December 20, 2012 ·
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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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advisory boards basic research biopharmaceutical biotechnology chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder clinical trials COPD deep-profiling health care professionals health care providers healthcare key opinion leaders KOL KOL deployment KOL engagement KOL identification KOL mapping KOL profiling KOLs medical devices Neil Mellor oncology KOLs pharmaceutical pharmaceuticals physicians pulmonology rheumatology KOLs Thought Leader Select thought leaders treatment guidelines
November 6, 2012 ·
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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 »
TAGS: biopharmaceutical company biotechnology Canadian KOLs centers of excellence Chapel Hill NC clinical research clinical trials deep-profiling drug development gynecology health care professionals health care providers healthcare key opinion leaders KOL KOL deployment KOL engagement KOL identification KOL mapping KOL profiling KOLs Kristen Smithwick medical experts medical research obstetrics scientific journal publishing Thought Leader Select thought leaders transparency treatment guidelines uterine tumors women's health
October 23, 2012 ·
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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 »
TAGS: biostatisticians biotech clinical trials disease state google alerts key opinion leaders KOL assessments KOL identification KOL profiling KOL research KOLs medical devices medical diagnostics medicine peer nomination pharmaceuticals principal investigator quality control research studies scientific journal publishing social network analysis therapeutic area thought leader activities thought leaders web crawlers
August 16, 2012 ·
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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 »
TAGS: Brian Castle clinical trials communications agencies editorial boards key opinion leaders key opinion leaders in medicine KOL identification KOL mapping KOL profiling KOL relationship building KOL research life science companies life sciences media exposure medical communications agencies medical journals medical professionals patient health public health regulatory approval reimbursement approval scientific advisory boards scientific journals Thought Leader Select thought leaders treatment guidelines
May 2, 2012 ·
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By Brian Castle and Kristen Smithwick
At Thought Leader Select, we have the privilege of working with a group of people who are always mindful of our company’s place in the big world of healthcare. We view our mission as a simple one, and that is to go about our work in ways that will always ultimately promote better patient care and public health outcomes.
We collaborate, through a strategic approach, with a variety of partner companies in the healthcare space—companies developing and commercializing pharmaceuticals, biotech treatments, medical devices, and diagnostics—as well as thousands of thought leaders, key advisors, and medical centers of excellence across more than 18 therapeutic areas covering over 50 diseases and conditions that affect millions of people around the world.
This week, we are proud to launch a new expression of our company’s mission and what we see as our responsibility to our partners across healthcare and the patients we all serve. We are proud of our team’s heritage in multiple areas of healthcare—our people have led industry teams working in brand and product commercialization, predictive medicine, and strategic planning, and they have also performed critical research work and delivered clinical care to patients alongside leading physicians in many of the top medical centers on multiple continents.
On our new Our Mission and Responsibility page, you’ll see a ... read more »
TAGS: biotechnology corporate mission corporate social responsibility diagnostics diseases drug commercialization healthcare key opinion leaders medical centers of excellence medical devices patient care patients pharmaceuticals physicians predictive medicine public health outcomes scientific community strategic planning therapeutic areas Thought Leader Select thought leaders
April 18, 2012 ·
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April 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 urology engagement with a top 20 global pharmaceutical company.
The pharmaceutical company, a global leader in drug development for urological conditions, approached Thought Leader Select for support with its existing portfolio of medicines, as well as new drugs in its development pipeline across the Canadian market. To meet the combined strategic needs of the company’s existing portfolio as well as its emerging pipeline, Thought Leader Select will deploy its in-house research group for a two-part assessment of the key opinion leader community in urology.
For the first wave of the assessment, the Thought Leader Select research group will validate the skills and experience of the urology specialists that currently comprise the company’s KOL roster. In addition, Thought Leader Select will identify new physicians appropriate for the panel, bringing the total roster to 40 thought leaders across multiple Canadian provinces.
In the second phase of the assessment, Thought Leader Select’s in-house research group will engage in its exclusive, validated methodology of deep profiling, delivering objective assessments of the skills and experience of key opinion leaders across 14 areas where health care professionals define themselves as ... read more »
TAGS: basic and clinical research biopharmaceutical diagnostics drug development key opinion leaders KOL engagement KOL identification KOL panel KOL profiling KOL roster KOLs in urology Kristen Smithwick medical devices medical meetings pharmaceuticals scientific journal publishing Thought Leader Select thought leaders treatment guidelines urology
March 14, 2012 ·
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Industry Insights from Brian Castle
As in nearly all other aspects of life, social media is fast becoming a dominant force in the world of healthcare. Leading centers of excellence—hospitals, clinics, research foundations, and universities—are utilizing social media to educate patients about medical resources and treatments on a daily basis. Biopharmaceutical companies are using social media to promote new medications and further educate patients about other wellness resources at their disposal to help with debilitating diseases and conditions.
Physicians and other healthcare professionals, like practically every other profession, are embracing social media at unprecedented levels, engaging with each other on everything from new medical devices to tough medical cases. Due to this rise in HCP use of social media, some have begun to question the very essence of what makes a key opinion leader in the medical profession.
Some of these questioners have gone a step farther, at their ultimate peril, in misinterpreting physician involvement in spaces like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and physician-only social media networks like Sermo. They incorrectly perceive that social media participation is the new thought leadership. Last year, I sat in the audience for a presentation by a leader in the pharmaceutical industry. This person posited a talking point she’d heard from an executive at a physician-only social media network: “If you’re not in their social network, you’re not ... read more »
TAGS: basic research biopharmaceutical companies biotechnology Brian Castle centers of excellence clinical research diseases Facebook global KOL HCPs health care professionals healthcare hospitals key opinion leaders KOL engagement KOL identification KOLs LinkedIn local KOL medical clinics medical conditions medical congresses medical devices medical diagnostics medical meetings medical resources medical treatment options medications national KOL patient education pharmaceuticals physician-only social networks physicians public health regional KOL research foundations scientific journal publishing Sermo social media thought leader engagement thought leader identification Thought Leader Select thought leaders thought leadership treatment guidelines Twitter universities wellness
March 7, 2012 ·
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Thought Leader Select, a Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based research and consulting firm for the biopharmaceutical and healthcare industries, announces the commencement a research assessment of key opinion leaders and centers of excellence in the treatment area of women’s health. The company will perform the assessment for a top-50 global biopharmaceutical firm entering the treatment of conditions affecting women.
For the assessment, Thought Leader Select will use its proprietary KOL identification and profiling methodology, known as deep profiling, to pinpoint 100 U. S. key opinion leaders in women’s health, with specialty in the area of obstetrics and gynecology. The company will then study the skills and experience of American OB/GYNs in several areas of thought leadership in the medical field, including areas of expertise, leadership in basic and clinical research, and research publishing in leading scientific journals.
The client company will utilize Thought Leader Select’s findings to engage key opinion leaders in obstetrics and gynecology on a number of fronts, including advisory boards, consulting, and medical science liaison outreach.
In addition to assessing OB/GYN KOLs in the United States, Thought Leader Select will also apply its objective, validated methodology to identify and profile 50 American centers of excellence in the area of women’s health. For the centers of excellence assessment, Thought Leader Select will gauge each center’s community footprint of associated physicians and ... read more »
TAGS: advisory boards area of expertise associated clinics basic research biopharmaceutical industry biotechnology breast cancer centers of excellence cervical cancer clinical research gynecology healthcare key opinion leaders KOL engagement KOL identification KOL profiling KOLs medical science liaisons Neil Mellor OB/GYN OB/GYN KOLs obstetrics ovarian cancer pharmaceuticals physicians scientific journals Thought Leader Select thought leaders thought leadership women's health
February 28, 2012 ·
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Industry Insights from Paul Meade, M. Sc., MPH
There has been quite a lot of noise lately regarding the use of social network techniques to find key opinion leaders in the medical profession. Whether it’s through what some call social network analysis or the creation of health care professional-only social networks, proponents of these methods like to think that they are reinventing thought leadership and its metrics.
In fact, some advocates even suggest they can find more key opinion leaders in the medical field than by using other tried and tested, and sometimes validated approaches. Can this be true? Well, it depends on how these companies, and better yet, how the end users of their services, define thought leaders or key opinion leaders (KOLs).
There are those with backgrounds in information technology, as well as social sciences such as sociology and psychology, and other areas outside healthcare who are trying to redefine thought leadership in medicine to fit the template of the products they are selling. For example, some of them have taken concepts of social interactions and applied them to finding those medical experts that either publish together or even present at similar conferences. But just because someone writes a paper with someone else doesn’t mean they are both KOLs. In fact, the contrary is often the case.
So let’s back up and ... read more »
TAGS: clinical practice diabetes health behaviors health care professional social networks information technology key opinion leaders KOL identification KOL profiling KOLs physician social networks psychology public health publication collaborations publishing scientific journals scientific research social networks sociology thought leaders thought leaders in medicine thought leadership
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