Langan Joins Thought Leader Select Research Group

February 26, 2013 · Leave a comment

For Immediate Release

February 21, 2013 (CHAPEL HILL, NC) Thought Leader Select, a North Carolina-based key opinion leader strategy company, announces the hiring of Heather Langan as research director.

In her new role at the company, Langan will lead profiling and engagement planning related to the skills and experience of both leading physicians and other health care professionals, as well as medical centers of excellence that advance the medical science.  Life sciences companies use this research and advice for better strategic decision-making for collaborations with medical experts, as industry works with these experts to bring new treatments to market for better patient care and better public health outcomes.

Langan arrives at Thought Leader Select after a decorated career in human services, working and leading teams in developmental disabilities, family therapy, and mental health.  In her most recent role at Duke University’s National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, Langan led quality assurance and continuous improvement at the premier center of excellence in the area of child trauma, influencing the treatment decisions in evidence-based clinics around the country.

Heather Langan holds two bachelor’s degrees, in philosophy and psychology, from the University of Utah.  After graduation, Langan also earned a pair of master’s degrees in psychology and counseling, from Stephen F. Austin University and North ... read more »

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Canadian Pharma Chooses Thought Leader Select for COPD Key Opinion Leader Engagement Strategy

December 20, 2012 · Leave a comment

December 20, 2012 (CHAPEL HILL, NC) Thought Leader Select, a Chapel Hill, NC-based consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics industries, announces the commencement of a medical strategy engagement in pulmonology with a top Canadian biopharmaceutical company.

The company, part of a select group of global leaders in drug development for products treating chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), approached Thought Leader Select for support with scientific advisory boards and continuing health education (CHE) initiatives across multiple Canadian provinces.  Having already worked with Thought Leader Select to form rosters of key opinion leaders in Canadian rheumatology and oncology circles, the company will formulate its panel of key experts in pulmonology by deploying Thought Leader Select’s team to assess the skills and experiences of physician specialists across the country.

Known for the versatility of applications for its in-house research, Thought Leader Select’s research group will analyze the skills and experience of these leading experts in multiple areas where they collaborate to advance the science of medicine and patient care, including basic and clinical research, scientific journal publishing, treatment guidelines, and more.

Throughout the remainder of the engagement, Thought Leader Select’s consulting team will provide strategic guidance, tactical recommendations for strengthening key opinion leader relationships in the nursing and pharmacy communities, and a suite of tools to promote collaborative work with KOLs.  Among these ... read more »

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International Pharma Chooses Thought Leader Select for Women’s Health Initiative with Key Opinion Leaders, Centers of Excellence

November 6, 2012 · Leave a comment

November 6, 2012 (CHAPEL HILL, NC) Thought Leader Select, a Chapel Hill, NC-based consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics industries, announces the commencement of a national engagement in Canada focused on key opinion leaders and medical centers of excellence in women’s health with an international biopharmaceutical company.

The company, part of a select group of global leaders in drug development for products aimed at improving the health of women, approached Thought Leader Select for support in a variety of collaborative efforts with leading physicians and other health care professionals at leading universities, medical schools, teaching hospitals, and specialty clinics.  The key opinion leaders represent medical experts within the Canadian obstetrics and gynecology community, with areas of sub-specialty including fertility and the treatment of uterine tumors.

Known for the versatility of applications for its in-house research and analysis, Thought Leader Select’s research group will analyze the skills and experience of specialists in multiple areas where they collaborate with leading physicians and other health care professionals, including registered nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical pharmacists, and medical researchers, to advance the science of medicine and patient care in women’s health, including basic and clinical research, scientific journal publishing, treatment guidelines, and more.

Throughout the remainder of the engagement, Thought Leader Select’s consulting team will provide strategic guidance, tactical recommendations for strengthening collaborative ... read more »

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The Necessity of Quality Measures When Profiling Thought Leaders in Medicine

October 23, 2012 · Leave a comment

Industry Insights from Paul Meade, M.Sc., MPH

There are several companies that claim to identify and profile key opinion leaders in healthcare, and they using an array of methodologies and techniques to arrive at defining the practitioners who drive a given therapeutic area or disease state. And yet, while all claim to have built a better mousetrap for profiling these thought leaders, what is sadly lacking among many these vendors is quality control and good quality measures.

Notwithstanding the variety of definitions of a key opinion leader emblematic of the lack of standardization across the industry, there is also a wide variation in the quality of the output from one vendor to the next. For instance, some companies utilize automated web-crawlers (think: glorified Google Alerts) to mine public information—for the most part, scientific publications data, and simply foist upon their clients a “data dump.” The content of these data dumps is often completely devoid of sound quality control—for example, it is not uncommon for an IT-based vendor to offer up John Smith, John D. Smith, and JD Smith as three separate KOLs, when, in reality, Dr. John D. Smith is a true one-of-a-kind. Likewise, we have also seen lists where vendors may conflate Dr. David Lee from Sacramento with Dr. David Lee from Shanghai, when human researchers would see these to ... read more »

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Top US Pharma Chooses Thought Leader Select for Obesity Centers of Excellence Initiative

October 18, 2012 · Leave a comment

October 18, 2012 (CHAPEL HILL, NC)  Thought Leader Select, a Chapel Hill, NC-based consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics industries, announces the commencement of a national engagement focused on medical centers of excellence in obesity with a top U. S. biopharmaceutical company.

The company, part of a select group of global leaders in drug development for products treating the condition of obesity, approached Thought Leader Select for support with a variety of collaborative efforts, including medical science liaison outreach to leading universities, medical schools, teaching hospitals, and specialty clinics in this area.  Having already worked with Thought Leader Select to form rosters of key opinion leaders in endocrinology, primary care, nursing, pharmacy, and long-term care in the treatment of type I and type II diabetes and obesity, the company has now chosen Thought Leader Select to pinpoint the leading centers of excellence in the treatment of obesity in the United States.

Known for the versatility of applications for its in-house research and analysis, Thought Leader Select’s research group will assess the skills and experience of selected centers, detailing the collaborative activities of leading physicians and other health care professionals, including registered nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical pharmacists, and medical researchers, the people who advance the science of medicine and patient care, through basic and clinical research, scientific journal ... read more »

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Allison Murphy Joins Thought Leader Select Consulting Team

October 11, 2012 · Leave a comment

Thought Leader Select is pleased to announce that Allison Murphy, an executive with nearly two decades of experience working in healthcare and biopharmaceuticals, has joined the company’s team of consultants dedicated to optimizing industry collaborations with medical experts.

Murphy comes to Thought Leader Select with a track record of success in clinical work at leading medical centers of excellence, as well as sales and medical science liaison roles at Eli Lilly and Company.  A 1993 graduate of Villanova University with a degree in nursing, Murphy entered clinical practice in a role leading pediatric oncology nurse teams at New York University Lagone Medical Center, followed by a stint working as a nurse coordinator in pediatric endocrinology at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, also in New York.

During her time at Columbia Presbyterian, Ms. Murphy managed a practice that grew from 300 to over 2000 weekly patient visits and served as study coordinator for multiple National Institutes of Health-sponsored protocols and several phase IV clinical trial collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry.

In 2001, Murphy began an 11-year run at Eli Lilly, first working as a sales specialist on behalf of the company’s portfolio of products aimed at growth disorders to help both pediatric and adult endocrinologists.  Murphy ... read more »

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Top US Pharma Chooses Thought Leader Select for Obesity KOL Initiative

October 4, 2012 · Leave a comment

(CHAPEL HILL, NC) Thought Leader Select, a Chapel Hill, NC-based consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics industries, announces the commencement of a national engagement in obesity with a top U. S. biopharmaceutical company.

The company, part of a select group of global leaders in drug development for products treating the condition of obesity, approached Thought Leader Select for support with scientific advisory boards, consulting, and medical science liaison outreach to leading physicians in this area.  Having already worked with Thought Leader Select to form rosters of key opinion leaders in endocrinology, primary care, nursing, pharmacy, and long-term care in the treatment of type I and type II diabetes, the company has now chosen Thought Leader Select to pinpoint the leading experts in the treatment of obesity in the United States.

Known for the versatility of applications for its in-house research, Thought Leader Select’s research group will analyze the skills and experience of specialists in multiple areas where they collaborate with leading physicians to advance the science of medicine and patient care, including basic and clinical research, scientific journal publishing, treatment guidelines, and more.

Throughout the remainder of the engagement, Thought Leader Select’s consulting team will provide strategic guidance, tactical recommendations for strengthening key opinion leader relationships in the area of obesity, and a suite of tools to promote collaborative work ... read more »

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Top Canadian Pharma Chooses Thought Leader Select for Diabetes KOLs in Nursing, Pharmacy

September 27, 2012 · Leave a comment

(CHAPEL HILL, NC) Thought Leader Select, a Chapel Hill, NC-based consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics industries, announces the commencement of a national engagement in gastroenterology with a top Canadian biopharmaceutical company.

The company, part of a select group of global leaders in drug development for products treating type and type II diabetes, approached Thought Leader Select for support with scientific advisory boards and continuing health education (CHE) initiatives across multiple Canadian provinces.  Having already worked with Thought Leader Select to form a roster of key opinion leaders in Canadian endocrinology circles, the company will round out its roster of key opinion leaders by deploying Thought Leader Select’s team to assess the skills and experiences of registered nurses and clinical pharmacists around the country.

Known for the versatility of applications for its in-house research, Thought Leader Select’s research group will analyze the skills and experience of registered nurses and pharmacists in multiple areas where they collaborate with leading physicians to advance the science of medicine and patient care, including basic and clinical research, scientific journal publishing, treatment guidelines, and more.

Throughout the remainder of the engagement, Thought Leader Select’s consulting team will provide strategic guidance, tactical recommendations for strengthening key opinion leader relationships in the nursing and pharmacy communities, and a suite of tools to promote collaborative work with KOLs.

“Thought ... read more »

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The Secret to Sound KOL Research—It’s Not a Data Dump

August 16, 2012 · Leave a comment

Industry Insights from Brian Castle

There are many ways that life science companies approach finding the right key opinion leaders in medicine to collaborate on next-generation treatments.

Some have the privilege of retaining staff members with decades of experience, during which they get to know the top doctors in their therapeutic area or disease state.  This do-it-yourself (“DIY”) method can be fraught with challenges, but it can also provide valuable insights through sound relationship building.

Other companies, to fill gaps in compliance or expertise within a given area, will contract with research organizations for their KOL work.  There are now over fifty companies (and counting) engaged in some form of key opinion leader identification, profiling, mapping, or engagement planning activities, and that’s not even counting the dozens of specialty medical communications agencies  and larger agencies that list medcomms as a specialty area.

Contracting with external vendors can result in great work, full of insights on the right medical professionals who can make a difference in whether a product succeeds or fails in getting in the right hands—those of patients.  But it can also result in really bad work—a data dump—that basically tells the buyer nothing.

We can define bad research quite easily—you know it when you see it. It often comes from methodologies that are suspect at first glance, those that rely upon too much ... read more »

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Global Pharmaceutical Company Tabs Thought Leader Select for Gastroenterology Key Opinion Leader Partnership

June 21, 2012 · Leave a comment

June 21, 2012 (CHAPEL HILL, NC) Thought Leader Select, a Chapel Hill, NC-based consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics industries, announces the commencement of a national engagement in gastroenterology with a top 10 global biopharmaceutical company.

The company, part of a select group of global leaders in drug development for products treating exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI), approached Thought Leader Select for support with scientific advisory boards in support of a new product initiative.  To meet the strategic needs of the company’s advisory board activities in support of the new treatment, Thought Leader Select will deploy its in-house research group for an assessment of community-based key opinion leaders in gastroenterology throughout the United States.

Known for the versatility of applications for its in-house research, Thought Leader Select’s research group will analyze the skills and experience of leading specialists in multiple areas where they advance the science of medicine and patient care, including basic and clinical research, scientific journal publishing, treatment guidelines, and more.

For the national assessment, the Thought Leader Select research group will collaborate with a team of national key opinion leaders in gastroenterology to identify community-based physicians for grassroots-level scientific advisory work. Thought Leader Select will combine the key opinion leader recommendations with the experience data to optimize a pool of leading physicians with broad representation across multiple geographic ... read more »

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