There are lots and lots of stories appearing on Twitter and LinkedIn this year about how people started in #MedComms. Here are some from Makara Health in the UK.
Sharing our stories on MedComms Day
Category: Services to MedComms
Celebrating partnerships
Angela Labrozzi, Channel Partner Director at Within3, has sent this simple message to the MedComms agency community from Princeton, New Jersey in the United States…
It’s goodbye from our Sponsors
A big thanks go to Concise who have supported today’s #MedComms Day celebrations. Thanks, guys. Here’s the office view in California just now… (great cake by the way!)
Delivering news for publication professionals
Hannah Mace, Scientific Director at Aspire Scientific helps run The Publication Plan, a free news service for publication professionals.
#MedComms Day at The Publication Plan is as busy and varied as usual! We began the day by catching up on the latest goings on at #PubPlan and #medcomms on Twitter; always a great way to find out what’s on the minds of our colleagues and peers across medical publishing. Later in the morning, we checked in with our Facebook followers to update them on the day’s activities. Next up was a post on our LinkedIn group to find out what our members will be doing to mark the day, as well as an article on our website to remind everyone how they can get involved.
After lunch we’ll turn to our ‘usual’ content moderation — reviewing and editing the articles on medical publications news that have been submitted by our talented bunch of writers. From preprints to predatory publishing, and patient centricity to open access, our team covers the length of breadth of medical publishing news, which makes for an interesting afternoon’s reading! Later on we’ll take a comprehensive look across the web and bring together the latest hot topics, debates, guideline updates and upcoming events. With such a range of discussions and activities going on in medical publishing we aim to bring everything together for our readers. Then we’ll round off the day with a final look at the musings of our medical publishing community on Twitter!
Follow The Publication Plan at: http://thepublicationplan.com; via Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1886265; Twitter: https://twitter.com/publicationplan; and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thepublicationplan/
Greetings from Concise Asia
A postcard has arrived from the Singapore office of our Sponsors of #MedComms Day 2018. A huge thanks for your support, guys. The global team from Concise are sharing a host of #EventTips throughout the day on Twitter if you follow #MedComms.
A final message, from our Sponsors
We’re grateful to Concise for supporting our initiative this year. So, as it appears that #MedComms Day 2017 is drawing to a close now, we’ll leave Stan Park, Client Services Director at Concise and based in San Francisco, to have the final word…
The sun is setting on the Pacific Ocean and our team in San Francisco has been following all the #MedComms Day 2017 updates online. It’s a great feeling to be part of a global community! I’ve included a picture of our office — I managed to get a picture with a sliver of sunshine today, which was no small feat.
Today Concise is Sponsoring – A Day in the Life of MedComms
Many thanks to our Sponsors, Concise. Have you joined in with their online quiz yet? It’s running throughout #MedComms Day 2017. Caroline Buttery, Head of Business Development at Concise has sent in this message from their Hong Kong office.
The 6th annual MedComms Day launched last night, open to anyone and everyone involved in and around MedComms, it aims to capture a representative snapshot of working life in this specialist business. Our team in Hong Kong got us started earlier on today.
The Concise MedComms quiz is live – take a look and see how you get on at Medcommsquiz.chime.live
Technology rocks!
Annabel Lloyd, Senior Account Manager from Virgo Health has been spending the afternoon checking out the latest technology at a digital congress. They’re looking forward to hearing about it when she gets back to the office.
Over at the support desk, help is on hand
Camila Ocampo, Global Customer Support Manager at Zinc Ahead reports a successful afternoon’s work supporting MedComms agencies here in the UK
Linh Nguyen, one of our customer support administrators based in the UK, received a phone call from a Medcomms Agency. The user had been assigned to upload new material for a new review cycle and she felt unsecure about how to proceed. Linh walked her through the process of uploading material and sent it out for review by either click on the ‘Go’ or ‘Open Access’ button. The agency employee was advised that by clicking on ‘Go’ she would send the job bag out in sequential review, which means that the material would be reviewed by a pre-set order of reviewers. With the ‘Open Access’ approach she would make the job bag available to all reviewers, who would review the job on a first-come-first-serve basis.
‘Arty’ or what?
SEC have written in to say…
We believe in working hard and also having fun at the same time. We aren’t called a refreshingly different type of recruitment company for no reason – take a look at that artistic wall behind Rosie Bougoffa and Joseph Mullaney, who are part of SEC Pharma’s Medical Communications team.
The Tools of the (recruitment) Trade
Here’s Matthew McGinley of NonStop catching up with work after his holiday (spot the ‘Manic #MedComms”) message…
Here are the tools we use to get in touch with all of our MedComms candidates. People often have mixed viewpoints on what recruiters actually do, but all it comes down to is phoning people up and talking to them.
So here you’ll see my trusty telephone, the pen holder my dad gave me when I first started work and my PC. (As well as my ruler, demonstrating that recruiters can be straight with people!)
I didn’t include a picture of myself – our marketing guru, James Spencer, has been busy photoshopping me in various ways to celebrate MedComms Day so check our Twitter feed to see what he has managed to put together.
As I’ve just got back from some annual leave, today has been spent catching up with various people (mostly freelancers), putting out the occasional fire and trying to get back to the many advert responses that have come in. The word ‘manic’ is a very accurate description of my day thus far! It seems to me that one thing that recruitment has in common with MedComms is that most working days are somewhat manic…
A day in the life of a Recruiter
Samantha Humphreys-Davies from Media Contacts describes her day so far
My day started earlier than expected – 6am to be exact – with the cat announcing she was hungry by attempting to chew through the bedroom door. Feed her, scan my emails for any candidates or clients having crises and it’s into the car for the 45 minute drive to the office in leafy Islington that takes me past the London 2012 Olympic site. But it’s once I’m at work that the true fun begins… With over 170 open jobs at the moment for everything from medical writing to account handling to business development to director roles there’s never a dull moment.
As soon as I pull into the car park my mobile starts buzzing – it’s a candidate who has an interview and she can’t remember who she’s meeting in the afternoon. No problem; I know my clients personally so names are rarely an issue to remember. Whilst on the phone, we run over some interview preparation and I give her a quick pep talk about her writing test that she’s worried about.
Once I’m at my desk it’s time to properly go through my emails. There’s lots of news bulletins to read, some people who have replied to job adverts that I need to call or politely reject and a senior level person who was given my name by a mutual acquaintance and is looking for a job. Whilst I’m on the phone to her a client emails in saying they need a senior person and bingo – we send her CV over and she’s interviewing later this week. Sometimes things just fall into place for everyone.
Quick break for a sandwich and it’s back to the job. It’s time to get in contact with some people about a really exciting senior medical writer job that I’ve got and to get in touch with some clients about interview feedback for candidates (and hopefully some job offers!). If a client asks for a freelancer (who they usually want to start the next day) it’s a case of drop everything and call the names in my little black book to see who’s around.
The day usually ends with catching up on the admin (job adverts, database maintenance, emails and writing reports from client visits) and preparing a list of who I need to speak to in the evening. Then, it’s back home to the eternally famished cat (I really don’t starve her!) and the bedroom door that now requires repairs.
Here to help…
Here’s a team of MedComms Recruitment specialists, sent in by Matthew McGinley of NonStop
Here is NonStop’s London team on this sunny Wednesday. We’ll have more updates later in the day, showing just how manic recruiting in MedComms can be!
Picture perfect
Fenella Vieceli works at Phototake, one of many companies that provides services to the MedComms industry, and she has sent the following message while waiting for her morning coffee.
It’s just gone 11am here at the Phototake UK hub. Whilst my coffee percolates, I percolate some fresh ideas for new and interesting images to showcase to our medical communication clients. Then I check out our latest health topic sent out yesterday from our office in New York. Our New York ( Yoav, Rose, Fran, John & Ivan ) and Florida ( Will ) offices normally start around 2pm UK time followed by Carlton way out in Seattle on the West Coast. I normally pass the baton to my US colleagues around 5pm, or so, UK time. We’re all networked together for ( nearly ) around the clock coverage always hoping to fulfill any pressing medical or scientific image requests.
Finally the Recruiters show themselves!
We knew they were out there somewhere! Craig Brown from Real Pharma in New York sent the following message…
Real Pharma’s Medical Communications Day is just half-way through, and going strong!
As ever, we’re keeping busy (and just trying to be the best recruiters we can – haha).
Craig and Brian have already met with with a group of 3 clients in New York this morning, talking about how we can help them expand their US operations (Account and Client Service Directors) State-side.
Christian has been head-hunting hard for Promo Writers and Medical Directors in New Jersey all morning.
Dandan is driving around Boston meeting 4 medical / regulatory writing candidates in Boston today.
The rest of the guys are pounding the phones as per usual.
Here we are in our office, 23 floors up in Rockerfeller Center, rocking our head-sets, and looking smart.
Asking the questions that need to be asked
Michelle Kelly from EPG Health Media is working on a market research project of relevance to MedComms.
Today I’m working on a market research study that we are conducting in partnership with a medcomms company. The survey is intended to extract the perceptions and attitudes of healthcare professionals on the topic of openness and transparency of clinical trial reporting. How aware are physicians of the controversy surrounding pharma sponsorship and ghostwriters and to what extent do they actually care or perceive it as a problem?
We’ll be asking registered users of our professional portal (www.epgonline.org) to participate and will report the results in January. Whatever the results show, they should be very interesting, especially since no such studies currently exist (I believe). I’ll be sure to make the report freely available to the Medcomms Networking Community (if that’s ok with Peter), so watch this space!
Have a good medcomms day.
#MedComms Day 