EphMRA 2024: Event takeaways

The Research Partnership team was out in full force for this year’s EPHMRA 2024 conference, held in London on June 25-27.  Roy Rogers, who is part of the EPHMRA Conference Programme Committee, attended, as well as Tom Winter, Paul Reed and Grzegorz Stanczyk. In total there were over 200 delegates from 70 different companies, so it presented the perfect opportunity to network with others in the industry. This year, we were also selected to present two papers at the conference.

Paul Reed’s paper “Patient social media influencers: why the industry needs influencer engagement strategies”, included contributions from Trishna Bharadia, who is a MS patient influencer. In his paper Paul argued that as an industry it is essential we view these influencers as critical “experts” alongside traditional sources of authority such as KOLs, HCPs, and Payers. Not only should we engage with influencers as a market research respondents, we should also go further and bring them into our research teams as consultants.

Tom Winter co-presented with Bismay Mishra from Gilead.  Their paper “How market research can help address disparities in HIV prevention” aimed to showcase ways in which market research can be used to inform health equity strategies at healthcare companies.  Using a case study from a recently completed project, they shared practical tips on how to run similar projects, and provided examples of the impact these types of projects can have in shaping decision making.  As health equity becomes more of a focus for our clients, it is important that we are able to think creatively about how to design and execute these types of research project.  Many of the communities we seek to understand can be challenging to access through normal channels, so we need to understand their needs through other means.

We also exhibited at the agency fair, sharing our latest news and research offerings with delegates. If you or your colleagues were unable to attend this year’s conference and would like to find out more about our papers, contact us today.