And here come the Australians…

Amanda Mao, medical writer and translator, aka @AcuritMedComms and based in Mebourne, has just said hi on Twitter. We’ll shortly be meeting online for our 7th occasional Zoom meeting of New Zealand medical writers and guests at 11.00 New Zealand time (note the time zone!). This is an informal group that has been facilitated by Peter Llewellyn who is based in the UK. We welcome medical writers and indeed anyone working in or around MedComms, whether based in New Zealand or not. Regulars attend from Australia and Japan and elsewhere.

At this meeting, all being well, the intention is then to hand over to Amanda and also Daniel McGowan who have volunteered to lead these meetings in future. They are well placed to lead relevant discussions and to respond to the local regional interests.

 

E3Y4C1bWEAEV47G

Finishing the day on the west coast of the USA

This is probably wrapping up our #MedComms Day 2020 activity… Tim Collinson from Fishawack Health has sent in his news from the west coast of the USA.

Hi everyone, happy #MedComms day… or evening for most of you at this point. The day here in California is well underway, with the string of early morning calls being the norm; a new norm is that previously camera-shy physicians, clients and colleagues have pulled that blob of gum off the camera lens and are now practically filmstars completely at ease with kitchen/bedroom backdrops, pets, children…  I work remotely anyway, and the uptick in face-to-face contact is a welcome shift (for me at least – not necessarily those subjected to my 7am face and wild social-isolation-hairstyle).  For this year’s #MedCommsDay, Fishawack is celebrating ‘Distance is no object!’. Today also brings our regular West Coasters’ virtual coffee break – nothing virtual about the coffee or the break, just 15 mins’ chitchat about nothing in particular among the Fishawack Pack in San Diego, up to Redding CA and a few places in between.  It’s a habit we’ll keep post-pandemic.  I’m wondering how interactions during next week’s ISMPP virtual annual meeting will go – I always look forward to seeing people at the live meeting but virtual is the next best thing. Maybe see some of you ‘there’… Stay healthy!

CA greetings

MedComms Day hits Asia

Thanks to Huw Williams, Regional Scientific Director at MIMS, from Singapore who has gathered everyone together for a regional team huddle today, and a photo opportunity.

A busy day like any other at MIMS with team members all over Asia Pacific connecting via ZOOM to share best practices.

With teams in twelve countries, MIMS is the medical communications agency with the widest coverage across Asia Pacific, delivering scientific, innovative, and multichannel solutions that go beyond achieving our clients’ objectives to enable patients across the region to live ambitiously.

Big thanks to local team members from Singapore, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam for joining us on this special day!

mims_01V2mis_02mims_01

 

Online with the New Zealand Medical Writers (and guests)

It was great fun chatting today with participants from New Zealand, Australia and the UK. Lots of talk about working through lockdowns, changing working patterns and practices and the challenges that might be faced by event organisers in the future. It was useful to have a good mix of freelancers and agency staff.

Thanks to Sally Bathgate, Manuela Callari, Marie Cheeseman, Richard Claes, Heather Graz, Sheridan Henness, Blair Hesp, Steven Inglis, Harriet Lamb, Daniel McGowan, Lakshini Mendis, Michael Molloy-Bland, Nicola Ryan, Yasmene Shah, Lyndal Staples and Michele Wilson for joining in.

Screen Shot 2020-06-10 at 00.15.27

 

A welcome return to office life

Blair Hesp and his team at Kainic Medical Communications are back in the office after the end of lockdown in New Zealand.

It’s another busy start to the day at Kainic Medical Communications in New Zealand on another cold winter’s morning in the south of New Zealand. Most importantly, we’re also celebrating the move to COVID Alert Level 1, i.e. completely back to normal, but with border restrictions, after eliminating COVID-19 from New Zealand.

Following a quick run for coffee at our local café, taking advantage of the prepaid tab we set up to support them while they were closed for lockdown, we have sat down for our usual morning team meeting where everyone gets up to speed on incoming work from the Northern Hemisphere overnight. In addition to the usual posters, manuscripts, slides and other med comms work, the team are also hard at work with a number of internal initiatives.

We’ve just launched First in Human Communications, our specialist pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics/toxicology offering, and not only have writing work coming in for that already, but have plenty of work to cover off including managing international trademark applications today and follow-up materials to support the launch. We’re also working on putting a preprint up on MedRXiv as we await peer review comments to an internal research project analysing how open peer review affects both reviewer and author behaviour, which we hope to be getting comments back on soon.

We will of course also be joining the NZ medical writers group Zoom call later in an hour so, and now that we are back in the office, we hopefully won’t have kids and animals gatecrashing the call on our end anymore.

kainci_01

Celebrate MedComms Day 2020 with the New Zealand Medical Writers

Hosted by Peter Llewellyn of NetworkPharma Ltd and founder of the global MedComms Networking Community initiative, this will be an informal virtual meeting of the New Zealand Medical Writers. We’ll talk for an hour specifically about working life in New Zealand but anyone from the global MedComms commmunity elsewhere is welcome to join us as we celebrate a Day in the life of #MedComms. So, do please come and meet some New Zealanders!

[REGISTER HERE]

Slide2