan of of simulation of interactivity. I practice Trump's theory with regard to communication every time in in my experience. Yeah. Let's get we're gonna we're gonna I wanna make this as as interactive as possible. So let's get let's get through some more of the of the questions that we have prepared, but then I wanna get back to some of the training techniques as well.
What I'm curious to know is what are you all seeing as the biggest deficiencies and skills that need to be developed better amongst your team members, whether they're new or seasoned? And how are you addressing this? And, specifically, what's working well, and what are you seeing as best practices? So, Ruth, we're gonna come back to you. Okay. And I think Brian made a very good point about that aggressive listening.
I find that my team tends not to have enough time because we're a very small group, and we're doing 7 different things every day. So we don't take the time to communicate or to ask questions. And, so I really like that idea of aggressive listening so that you can actually get to the bottom quickly of what you need to understand. I often will say, please, you know, we have an open door policy in my office. If somebody has a question, they need to put time on my calendar.
They need to call me or text me because I need to address those questions that they have before they take things in a direction that maybe isn't, sound or that, you know, they're kinda going off the top of their head. And when you're in a small company, fortunately, you have a little bit more ability to have that kind of open door policy.
But I also want them to know that they can share anything with me, that I'm not gonna judge them or, question why they're having those thoughts or questions that they have for me, that that's a way that we can learn and grow together as a team. Got you. And, Michael, what about you? What what do you see as some of the deficiencies and skills that need to be developed better? Tailoring my answer excuse me.
Tailoring my answer to internal engagement, and specifically, influencing others whether it be cross functionally or your manager or senior management. Sonia, you said something that really resonated with me in your presentation, which was the power and the impact of storytelling. We are hardwired as primates to respond to story and narrative. And yet the challenge I see frequently with medical affairs professionals, I trained in journalism and and then in business. Right?
So I'm a linguistic strength, but I work with a lot of people who are scientifically trained who are doctors, and they have a very different communication skill set. And often medical affairs professionals I see will let the PowerPoint slide or the material tell the story, but that's not enough. Right? A set of data structured, abstract introduction, methods, results, conclusions is not a story. It's a framework that tells a story.
And so to be able to use source material as a basis for whatever argument or persuasion or inform or teach or whatever your communication goal is, I I think that's probably the biggest challenge that I see is bringing whatever you have to communicate imparting into a narrative format. Yeah. And not a shameless plug. We literally, last week's podcast episode was on storytelling for field medical affairs professionals. So check it out. But it's amazing that you just said that.
Literally, we just had this conversation. And I think that we all in medical affairs, you have strategic objectives, and and you you're so the MSLs are so focused on their strategic objectives. But how are you how are you communicating that? Is it just and I don't wanna say the word data dump because I don't wanna accuse anybody of that.
But, are you taking the time to prepare and to put those objectives into a story that's compelling, that'll leave somebody with a feeling when you're finished, and satisfied and fulfilled in information that can help better their practice. So, Brian, what what about you? In in in your group, what types of deficiencies or skills, not necessarily deficiencies, but are there skills that you feel, people need to work on more in this day and age?
Yeah. My answer is a little bit more general than than the team that I work with currently. Just generally speaking in medical affairs, I found that medical affairs personnel tend to struggle with strategic thinking. And it's a concept that I know a lot of people have heard.
I'm not sure a lot of people can define appropriately, but for whatever reason, I found that field medical personnel specifically have an inherent inability to look beyond 6, 12, 18 months down the road as to what the environment will look like competitively from a scientific point of view. What kind of data will be out? What kind of data gaps will exist that we should start to fill now? For whatever reason they struggle without, the good news is I found this is a muscle that can be exercised.
There are strategic thinking exercises out there that you can do with your team, and the good news is most of them are kind of fun. The scenario based, they're problem solving, they're team oriented, they get up, they get people active. And so on a regular basis, I like to do these with my team, both to energize them as well as to teach some lessons about strategic thinking.
And I also kind of to to your point of what you were just talking about, Tom, frequently come back to our overall overarching medical objectives Because, traditionally, these are rolled out in January after a flurry of meetings in q 4, and people will look at them once on a beautiful PowerPoint slide and then never look at it again. And so every month with my team, we actually pull these up during our team call and review them 1 by 1, our top level objectives.
Why are what we're doing tactically? Why is that important? Because it ladders up to what we wanna do as an overall objective. Great. Great answer. Awesome. So hot topics as you guys know right now are KOL access and relationship building. So how can professionals position themselves better when contacting KOLs, DOLs, and HCPs, in general, gain better insights and create lasting relationships? So, Ruth, back to you.
Alright. You know, and I think this is probably an area I spend most of my day doing. As vice president of medical affairs, I get to do everything. So I get to talk to our KOLs, which I love. And really getting to know them as a person has made a huge difference where I can call them up at any time and say, hey, doctor so and so. I have a question or I need help with, you know, a a panel discussion. What would you recommend? And they're they're very willing to take short periods of time.
And as long as I am cognizant of the amount of time that I'm asking from them, We've I feel like I've got great friends for life, which is very fun. Friends for life. Mhmm. That's the goal. Right? Friends for life. Mike, what about you? Full disclosure. This is not my area of expertise. I'm on the operation side, so I'm usually heavily involved after the interaction and trying to make sure that it it gets recorded that it actually happened as opposed to, obtaining access.
But what occurs to me, and maybe this is patently obvious, is identifying the areas of overlap of interest where the MSL or the medical affairs professional can help the KOL. Right? Do they do they really want information? Do they want to be, you know, connected to latest data updates? Do they want to be an investigator? Do they want to be involved in an ad board?
Whatever you can give them, whether it's information or access, what what try and deliver what they want because the last thing they want is the sales pitch. Nobody wants that. No. No. I know Brian will correct me if I'm off base here. But but you're not. It's amazing for an operations guy. You nailed it. And by the way, I consider this panel friends for life too as an aside. The the, the engagement question is is an interesting one.
I I have a lot of different tips and techniques I've learned over the years from my team. I always tell them to introduce themselves as doctor so and so. It's not a demonstration of arrogance. It's just a differentiator from the commercial organization, which typically doesn't have doctorate degrees to make it clear that your role, that your interaction, that your goal looks a little bit different. Second of all, Ruth, I love your point about being sensitive to time constraints.
In fact, I like to teach my team to say that. I'm sensitive to your time constraints. Sounds like a mouthful until you say it a few times. But the reason for that is I think it does a couple of things. When you're actually in front of a doctor and you say that, it kind of turns off their brain a little bit from these patients in the waiting room and everything else thinking that you're gonna drain 15 minutes out of their day.
And instead, they're willing to engage with you for just a couple of minutes. So you have time to hit a couple of bullet points, ask an open ended question, and then get a reason to come back, and then you're out the door. And if you do that over a series of time, you build up trust. That trust leads to a deep robust relationship over a period of time.
So one of those days, you are gonna get 45 minutes and be able to pull out the iPad and run through things because they know you are sensitive to their time constraints. Awesome. You know, interesting in in so in my job as a recruiter and in my job as a as a podcaster, I get the opportunity to ask a lot of questions to not just MSL leaders, but, high performing MSLs. And when I ask this question, this exact question to MSLs, you know what they say? You gotta get in their phone.
You have to find a way to get a KOLs get in a KOLs cell phone. What's the closest way to someone's heart in this day and age? Through through their cell phone. Brian's gonna leave his comments to himself. He has other things to add. I was kidding. But no. Seriously. And I know that there might be some controversy in me saying this or I might be overstepping my bounds to a certain extent because I don't want to, I don't wanna be come up come up here and be a total renegade.
But in in conversations with KOLs, if you can ask a simple question, would it be okay if I text you this information? Would it be okay if I text you to set up our next meeting and get authorization to be in their phone and be respectful of that person's phone and their time in their phone. But this is what I'm hearing from successful and top performing MSLs as a differentiator in access, and in their relationships. Does anybody agree does anybody agree with me? Show of hands.
Is this something we're not pulling this, but you agree that that's a good a good and, again, it's not coming from me, actually. It's just coming from people that I'm I'm speaking to. Okay. So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna go to a poll question because I wanna see if maybe we can get you guys involved in the conversation a little bit. So let's start with, what percentage of your team is live in office versus remote, virtual? Oh, music. We got music for the for the the poll question.
I love it. This is so legit. Like, I'm so excited. I can't wait to see how this goes and get all this information out there. Alright. So we have and I let me see if I could see this here. You guys could probably see better than me. So it looks like we have well, it's kinda split, and it looks like we have a combination. So less than 25% are showing 56% of people are now live. That's more than I thought. Is that would you think that that was that number would be that high?
Yeah. It's the other way around? Less than 25%. Oh, yeah. Less than I was gonna say that definitely alright. That makes sense. Right? That definitely makes sense. This was just a curiosity thing amongst the panel. We just kinda wanted to see where everybody was out because when you ask this question, it's really it really totally varies. Let's go to the next question because I'm eager to see what are your biggest challenges communicating internally with with cross functional colleagues? Alright.
So let's see. Again, can't really see this stuff here, but, so it looks like the biggest one is a misalignment of goals and priorities. So that's a that's a pretty big number. What do you what do you I'm gonna hear from the panel. What do you guys think about this? I'm fascinated by the answers, my first reaction. Mhmm. Because that's an organizational design question. It's very difficult for one person or one function to address.
And the fact that it is this endemic, it's really, really interesting. It's a really difficult question until you call it to the attention of senior leaders, to explain why something isn't getting done or is not getting done as quickly or as optimally, as it should be. Always the operations guy that speaks up first to the question like that. That's awesome. Thank god we have Michael here. And for the and just I I'm forgetting that a lot of people can't see this, at home that are listening.
What are your biggest challenges communicating internally with cross functional colleagues? And 58% of the audience said misalignment of goals and priorities. So, yeah, I think that's a pretty big number. 42% said differing perspectives. So anything anybody else have anything to add? I actually would like to hear from from anybody in the audience who put that down as a as a choice about misalignment of goals and priorities. I'd like a little more detail on that.
That's very general, and you would think there would be a certain level of alignment. But we have a gentleman over here who looks like we might respond to that. So my question, would actually be the the options that are given. I think that, misalignment is a a rather harsh term.
I think the fact that you have different tools to approach, similar, goals, and how you can communicate and recognize the fact that, when you look at it from 2 different perspectives, it doesn't seem that you're you're you're pulling in the same direction, but it's it's more a function of the tools that you have at hand when you're talking to somebody from operations or from one of your your commercial colleagues.
And you you appreciate the the goal, the strategic imperative, but you may have different approaches. So I don't know that it's a misalignment. It's just as a a matter of, aligning, recognizing where you're headed and how you can best get there with the levers that you you have at hand. That's a good point. I think it's tough when you do these polls. You're trying to figure figure out what the answers should be. I did my steps.
So Okay. Done. I was just gonna comment because I said misalignment of goals, and sometimes it it seems to be not intentional. It's just by nature of where they're situated. If they're virtual, there has to be a proactive place to check-in and align the goals. And if those those opportunities aren't arranged, you're just all gonna be at different pathways. And until you realize you are, you know, you don't really get a chance to align them again.
Well, Jonathan, as walking out contribute, there's always a challenge as we're aware of in medical affairs and commercial organization. Their goal is to drive sales to x. We're agnostic from sales. And so we may have a list of key opinion leaders or external experts we come on that don't have their, quote unquote, prescribing potential, and so there's a misalignment there because they want us to call on those people. They can't suggest that, of course.
But that's where a lot of that friction, I think, occurs. Yeah. And I think that this speaks very well because of the last question. Right? With 56% of the audience being virtual, there is only certain amount of times that, you you know, that's something that we take for granted. And I was surprised with that number as well.
I also put that because I think that's a very easy one that I have my, one on one with product on Monday, and then I'm going to with the CEO on Tuesday, and all of a sudden, there's a lot of time between those 2. And, I think that's a definitely an uncovering of, an issue that may be floating out there with such a virtual workforce these days? I carry my own mic, Jonathan. Thank you. Wow. Mandeep, you're a boss, man. You are a boss. No question.
No comment. So I think, I'm not surprised, you know, on this number as you know? But it was it was a shocker. Like, Ryan, you said, when you see it for the first time, you know, but I feel like it's also the visibility of the overall plan. You know, strategy, I think, Ryan, you mentioned that the strategy is built and then that document kind of sits there. And how's the visibility of that overall strategy, overall tactics?
Because sometimes people are just, you know, working on a tactic, not looking at the overall goal. That's a priority for them because they're accountable for that. Right?
So I think the visibility of the overall plan and having and putting time and effort when we are building those plans to share that with everybody in the in the team, the full team, not just the leadership, and then follow through, you know, and see if there are regular touch points where we can look at those plans and say, are we still on track? I think that might help, but I think this is this is a challenge.
I do have one quick question regarding remote factor, and I just wanna hear the perspective from the panel and also the audience who said that. So how much of a remote factor, you know, played a part, because we are still saying it's 25%. It's less than the other numbers, but, anybody wants to elaborate on that? So I can comment on something with that.
So, you know, as I was thinking about these options, the the biggest challenge I'm seeing is people taking the time to communicate and having the time. And, especially remote, what I'm finding is that we're trying to accomplish really large strategic things in 30 to 45 minute meetings. And just by the time that 35 to 45 minute meeting is over, you've got 6 more to line up. And so we can't actually spend time thinking about the stuff we just talked about, and so then it doesn't get done.
So then we have the next 35, 45 minute meeting, 10 minutes of which is just remembering what we talked about last time. Right? And so I do think that when we were less remote, we were more prone to say, hey, everybody. We need to get together for 2 days and figure this out and have marching orders now go execute, and I'm seeing less and less of that now. Yeah. Ask my kids during COVID. Back to back to back with different Zoom calls.
But to have, you know, an 8 hour day, the same that what needs to be the goals and priorities are. It's hard. And we've we've kind of gone to a position where we limit to 2 hour meetings, and the 2 hour meetings are tough. Poof. Yeah. I'll second that.
The other thing that occurs to me about the nature of communication remote versus in person, even if you're looking into the camera and you're looking, at the face of the person talking to you, you know, we know that 70% or more of communication is nonverbal. So I'm really engaged and looking forward and and really I like I just saw, like, 4 people, like, what? Like, because I just turned we don't do that on Zoom. But if I do this, I'm just really disinterested. Like, that comes across too.
None of that I shouldn't say none of that. It's really difficult in a Zoom call to do the things I just did to make a point, and to do that meeting after meeting after meeting is exhausting. So I, you know, have a mental note to do it in my Zoom calls, but you have to dose it out with medicine because it's not sustainable. Here's a question we have. Just a point I wanted to make to initially follow-up the original point I, I questioned and to support what you're saying.
I I believe that the remote nature of things, post pandemic and post pandemic, I think that that there are 2 aspects to be considered. 1 is the the quantity and the quality. The quantity of communication, to be quite honest, from my point of view, is increased. I mean, you may you it's a problem, but you can't separate yourself. You're in your home. You're close to your computer. And, you know, I had need, early in the pandemic to put together a meeting on a Friday evening about 5:30.
Well, if I was in the home office, it just wouldn't be a possibility. I mean, people would be gone. And yet I was able to put that together because people at their home and they were finishing up their day, and they would make themselves available. But I agree with you a 100% that the quality of the communication is diminished, that from the standpoint of whether you speak of nonverbal, communication. But the that that makes the perfect sense to me.
The the nuance that I was trying to identify there and the example the example I would give is I was working with, our market access individual, and we wanted to show the, the utilization of a particular, drug, in terms of its timing and whatever. And there just wasn't an appreciation.
We we agreed upon the objective, but the time frames understanding how long it takes to agree upon an appropriate, even if it's real world evidence, an appropriate questionnaire, how how long it takes to put that study in place and how long to collect the data versus I need I want access to this particular individual or this company and and, you know, from the market access point, and 6 months is too long or 9 months is too long. It's that's not a misalignment. And it's not really a perspective.
It's just an appreciation, a contextual understanding of what what you the time frames of how long it takes things to accomplish various things from different functions. And it's, as I said, different levers, different tools. Thank you. And just following up from your conversation around body language on a call, what is your perspective of people who turn their camera off during a call? So you have some people on camera, some people off camera. I have varying perspectives of it.
I know sometimes there's just too much going on in the background, and sometimes, honestly, it's a it's a bit it's a broadband issue. It's the fact that 12 people on camera makes the connection sometimes difficult. But how do you think it plays in the communication having some on and some off? Personally, I think it's huge. When I can't see the person that I'm talking to, I don't know if they're engaged.
Sometimes I've had situations where I've asked a question and had to repeat it 3 or 4 times because I know they're not paying attention. And so those questions get thrown in a little bit more frequently to keep them engaged. I do think it's much more difficult, when you don't have that that picture of someone right there that's engaging with you. It is more it is more difficult. You you can explain reasons why. Expectation is always always open cameras.
But if you cannot, maybe you're traveling, maybe you're in an airport, maybe you happen to have a real child care situation going on where you're just not camera ready or whatever. That's all fine. Just explain it ahead of time so we know so we don't wonder if you're really paying attention or not. Yep. Yeah. I think the the interesting thing is, internally, I think it's a lot easier to mandate in some ways that you have your camera on.
But when you're dealing with an external customer at a site, boy, they don't like to put their cameras on. Well, there's legit no. That's true. There's legit reasons Yep. Why. But to Brian's point, I think if you explain that and and and the and the group understands, then I think, you know, obviously, it's a better it's better form. So we have one more poll question. Can we put that last poll question up? What are your biggest challenges communicating with external stakeholders? Cue the music.
Yeah. Alright. Let's see. Wow. Interesting results. Look at that. I'm a try not to mess this up. I messed up the other 2. So what are your biggest challenges communicating with external stakeholders? We had 56% say access and unresponsiveness, and we had another 56% said everyone is too busy. So that there was a domination of people just being unresponsive and just too busy. So how do you overcome that? John, let's hear from you. What do you what do you have to say there, mister John?
Hi. John Caskey, Pure Science. This is very much not surprising to me. I work with a lot of different pharma companies, and everybody is pushing a digital first, program, meaning from a doctor's perspective, they're flooded with all types of digital activities in a way they never have been before. And on top of that, you know, depending on the disease state, they may or may not be seeing people live. Right?
So it just fundamentally makes sense as as a challenge, and I think that people need to recognize that you're you're taking smart strategies and pushing digital because that's the world we live in, but everybody else is too. So you need to be really, really, purposeful in how you do it and intelligent about how you how you go about getting your stuff seen. I would look at this as a as a challenge also because, you know, this phrase has been around for a while. I'm too busy.
And to be sure, the digital world has changed things a little bit, but, nonetheless, I don't want this to become an excuse for my team. Okay. They're too busy. So that's our status. What we can do about it? You know, how are we still gonna get in front of them? And there's a few different ways you can do that.
If they have a specific disease state interest that may or may not even include your product, are you bringing back information to them of value from a recent medical meeting you were at about that disease state? Can you have an organic conversation with them about things that kind of in a in a in a side way get you to where you wanna go with a product discussion? You have to be very creative to demonstrate value to get that kind of time in a very busy world. It's hard, but it can be done.
Come over here. Mike is way over there. So toss it, Jonathan. Passing the baton here. To your point, I I don't know that there's, separating disinterest from too busy. I I don't think those are mutually exclusive answers. I think, if I think context is everything, and this goes back to one of the earlier points that didn't come to questions. It come to, questions from from, us out here.
But I think if you contextualize the questions that you have, the information so that they're of primary interest, to the key opinion leader or the expert or whomever you're trying to contact, that you have a much better chance of getting time on his or her schedule. This interest in and too busy is I think this interest is just an extreme of or too busy. Anyway, I think you get what I'm trying to say here. Yeah. Alright. So we're we're gonna we have a couple minutes.
So what I think I'd like to do is just we have one more question for the panel, and this relates to, the future. So what do you think engagement will look like in the next 5 years, and what trends do you think will emerge? Unfortunately, I think more Zoom meetings than Zoom calls. I don't know that that's what I'd like to say but I do see that that that's probably more more of a headache.
I'll, I'll beat the omnichannel drum and the concept that the way to communicate is, the way that in this case, the the external engage in KOL wants to be communicated with whether it's Zoom or in person or, you know, send me a downloader packet. It's gonna be customized.
Yeah. I'm not sure I can predict exactly what the future will look like in terms of virtual versus live interactions, but I'm very optimistic that's gonna be better because humans tend to evolve both personally and in business to, get better at things. And I think we're gonna evolve to this point where we understand how to communicate a little bit better, whether it's virtual or face to face interactions, minimizing the length of meetings.
I like to run my meetings at 55 minutes just in case you're back to back, you get 5 minutes to catch your breath. I know it doesn't sound like much, but sometimes that can make a difference. You know, little things like that, I think, make a difference. And I think 5 years from now, assuming, again, that epidemiologically, we're still in this place where COVID, while it's still a thing, is a little bit more minimized than it was 2 years ago, assuming that's still the case.
I think it's gonna look very much like it does now, but, again, perhaps a little bit optimized. So we have, like, a second left. I'm getting the definitely get 4 minutes we have. So one of the things that we purposely did not incorporate into this discussion is social media and digital, but I couldn't resist. So what what do you guys think about when we look at the well, maybe not even the future.
We look at right now, how does social media play and the digital opinion leader play into the communication strategies for your teams? Are we going audience, or are we going panel? Some someone was just. I'm sorry. I had a just a comment on the last just the future. I'm sorry. No worries. I was gonna let you go with that part.
But I I agree with everyone with that because I'm seeing the same thing, and and I think that the the new world of of interaction, of engagement with external stakeholders, internal stakeholders, has changed due to the fact where when COVID started and we all jumped on Zoom for the first time, those of us that could figure it out, no one had their cameras on. Now it's getting to the point where it is a little bit weird unless you announce it, why you're not on camera.
That has that has changed the the the scope. Going back to what are we gonna be like moving forward, I think we realized some efficiencies with that model where it doesn't necessarily everything has to be in person, especially for our KOLs. KOLs now can determine what they wanna do with their time and actually can be more efficient by doing some virtual summit person. So that's just I'm sorry. I didn't wanna take it back. Have 1 somebody has to weigh in on the whole digital social media thing.
Anyone who's brave enough? Anyone? Randi, we'll let you go because you have your own microphone. She's got to go. No. It's just something that I feel very strongly about even before COVID. Digital was something that I believe was a part of the future. Now I'm not putting a timeline because I think, pandemic really accelerated a lot of those digital initiatives throughout the industry.
So I will say definitely digital is gonna play a part, and I think if you ask the question again about the next 5 years and thank you, Michael, for bringing omnichannel piece because that kinda plays a part in the digital conversation. But, also, the digital opinion landscape is gonna expand. Yep. And we all know that digital opinion leaders are not technically KOLs in that case. Right? So it might be someone from the HCP community.
So we have to, bring our organization up to speed on that level as well because we have a KOL list that we have haven't had it for a long time, and how to organize that, how to make sure everybody's on the same page, and, also, what kind of content is needed for that digital opinion leaders because it's different than the content that we are developing with regard to some of the slide decks, for example, for the MSLUs. But I feel like that's how I see digital landscape evolving, on that.
And one more. Yeah. And I'll just add to that. So, you know, at our at acceleration point, we're currently listening to about 60,000, HCPs in the social space, for medical teams. And this year, we're at about 58% of them having scientifically relevant content that they've shared in the digital space. And it's not just that they talked about COVID. It has to do with the disease that they specialize in. Right? So it's accelerating. It's getting faster.
And the scary part is that there's no barrier to entry at all. And so, you know, when we think about our job of of sharing the science, making sure people know the the latest and and the the most current thinking in the space. And that's what KOLs turn to you for. That's what DOLs turn to you for, and they're going to talk with or without your support. And so I think that we're just seeing this, need to continue to prioritize. Right. Right. Okay. So we have to close this.
I am gonna add one thing to that, and spoiler alert, my friends in the data and CRM space are telling me that artificial intelligence and machine learning is going to actually curate all of the content that's being shared from KOLs right into the into the CRM. So without having to go out and find it, it's gonna come to you. So in the future, I think that there's gonna be a lot of digital tools that are gonna provide the information needed for everyone to do a better job with their kwell.
That's at least that's what I'm hearing. So, thank you all. Thank you to my panel, Michael, Ruth, Brian. I really appreciate all of your insights. Thank you to our live audience and everybody that's tuning in via LinkedIn live, and thank you to Momentum Events. I appreciate you guys giving us this opportunity. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the show.
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