There is nothing more valuable to Medical, Market Access and Marketing teams than getting international Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) together in a room for an in-depth discussion to build consensus and share experiences with one another. However, an advisory board can become eye-wateringly expensive if done in person: accommodation, sundries, flights, increased honorarium for travel time, and conference registration. All this for a four-hour meeting that could have been virtual.
The beauty of a virtual advisory board is that it allows KOLs and your team to enjoy the discussion from the comfort of their own home. Additionally, the advisory board does not need to be scheduled around a big international conference. As it is virtual, it can take place any time you wish.
But what if your chosen KOLs do not all speak English, and require language support during the event? This is a challenging hurdle to overcome in person, so how can this be surmounted virtually?
The silver-lining of the COVID-19 pandemic was the evolution of virtual conferencing tools such as Zoom, which launched new features that one could only dream of before the pandemic: live interpretation.
We organise and execute virtual advisory boards for healthcare industry clients to allow those important discussions to go ahead without spending an arm and a leg. Here are some of our tips for virtual advisory boards to run successfully.
Whilst our team might be able to pull everything together for a virtual advisory board quickly, KOLs are famously busy. They have patients to see, might be travelling for conferences, writing manuscripts for journals, the list goes on! Respecting their jam-packed schedule and allowing enough time before the desired advisory board date is critical. We advise no less than two months between project kick-off and the advisory board going live.
What makes advisory boards interesting is bringing together international experts who may have met at a couple of conferences, but who have not had the opportunity to work together yet. This will make the advisory board more valuable for your organisation and the KOLs. Involve country leads from your company based in other countries to choose the right experts.
Depending on the topic of the advisory board, you may want to bring together experts with different specialisations to make the discussion richer. Or it might make better sense to bring KOLs who all specialise in the same area to better contrast the differences between countries.
A moderator is critical for the advisory board to run smoothly. We recommend choosing an additional KOL who has proven experience of facilitating webinars or who is a great speaker at conferences. This will make the other speakers feel comfortable that someone in their field is bridging the presentations and adding valuable commentary throughout the event.
Bringing together the company country leads at a work-in-progress meeting to discuss what topics would be compelling to the audience from their country will help build a strong agenda. For instance, there could be an interesting reimbursement system in one country, or specific cultural sensitivities in another that would be unique and interesting to share about.
Providing the KOLs with the list of topics to choose from and giving them a couple of subtopics to cover in their presentation will help them to stay on topic.
We recommend leaving a good amount of time at the end of the advisory board for discussion. After all, this is where most of the magic will happen. It is also not compulsory for all KOLs to make a presentation to maximise the amount of time for the discussion.
This depends on what you would like to achieve, how many KOLs are present, and whether each KOL will be invited to make a presentation. It also depends on how much your company is able to pay KOLs for their time. Advisory boards should last between two and four hours, especially if the advisory board is virtual. Sitting in front of a screen for four hours can be uncomfortable.
Thanks to Zoom’s interpretation feature, involving KOLs who do not speak English is not an issue!
The interpretation feature on Zoom is ideal for simultaneous content across languages
You will need to enrol a couple of interpreters per language to support with live interpretation during the virtual advisory board and rehearse with these interpreters and KOLs ahead of the advisory board so everyone is comfortable with the Zoom interpretation feature.
The Zoom interpretation feature is available to panellists and the attendees who watch the advisory board. It allows for seamless interaction between experts from different countries.
You will need to decide whether the advisory board presentations should be translated into different languages to allow panellists and attendees who do not speak the language being presented to follow along. Share the presentations in advance via a drive or file-sharing platform so the panellists and attendees can download them ahead of time.
As someone from the company organising the advisory board, you can log into the Zoom Webinar as the audience, sit back, watch the show and relax. Or you can choose to make a short introduction to set the scene.
The agency takes care of the short run-through before the start time to make sure all the panellists have their slides ready, their microphones and webcams are working, the interpreters are ready to go and the panellists have chosen the correct language channel. The agency also takes care of keeping the advisory board to schedule, records the event and responds to any last-minute technical challenges.
After an ad board, there are several outputs that can be created with the content gathered during and before the event.
An executive summary is a shorter report that includes the highlights, the key objectives and whether these were achieved, and the next steps.
The agency can prepare a consensus statement for the company using insights from the different KOLs on what they would like to see change in their area of healthcare. These consensus statements could influence country guidelines if socialised with other prominent specialists.
We recommend planning subsequent advisory boards with the same panel to deepen the conversation and build relationships between the KOLs. The panellists often request a follow-up meeting as they appreciate this opportunity to exchange with other like-minded experts.
If you have any questions about how to host your own virtual advisory board, get in touch here.
