Why Global Medical Affairs Struggles to Make Science Relevant

Speaker A: We always talk about patient centric approach in many organizations, but in reality we don't put it in practice. We never ask ourselves the question, what I'm developing here, what's the impact on a patient? Can I really impact the patient life by providing this education?

Speaker B: Welcome to Transforming Medical Communications, a podcast by Kinetics Health Group. We share medical communications insights and and advice from the best and brightest in the industry to find out what they're doing to push our industry forwards. Here's your host, Wesley Portogees.

Speaker C: In global healthcare, the challenge isn't just generating great science, it's making sure that the science can actually be understood, applied and used in very different real world settings. So for instance, what works in a, uh, major US academic center may not really work in a regional hospital in Africa, South Asia or Latin America. Different physician workflows, different patient realities, different access barriers. All of that changes what effective communications may actually look like. Well, today's guest has spent his career thinking about exactly that. So I'm joined by Babak Abased and he is the Vice President of Global Medical general medicine at Ah Amgen. He brings also more than 20 years of medical and pharmaceutical experience spanning emergency medicine, global medical affairs, commercial leadership, and also international market strategy. So in this episode we're going to explore how medical affairs can better understand these local needs and how they can adapt the communication for these very different physician and patient realities. And also how we can bring more clarity, relevance and purpose to our scientific messaging. Babak, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Yes, hi, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker C: I'm glad to have you. Thank you. So why don't we start with a big picture question here? What would you say is the biggest mistake that global medical affairs teams make when they try to communicate across very, very different healthcare systems, audiences and geographies?

Speaker A: I think global medical teams often assume that scientific relevance is universal because this is how we learn in medical school. Right. So we have a guideline that we want to apply that guideline everywhere in the world and we are following the evidence based medicine, while the real world practice environments differ dramatically in infrastructure, access, workflow and the patient barriers. So I think the main oversight is that we are trying to export headquarter design communication without enough local physician input or adaptation to their practical realities on the ground in the field.

Speaker C: Mhm. So if we could maybe zoom in on that a little more. So what would you say is the biggest gap between then how headquarters, like you mentioned it, is designing scientific communications and what physicians actually need in practice? And if you would have an example or two, that would be a. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker A: So I think, for example, Global often focuses on comprehensive scientific completeness. Right. So we want to make sure that we are not deviating from evidence based. Right. So when we are developing any communication, while local physicians need something concise, something that is practical guidance that they can apply within their healthcare constraints that they have, the biggest gap is usually between what the data says and how this actually works for my patient tomorrow morning when I'm going to applying it for the treatment paradigm in my clinic, in my institution, in a place that I am working for patients. And I think one of the good example is that I was talking to a healthcare professional from India that they implemented a very large project in remote areas in India in treating hypertension. So their project cover millions of people in a remote areas in India, uh, by providing free antihypertensive medication, they try to control the hypertension, which is one of the main risk factors for cardiovascular disease. I was amazed by their approach and the project that they did and the impact that they had. I simply asked the question, you did that why you didn't distribute the anti lipid medication because they are also generic and cheap. And the symbol answer that was amazing for me was that because we cannot test ldl, uh, in a remote areas, the testing is not available. We simply didn't think about availability of diagnostics in a remote area. And we think that, you know, by just distributing cantilipid medication, we can control another risk factor for cardiovascular, which is, you know, diagnosis of that risk factor is a difficulty and a barrier in the remote areas In India that is a great example.

Speaker C: And we do a lot of audience diagnosis as we call it here, right. And trying to dive into these like very specific needs. And I think one of the things as humans that we have as a trade is this like level of assumption. It's kind of subconscious, right. We always assume that what is true for us is true for everyone else. And I think this is a good example of that. Right. Because we could test for that. We assume that is true everywhere else. And I think those are the most dangerous ones, right? The ones if you don't know, you will go and figure it out. But if you think you know but you have it wrong, that is the most dangerous part. Right. So how could people challenge themselves to uncover those things that they think they know but might not be true?

Speaker A: Definitely. That's the art of how you can do communication in a different part of the world, adapted to the local practice, right? So that's the art. And then maybe we can discuss about some of the practical way of doing that.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, it's of course that the global medical teams, right, that create the core communication approach. So uh, let's say they create an SCP and then they try to scale it of course, everywhere where possible, but it often falls short. I'm actually thinking kind of about the local role as well. Like how would you imagine this should actually work? So let's say we have the global organization, they create an SCP and create maybe foundational materials. What now? Like how is this supposed to work?

Speaker A: So I think number one is really to think about what's the patient journey look like at the local level. Right. So even within the same country, the patient journey could be different institution by institution, account by account, you know. So I remember when I visited Mexico one time, there was three different model of the patient care within the same city of uh, Mexico City, right. So there was a patient care that they go through private hospitals, patient care that they go through public hospitals, and a patient care that they go through government based hospitals, right. So the hospitals that are covered by the government, so totally different patient journey. So we need to understand that patient journey and know what's the reflection point in terms of education for patients. Second thing is that healthcare structure and access limitation, right? So that's very important. We need to understand healthcare infrastructure, but also access limitation. Even in Quebec today, in Canada, uh, one hospital might have access to cancer therapy differently from another hospital within the same city. Because the access between the hospital to the cancer therapy could be different depending on the funding of the hospital for the cancer therapy. You know, the sequencing could be different as well. We need to also understand what are, uh, the physician decision making realities are, right? So where physicians have a decision making power and where pharmacists in the hospital or in the region has a decision making responsibilities, Right. So understanding all of that will help us to develop much more impactful communication package for educating on a specific disease area or a specific treatment pathway or diagnosis. Right. So either of those. So in that regards, I think global can develop one big, uh, communication. But this should be modular in a way that the local countries or local affiliates can adapt it based on the need and insights that they can get from the local regional understanding of the patient pathways.

Speaker C: Mhm. Now that sounds as expected to me.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: But we're here and we're talking about this topic and we both know that this often doesn't really happen. So where is the breakdown so we

Speaker A: always talk about patient centric approach in many organizations, but in reality we don't put it in practice. We never ask ourselves the question, what I'm developing here, what's the impact on a patient? Can I really impact the patient life by providing this education? Do we get enough information from uh, patient based information from regional perspective? Are we considering all these cultural and behavioral relational interactions with this disease when we are developing such a material? So we don't do enough? Right. So because we are always short in time, we try to develop something fast. We want to provide it as soon as the evidence is out, provide it to the physicians. And we believe that would help physician increase their education and then adapt it themselves based on their reality. But physician on the ground, they don't have time to adapt it, right? So they really want something concise to be handed to them and then they take it and they try to apply it for their patient the next day. Right? I think so. The reality is that we need to really pause and then think about uh, continuous local insights, get input into what we are developing globally. And uh, we don't do that very often.

Speaker C: I think the biggest challenges are with like lower or middle income countries. I worked for an affiliate for small affiliate in the Netherlands of a medical company. And what I do lively remember is because I was actually heading the marketing function there and Global would give us things but we had very little resources, both like in terms of people and budgets to truly adapt things. So if Global would get it wrong for us at least right where it didn't really work for that small organization, then we often had a problem. And this was not a low or middle income country, this was quite different. So what do you think about that? Do you think the local organizations, I'm sure they know what is needed, but do they have the means and the ability to actually properly adapt all these materials?

Speaker A: So maybe before I start giving an example of what we do in industry, maybe I give you an example of uh, when I was working with Doctors Without Borders, they send us to very remote areas to provide care for patients. So in one of our missions they send us to provide care for a uh, nomadic population in Ethiopia. And then before they send us there with all of our medications, with all of our diagnostic tools or anything, they send an anthropologist to go there and uh, spend good three months with the chief of the tribes, with the head of the tribes, and then um, all the local communities and talk to also some of those traditional healthcare providers that exist in the tribe to understand the culture, to Understand what behaviors people use to go and seek treatment. Right. So only after that anthropologist report came back, then they send us as a medical doctors studied in the western medicine to go there with the western medicines to try to manage the diseases that they are dealing with in that nomadic population. So one of the good examples was that we wanted to provide treatment for tuberculosis. But tuberculosis needs the people staying in one place for six months. But for nomadic population that doesn't make sense because they live by following the cactus, everything nomadic. So we develop a protocol for tuberculosis treatment that can allow them to get treatment for a month, then they go to their life with the medication in their hand to go for three months and then come back after three months and then incentivize the patients to come back and show that, uh, their results become negative and then they give them the further treatment in their hand. Right. So if we didn't do that, and that protocol is then adopted by the WHO in the future. Right. So you see, how valuable was that anthropology report helped us to even develop a new protocol for, for the treatment of tuberculosis that get adopted by in the future. Right. So that's a very good example of if you spend your time from headquarter perspective, provide support and help to the local communities to understand the culture and behaviors of the treatment, then you can provide much more impactful patient services. Right, so that's one good example outside pharma industry. Right, but we did the same inside pharma industry as well. When we wanted to bring oncology, um, treatment for Africa, we sit down with the hospitals that are providing that treatment to the patients and we talk to them about how they manage the side effects, how, uh, they follow the guidelines, what are the criteria. That is a barrier for them to have continuous treatment for patients like this. They don't get resistance to the treatment. You know, so the first line treatment and after, only after we understand all of those, then we develop the educational materials that could be available for them online. Then they can follow through and have questions send out to us or to physicians in US or elsewhere to provide ongoing support for those physicians on the ground.

Speaker C: Yeah, I really love your example. And of course you have been on the front lines with Doctors Without Borders, which makes it like of course a hands on experience for you to see what kind of impact this has. So that's a beautiful example. And I'm assuming that the anthropologist was commissioned by Doctors Without Borders, right?

Speaker A: Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean everything is volunteered, right? So Doctors Without Borders, everybody love to work for them. So you just Put out a request and say, we are looking for anthropologists. And the person just showed up. They enjoyed the work that they are doing. Right?

Speaker C: So well, it's beautiful those organizations exist. But I think, like, the more we talk about this topic, the more I'm thinking about these spectrum of complexity.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Funnily enough, I'm not sure if you already heard it, but I think it's like two episodes before today, I spoke with one of my colleagues about what we call audience diagnosis, which has everything to do with a very simple concept, and that is know your audience before you communicate to them or before you start creating your communication materials. Right. That's the simplicity behind it. But clearly this is not easy. And the two of us are now talking about these very important but also extreme cases, right. With a nomadic group on the other side of the world. But actually, from my perspective, even when we talk about academic oncologists and community oncologists, we are not even there, right. Where we can really, really tailor our materials and our messages so well to them. And my favorite statistic that I always mention in these situations is the McKinsey report, right. Where 82% of physicians say that they don't feel content is relevant to them. So this is really a topic close to my heart. And I also believe, Babak, that. And that's why I'm so grateful for this episode with you as well. I believe that sometimes looking at extremes can really, like, point out solutions and approaches that can help us tackling this. So thanks for the example. So what can we do about it? Right. So if we look at the practical world, so we have some global medical affairs team or global medical communications team, let's assume they're based in the US or in Canada, and they go about their new communication strategy, what can they do to help understanding their audience better and how can they leverage the local organizations or support the local organizations better?

Speaker A: So I love that you provide an example of the community oncologist, for example. Right. And, uh, one thing that came to my mind was like a, uh, community oncologist in Vietnam is a very different need than a community oncologists in Japan. They are both in Asia, but very different need of education and very different need of the patient pathways in their institution and clinics. Right? So I think first of all is that the willingness of the organization, you need to raise the willingness of the organization to develop a modular approach, to be able, capable of having a modular approach to any communication and education that you want to do. Because if that capability doesn't exist then whatever insights you get, you won't be able to provide the solution. So that's the first step is really to work on a global headquarter mindset and making sure that that modular capability start existing and today's board with the AI integration, that capability is very easy to build as long as you guys are adapting that capability within your organization and move the mindset towards that capability. Right. So that's number one. I think number two is you need to enable your local and regional affiliates to provide continuous insight. Right. Insight is not only from physicians but also from patients. I think we are missing a lot on the patient. You know, we do advisory board for physicians but we very rarely we do advisory board at the patient level which is the pure medical communication teaming work. So one time we did it in China and it was numerously helpful for us to even develop the clinical studies adapted to the Chinese patient population. Right. So we start developing these patient advisory boards across China, but also we bring it to Japan, we bring it to Latin America to get patient input into even disease awareness education that we want to do and then test run them with them continuously. Whatever we are developing, that's the second piece. So not only get HCP advice and insight continuously, but also get the patient advice and input on your materials that you are developing and that's critical and that's the capability that again global can enable local to work on it and then help them provide the guiding principle and help them how they can provide those succinct insights and feedback to the organization globally. And the third piece is really about how we can measure the impact. Right. So you implement this, at least make sure that you measure that it was really impactful. You see the impact on a patient level, you don't get the results like what you say from McKenzie that 82% of the content is not useful for me. Right. So measure that impact, make sure that it was useful for them. Do pre and post tests. Right. So after the education, simple pre and post and then make sure you get it back and then you course correct on the go.

Speaker C: Absolutely. I like that. Especially the patient perspective.

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Speaker C: Now, I think generally the commitment to build a deeper understanding before you even start creating any materials. Right. And if I would think about an analogy quickly, I would think about building a house. Right. When we build a house, everyone knows that if you build a poor foundation, the house will not last very long and you're basically wasting your money. Right. Because your foundation is going to crumble and then the rest of the house which is resting on that foundation is going to crumble too, and your investment will be gone. Um, I think with a lot of other things in life, including medical communications, we kind of underestimate that. And we're often not willing to actually build that foundation because the foundation is actually what we're talking about today. Right. The foundation of strong communications is understanding your audience. But the thing is, it takes time, it takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot of budget. Right. The things you just said that people should be doing or that companies should be doing are amazing. But they take time, effort and budget without seemingly a lot of result. Right. Just like within foundation, it's often kind of hidden under the ground. You don't even see it yet. It's expensive, it takes a lot of time. And that's what I'm thinking when you give these examples is like, I absolutely agree. I'm just wondering if the industry is ready, if they are ready to make the mental decision of we're going to be okay with not immediately creating content. We actually really deeply want to understand this first. And I think that's the beauty of the story about Doctors Without Borders.

Speaker A: Yeah. And again, on the industry side, if any industry doesn't go this path, their future in terms of communication will be struggling for sure. And they know that now. That's the reason that they are trying to bring AI uh, models to make sure that they can help them to modulate some of those adaptability much more faster than before. Before we didn't have those opportunities, but now we have those opportunities. We can modulate our, uh, scientific communication packages. When we deliver them, we can track them down, you know, which one has been used, which one has not been used, and then bring back those information in the timely manner and then adapt it. Right. So that's a possibility now. And everybody are thinking about it. Right. So I think the willingness is there. It just requires a little bit of shifting a mindset of people, uh, within the organization.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's shifting the mindset and I also think from what I'm hearing, I'm uh, wondering if you agree with me. I think the collaboration between global and local is so important here. Right. And I'll give you a real life example from my perspective. So like I said, I worked for this small Dutch affiliate of the medical company I worked for and then I actually joined European headquarters in Switzerland. And I remember I needed to create this like 90 day plan of what I was planning to do. And one of the things that I said I would want to do is to go to many of the different European countries and take kind of inventory of their needs and listen to where they were struggling. Because I thought in my mind like, well, logically if I know where they're struggling, then we can help them better and it's going to be good for the organization. Well, guess what my boss said. My boss said, no, that's a crazy idea. Right? We're not going to do that. They just need to execute whatever we give them. We are setting the strategy. So we're just going to tell them

Speaker A: how to do it.

Speaker C: And this is uh, maybe perhaps an extreme example. It's also kind of in a past lifetime, 20 years ago. But, but um, then at the same time I still hear about companies where there's kind of a breakdown between local and global, where it isn't always clear to global that if you ask the question what do you need? It doesn't necessarily mean you need to do exactly that. It's just like collecting the information and try to take it into account where you can. What has your experience been with that?

Speaker A: First of all, we call it global with local. Now that is not global too local. So it's a big difference between these two wording. Right? So you have to develop everything with local team and uh, not to local team. Right. Let's not forget global still remain and I'm going to emphasize on this, we will remain as a strategic development of the content and then idea and objectives. Right? So we will develop the strategy because to be honest, evidence won't change across the globe. Right? So if the blood pressure monitoring is necessary and that uh, blood pressure levels are the same across the globe, right. So you need to test for blood pressure and you need to reach that objective so that communication is there. So that's what I call it scientific narrative. The scientific narrative should be clear right from the beginning, from below perspective, but it should be very simple. Right? So scientific narrative is talking about what's the disease state. Definition is, uh, then what's the treatment and diagnosis paradigm looks like for that disease. And then the most important piece that is most of the time is missing is the so what? Right? So what this means for their countries, for the local. And that's the piece that you always need to get the input from the local markets. Right? So you can always develop the disease definition from global perspective. You say, this is our scientific narrative, this is our strategy about this. You can always say this is our treatment results, this is what diagnosis need to happen. But when you get to the so what, then that's the place that you need to get an input from the local market and make sure that you include that so what into your scientific diet. So what is inclusive, um, of access, is inclusive of the patient journey, is inclusive of the barriers for a physician decision making. All of that is within that Soviet. I think we should spend a lot of time in that area of so what with the local countries, local affiliates to make sure that we develop it really robust. And then we modulate our, uh, communication package based on that so what? Right. So modulate and then make sure that we make it available for them and they can use it depending on the scenario. Because as I said, you know, even within Mexico, the three hospitals have three different patient journeys. We can either let the Mexican team decide how to modulate the education based on those hospitals, or we provide them a very robust, flexible enough communication package that they can use with the different need that they have at the local level. Right. So both phases is available depending on the capabilities of the local affiliate versus the global team to support or enable them.

Speaker C: Yeah, I really like that. And I like that you use the term modulating. It's funny because as I already said, like, I come from a, uh, commercial background, right. I was mainly working in marketing in the industry and modulating in marketing has been there forever. But then when I joined more the medical affairs side of things, that is very new. Right. And we tend to communicate a little more in this one size fits all approach. But especially now with AI modulating messages is so much more easy than it has ever been. So I like that, you know, you provide a foundational version that is easy to adapt for different localities. And I think that's definitely a great approach. Now, in what you were saying, you were mainly talking about the science of treatment, right? But now how could we also better connect the physician education with the lived reality of patients and not just the science of treatment?

Speaker A: I think it's really about what's the patient journey look like at the level that they're living that disease day in, day out, I think number one is really focusing on a patient. Second thing that I think commercial team do it really well. Better than even medical is really take care of also caregivers. They focus not only on a patient, but also on the caregivers because they are part of the patient journey and uh, a treatment pathway. They live the life with the patient as well. And then it's important that we consider that. One example that always remains with me was that we designed clinical studies and then we try to run it in different part of the world. And then out of the sudden we realized that we cannot recruit enough patients in our clinical study. And it was for Ms. Patient population. And then when we went in and we did some deep analyzes, we realized that we are asking the patient to come one day before receive the treatment to do the test, then they have to go back. And then when the results is out, then we know what type of dose we need to use for a patient, they come back and then we give them for a second day. So who should drive the patient? It was the caregiver. So that means that this caregiver should get two days off just to manage this. So can we do something that instead of two days off, they just do one day off. Right. So to come to do the test and then get the results and then receive the treatment and go back home. Right. So we never consider uh, caregivers as a part of the patient uni. And then in our educational material we also need to take care of what the caregivers needs are. Right. So that's what commercial team normally they do it really best because they always focus on totality of the patient and totality of the physicians versus we all. We have a tendency to focus on a science only. Right. So we have to broaden our perspective and look at totality of the patient and totality of the caregivers as well to make sure that we can provide a very disciplined special education and SCP education. Mhm.

Speaker C: You have worked on the commercial side too, right?

Speaker A: Yes, I worked uh, for a good three, four years on commercial. There's a lot of learning.

Speaker C: Yeah, I can imagine. What else did you learn on the commercial side that you think medical affairs can benefit from?

Speaker A: I mentioned it already about the so what was one of the biggest learning that I had because they always focus on the so what? At the end of the tunnel they want to make sure that what is impacting the patient. And SCPs are like taking into account in anything that they want to do. But the second thing was like really disciplined in their messaging and communication. They are very disciplined, they are very good in simplifying very complex story and making sure that you can deliver it within like a one minute or two minutes. Right. And as soon as I come back to medical, I try to see if I can do that. Especially with the new generation of physicians, the span of attention is like a TikTok and Instagram approach. Right. So you can no longer go there and provide like a 10 minutes video education, less than a minute, two minutes. How you can concisely not losing the whole evidence, not losing the important evidence information that you want to provide, but at the same time simplify it to deliver it really rapidly and discipline. Right. So that was the biggest learning that I had and I tried to use it quite a lot in the communication packages that we are developed.

Speaker C: No, thanks for sharing that. You're speaking my language here.

Speaker A: Bye bye.

Speaker C: Yes, I like it and I think it comes from a really good place. But in science we learn to always communicate everything. But the mind of our audience is not anymore trained to absorb everything. So most HCPs, they drink from the fire hose, as they like to say it, and they lack the time to really absorb everything. So instead we need to figure out what is it that they need to know, like almost on an individual level and get to that. And it's funny that you were talking about TikTok, because one of the things I'm currently working on is something related to a concept called the clip economy. I'm not sure if you heard about this, but basically the clip economy means that like the TikTok and YouTube shorts and all those like short 10 to 15, 22nd kind of clips, they have taken over most of the world already. If you look at other industries, right. Not in medical communications yet, but I believe that's where it's going. And the average attention span of people has dropped from 50 to about 8 seconds over the last few decades. So it's really important we consider not just what we want to say and how we want to say it, but actually more importantly how does the audience need it to be served in order to absorb it. Right. And I really like how you were explaining that and uh, the takeaway from commercial.

Speaker A: Yeah. The good news is that most of the societies like you look at ACC or AHA or even ESC and some other other organizations that we are working, they are already into that paradigm shift. Right. So they already either doing that especially for residents, especially for younger generation physicians, that they are coming for rising stars they start developing educational materials in a modular manner. I think I was at the, uh, ACC this year and one of the guideline writers of ACC actually developed like a wrap, wrapping the whole guideline in a one minute video or something. It was amazing, actually. It went viral so fast. And she basically summarizes the whole guideline, changes what was before and after in a kind of a rap sign. Right. So it was really good. So they are going in that direction. So that's a good news, I would say.

Speaker C: Yeah, I love it. I love it. This is great. The way I, uh, often think about it is that what we do in our personal lives, we're also going to do in our professional lives. Right. Even when you're a doctor, like you're a doctor, right? Like if you're in the evening, decide to go on Instagram and look at I don't know how many 10 second videos, then your brain is going to automatically assume that same thing for work. But currently there's a huge disparity between how people have been learning to communicate more recently relatively, and how we still work in medical communications. We're kind of light years behind and I think there's a huge opportunity for us to bring this to the modern world.

Speaker A: Definitely.

Speaker C: I have a question for you, Babak. You've been talking about the so what for a few times. It's my favorite way of thinking too. But if you would need to give a recommendation on how can you make sure that the so what is clear? How can you practically go about that?

Speaker A: Yeah, So I think there is three components, right. So and I think I mentioned it already, but I'm going to emphasize number one, patient journey, Number two, access to medicine. Right. And number three, is that how patient get follow up? Right. So the follow up and the monitoring and then what happens to the patient after the intervention? Right. So I think you need to consider these three for every element that you are developing. Right. So your so what need to address all three. We cannot, uh, skip any of them. Right. So if you skip any of them, then it means that there is a gap in your communication. So like the physician will face the problem. So remember in the beginning I say that what I should do next day in the morning for my patient. Right. So these three components for patient is, should be considered in your education. Right. So access, patient journey, how does it look like? And then the third piece is really how can I monitor and follow up the patient? That should be part of every communication that we do. So it's taken into account all the holistic patient need.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And as a follow up, Right. We have also been talking a lot around borders here and making sure that these strategies work across borders too. So let's say you are part of a global medical communications team, you're based in the us you need to work on a communication strategy that will work in the US and it will work in Japan, but it will also work in, let's say a low income country in Africa. How can you stress test this? So let's say you come up with some of these materials. How can you make sure that actually works?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I think before I develop the materials, as I said, as a global communication lead, I will develop the scientific narrative first. Right. So let's say, what's that one slight summary of what we want to elaborate about this disease, about this treatment and so what elements to be considered. Right. So if you have these three components and then establish that three components before even developing anything else, you need to test run the Soviet with the different regions that you have. And that's not a very difficult task to do. As long as the guiding principle is clear on the Soviet, you can send it over, it can be captured all the information asynchronously. Right. So through the different region of the world. And you can also have the sequence of the education that you want to provide. Because sometimes you know, you provide education for example to European market and some other markets like Middle Eastern, they're going to look into what European market patient practices are, uh, look like. So then you can use that European market education and then laid over for example Middle East. Right. So if you want to do it that way, you need to get the information from the Middle east region as well. But at the same time when you develop the materials, you can develop it in a sequence that you know how the communication flow looks like across the globe. Right. So for example, when you want to do it for Latin America, you know, you want to for example translated in Spanish, some of the Spanish educational from uh, Spain can be useful as well. Right. So you don't need to do the second translation or anything related to the language there. Right. So get that. So what from the regional countries much more in advance. That's from local affiliate. If you are not satisfied with what you are getting from your local team, then it's time to organize those local advisory board or patient advisory board. And I think you really need to add that to your mix before you go to mass production. Right. So before you go to mass production you really need to do that even for your Publication today we are using a, uh, patient simple language as well. Uh, for our general publication on manuscript, we are using a simple. So for that you need to get the patient advice on your simple patient language publication aspect. So get those information even before you go to the mass production and then don't forget as soon as you develop them. Um, now it's time to make sure that you measure the impact, right? So that's the step that we always forgot, you know, so we just developed it, the circuit, we did our due diligence, we know what they need, let's implement and then we forgot. But the most important is that let's follow up and see does this one had an impact, is it really worked well? Did physician understand the content, did they like it? And then what was the patient impact? Right, so let's measure the patient impact as well.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think this is a very powerful reminder that great medical communications is not just about delivering science. Right. It's really about understanding the people, the systems, the patient realities that are true on the other side of that communication. So, Babak, thank you so much for being here today. I think you made it very clear, right, that if Medical affairs really, truly wants to support physicians all around the world, we need to move beyond this like one size fits all messaging and start designing communications that reflect the local realities, patient needs and practical relevance way more.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate and I love the conversation and hopefully can impact like shifting some mindsets within the organizations to think about low to medium income countries also everywhere in the world. Because there's global patients, right? Uh, in need, not just patients in need in US or anywhere else, but there are global patient needs as well.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Thank you, Babag.

Speaker A: Thank you very much.

Speaker B: Transforming Medical Communications is brought to you by Kinetics Health Group. To find out more about Kinetics Health Group and how, how we create some of the most cutting edge medical communications programs anywhere in the world. Visit www.kinetics-health.com and then make sure to search for Transforming Medical Communications in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are found. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at Kinetics Health Group, thanks for listening.