Conference Schedule

chairperson:

The strongest research programs don't add the patient perspective after the scientific question, protocol, or evidence plan has already been established. They begin by understanding what patients need, what participation actually requires of them, and what barriers may prevent research from representing the populations it is intended to serve.

  • Explore how patient-centered principles can shape research priorities and execution from the beginning, influencing communication, feasibility, informed consent, access, study participation, and the responsible use of AI
  • Bring patient needs and participation realities into research planning before study decisions are finalized
  • Use inclusive communication to make complex research understandable without compromising scientific accuracy
  • Consider access, participant burden and equitable engagement when evaluating study feasibility
  • Strengthen informed consent as an ongoing process of understanding rather than a documentation exercise
  • Use AI thoughtfully to support patient communication and comprehension while preserving human connection
  • Connect patient-centered research practices to recruitment, retention, evidence quality and ultimately patient impact
Speaker:

Medical Affairs teams can report how many KOL interactions, advisory boards and congresses they completed, but struggle to answer the questions leadership actually asks: Which KOLs changed their position? Which insights shaped strategy? What did the team learn at the last congress, and did it change anything? In this panel, Medical Affairs leaders from pharma and medtech share how they use agentic AI in their day-to-day workflows, and what it took to get there.

  • Capturing and analyzing field insights so they shape medical strategy
  • AI-assisted KOL identification and MSL pre-call preparation
  • Moving from activity metrics to measurable Medical Affairs impact
  • Lessons learned: organizational buy-in, implementation hurdles, and time to results
Speakers:

MSL teams are gathering more insights than ever, but volume does not equal value. The real challenge is knowing which KOL signals point to meaningful evidence gaps, which insights should influence medical strategy, and which recurring questions may deserve research support. Explore how leading teams separate signal from noise and move field intelligence into decisions that actually change strategy.

  • Distinguish actionable field insight from anecdotal feedback
  • Create escalation pathways for recurring evidence gaps
  • Connect KOL feedback to Medical Affairs, portfolio, and evidence-generation priorities
  • Define what makes an insight useful enough to influence research strategy
moderator:
panelist:

MSLs are often closest to investigators and KOLs, but that does not mean they should own every step of the IIT process. Without clear boundaries, teams risk inconsistent communication, duplicated work, operational confusion, and compliance exposure. Do your MSLs clearly recognize where ownership must shift to ClinOps, Grants, or other colleagues?

  • Define appropriate MSL involvement across the IIT/IIS lifecycle
  • Clarify when MSLs should engage, escalate, or step back
  • Build compliant communication pathways between investigators and internal teams
  • Reduce operational confusion through clearer role ownership
Moderator:
Panelist:

A strong scientific question can still fail if it is forced into the wrong research model. IITs, collaborative research, real-world evidence, Phase IV studies, registries, and sponsored trials each carry different levels of control, cost, risk, speed, ownership, and operational complexity. Choose the right pathway before expectations, timelines, contracts, and compliance questions become tangled.

  • Compare IITs, collaborative research, RWE, Phase IV, and other external research models
  • Match research questions to the most appropriate evidence pathway
  • Evaluate control, risk, cost, ownership, and operational complexity earlier
  • Avoid misclassifying research in ways that create downstream friction
Speakers:

Investigator-initiated studies, medical education grants, ad boards and speaker programs are some of Medical Affairs’ biggest investments in evidence and external engagement. They draw on the same KOLs, contracts and compliance rules, yet each is often run from its own spreadsheet, inbox or tool, and the practical questions fall in the gaps between them. Who is the right expert for this study or ad board? Will they still be under contract on the event date, and how close are they to their FMV cap? Which funded studies are on track to produce evidence? Explore the practices that separate well-run programs from reactive ones, and how teams can use AI responsibly to strengthen KOL relationships and program oversight.

  • Clear intake and review governance across IIS, grants and events, and who carries the workload
  • Choosing the right KOL for a study, ad board or speaker program, including diverse voices
  • Early warning on study slippage, contract status, FMV caps and overlapping touchpoints
  • Using agentic AI responsibly to monitor programs and keep each one connected to the field relationships behind it
Speakers:

AI is moving quickly into Field Medical workflows, but many MSL teams are still working through where it helps, where it creates risk, and how to use it without losing the human judgment scientific exchange depends on. Examine practical, real-world use cases for KOL preparation, pre-call planning, insight synthesis, roleplay simulations, scientific exchange coaching, and pattern recognition across field intelligence.

  • Identify practical AI use cases for MSL pre-call planning, KOL preparation, insight synthesis, and roleplay-based coaching
  • Explore how AI can help MSLs enter KOL conversations with stronger context, sharper questions, and better understanding of stakeholder priorities
  • Address field team hesitation around AI replacing, flattening, or over-standardizing the MSL role
  • Improve the consistency, quality, and actionability of field insights without losing scientific nuance or relationship context
  • Build governance guardrails for AI-supported coaching, documentation, insight analysis, and cross-functional use of field intelligence
Speakers:

Day 1 Concludes

chairperson:

Many IIT challenges begin long before the contract is signed. Unclear endpoints, poor investigator readiness, and mismatched expectations can quietly derail a study before it starts. Explore how teams can evaluate investigator proposals with stronger criteria and make better decisions before resources are committed.

  • Define must-have criteria for investigator proposal review
  • Evaluate scientific merit, feasibility, patient access, and operational readiness
  • Incorporate MSL and field insight into proposal assessment
  • Identify early warning signs that a study may not be worth pursuing
Speakers:

Every delay carries a price tag. Tufts CSDD estimated that a single day of delay in drug development can represent approximately $800,000 in unrealized or lost prescription drug sales, plus roughly $40,000 in direct daily clinical trial costs. While IITs may operate differently from sponsor-led development programs, the underlying lesson still applies: unclear milestones, delayed activation, missed invoices, and stalled enrollment can quietly turn strong scientific ideas into expensive operational drag.

  • Set realistic milestone expectations before launch
  • Tie payments, deliverables, product/device shipments, and enrollment documentation to explicit contractual milestones
  • Identify common causes of activation delays, enrollment stalls, product expiration, and missed invoice milestones
  • Build escalation processes for studies that begin to fall behind
  • Improve communication between investigators, sponsors, sites, MSLs, External Research, and internal operations teams
moderator:

Move beyond anecdotal conversations and get a real-time view of how peer organizations are approaching the practices that most directly influence success. Participating companies will anonymously contribute data on their current efforts, operating models, challenges, and most importantly how they measure effectiveness. Results will be revealed and discussed live, giving attendees a rare opportunity to compare approaches, identify emerging standards, and uncover where their own organization may be ahead, behind, or simply doing things differently. A particular focus will be on how organizations quantify and communicate the value of their external investments to internal leadership. Leave with actionable peer intelligence you can use to validate current practices, strengthen internal decision-making, and identify opportunities for improvement build a defensible case for the impact of external research.

  • Benchmark your organization's current practices, structures, and priorities against participating peer companies
  • Identify common approaches, areas of variation, and emerging practices associated with stronger outcomes
  • Understand how other peer organizations define, measure, and report success, including the metrics and indicators they rely on specific metrics, financial indicators, and outcome measures they use to demonstrate the impact of external research to leadership
  • Surface persistent challenges and compare how peers are addressing them
  • Translate live benchmarking results into practical opportunities to strengthen your own strategy, processes, and internal business case a defensible internal business case—including the metrics and comparators most persuasive to senior leadership and finance
  • Compare how organizations justify, sustain, or grow external funding budgets, including how they connect spend to measurable impact
Speakers:

The hardest IIT problems often hide inside early assumptions: who owns the data, who controls publication timelines, what counts as fair market value. By properly establishing contract and budget terms, you can protect the study, reduce investigator frustration, and prevent avoidable conflict later.

  • Address budget, FMV, funding expectations, payment milestones, and invoice timing earlier
  • Clarify data ownership, publication rights, access terms, product/device logistics, and termination language
  • Help investigators understand core legal and contracting expectations before delays damage the relationship
  • Build clearer investigator-facing education around contracting, FMV, data ownership, publication rights, and milestone obligations
  • Pressure-test common scenarios, including missed enrollment milestones, expired product, delayed invoices, disputed publication rights, and study termination
Speaker:

MSL teams and IIT programs both struggle with value measurement because their work is relationship-driven, long-cycle, and often indirect. Learn how to measure what actually matters by prioritizing the highest quality insights and most useful publications

  • Define metrics that connect external engagement to research outcomes
  • Move beyond activity counts and anecdotal success stories
  • Demonstrate value to Medical Affairs, clinical, and executive leadership
  • Build a reporting model that captures scientific, operational, and strategic impact
Speaker:

Conference Concludes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Accept