Key Takeaways from 2024 Intellus Fall Institute

The Bazis Americas team was excited to be a part of the 2024 Intellus Fall Institute and participate in the conference for healthcare marketing research. The conference tagline, “Where Great Minds Meet!” was fitting as brilliant minds from across the industry came together to share the latest knowledge and methods being used to improve healthcare marketing. The conference was held in New Brunswick, New Jersey, home of Rutgers University. The city’s academic atmosphere was a great addition to our event. Feel free to check out our facebook page to see photos of our team exploring the city!

Tatiana Barakshina of our Bazis team, presented  “Mentorship and Milestones: Empowering Black Women in Clinical Research” with Danielle Mitchell (Black Women in Clinical Research), Portia Gordon (Branding Science) and Tom Donnelly (Research Partnership | Inizio Advisory). The presentation gave an overview of the study that was conducted for Black Women in Clinical Research and explored what can be done to improve the experiences of Black women in the clinical research field. Here are two key takeaways from the session:

1. Awareness of Clinical research careers are currently low at high school and college levels of education. Increasing awareness in these areas would play a positive role in attracting Black women to the field and driving more widespread awareness overall.
2. Mentorship connections, Internships and Networking are highly valued by Black women in clinical research because it helps them feel supported as they enter the field and want to grow in the field.

In addition to presenting, we had the opportunity to attend other fascinating presentations where we learned from the world’s leading companies of healthcare marketing research. Here’s a brief summary of our favorite sessions:

Rare360 Program- Establishing the Gold Standard for Rare Disease Market Research Recruitment

In this session Nadia Bodkin and Heather Flaherty (Rare360 & Rare Advocacy Movement) gave us an in depth look into rare disease patient recruitment challenges and solutions. Using the Rare360 program, the Rare Advocacy Movement (RAM) aims to connect community stakeholders and provide a trusted, vetted ecosystem for research. This work is important because there are over 8,000 rare diseases impacting nearly 25 million Americans and ⅔ of rare disease patients are children. RAM created the Rare360 Program to set the gold standard for rare disease market research recruitment by addressing specific community needs through advocacy-driven approaches. In their efforts to set this standard three key points arose:

1. The rare disease ecosystem is diverse and complex. Community landscapes are central, with various stakeholder perspectives that may not always align. Advocacy and community landscapes must be distinguished.
2. Lack of trust remains a significant barrier to participation in healthcare market research, with 68% of participants from naive communities expressing distrust in market research.
3. The following key areas are important to improving market research experiences for people with rare diseases: avoiding exploitation, respecting privacy, avoiding spam, and offering fair compensation.

Harnessing Insights & Analytics to Drive Patient Engagement

Jennifer Parr, Steve Yonish and Sri Saikumar (Trinity Life Sciences) hosted a discussion of practical patient-centric approaches and presented a new model for patient engagement to “walk the walk” of patient centricity. The session aimed to explore how insights and analytics can be used to enhance patient engagement, especially by leveraging real world evidence and primary market research. Here is a brief summary of two case studies that were presented:

1. Case Study 1
   1. A global rare disease company sought to engage community physicians to identify new patient opportunities. Challenges included the small population size and restrictive therapy eligibility.
   2. Solutions: AI/ML models were developed to identify clinically on-label patients and flag patients for treatment, successfully driving focused sales efforts.
2. Case Study 2
   1. A pharmaceutical company with a diabetes asset realized that forecasted patient numbers were underperforming due to insufficient patient screening.
   2. Solutions: Statistical analysis of claims data helped identify patients at risk, leading to better-targeted interventions to delay disease progression and improve quality of life.

On a final note we’d like to share how special the Awards Celebration Dinner was, where the most dedicated members of the Intellus Community were honored. It was a wonderful display of the strength and care of the Intellus community. The 2024 Intellus Fall Institute was a success and we were delighted to be a part of it another year.