In light of the continuing pandemic, our 2020 annual conference was held as a virtual event. To allow flexibility around work commitments, and to prevent webinar fatigue, the conference programme was staggered across four days from Monday 28th September – Thursday 1st October.
For our virtual conference we offered a range of topical, informative and interactive sessions.
The event was well attended with over 100 delegates, speakers and exhibitors across the four days.
Plenary sessions
| 10.00 – 10.45am | Exercise, Nutrition and Diet During the Covid Lockdown: How to Maintain Optimum Health – Dr James Brown, Director of Aston Research Centre for Healthy Ageing (ARCHA) Covid-19 and the associated lockdown has introduced challenges to physical and mental health, especially to older adults, that we have not seen in 100 years. This presentation will cover these challenges, and will probe simple steps that can be taken to mitigate them. |
| 11.00 – 11.45am | Initiatives to Improve Patient Safety: Guidance and Patient Information – Belen Granell Villen, ABPI In her presentation, Belen will start her discussion by talking about the ABPI principles for appropriate prescribing of medicines. In relation to this, she will also talk about the Code of Practice 2021 Consultation, as the new Code has a different look to the current 2019 version. There will also be a mention of the Brighton & Sussex medical school project, which includes pharmacovigilance for medical students to help them be better prescribers: the pilot is in the process of expanding. Belen will be presenting the ABPI PV Guidance Updates in light of digital technology advances. And then she will move on to discuss initiatives undertaken in 2020 to improve patient safety through collaborations such as multi-morbidities, the Cumberlege Report and risk-based approaches to Solicited Reports. |
| 12.00 – 12.30pm | PIPA AGM |
Workshop
| 2 – 4 pm | ABPI & PAGB Code & Compliance Workshop – Laura Kelly, PAGB; Charlotte Beadle, Compliance Angels Ltd
The aim of this interactive workshop is for attendees to leave with a greater understanding and appreciation of the ABPI & PAGB Codes of Practice and efficient copy approval processes. The workshop will:
The workshop will use a mixture of presentations and interactive scenarios. We welcome audience participation and will provide the opportunity for delegates to ask questions and to share best practices.
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| 10.00 – 11.00am | MI: Collaboration Across Departments – Charlotte Mason, Sanofi In her session, Charlotte will provide an insight into how MI teams work with key stakeholders in other departments such as drug safety, regulatory, marketing and market access. She will also explore the use of digital collaboration tools and discuss effective collaboration when working remotely. |
| 1.00 – 1.45pm | Web RADR Update – Phil Tregunno, MHRA The WEB-RADR 2 project, launched in September 2018, seeked to exploit the outputs of WEB-RADR 1. Over the project, the mobile app was enhanced and a Vigilance Hub was created to manage the back-end system. There is now the ability to embed WEB-RADR functionality into systems, applications and websites by use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Another key arm of WEB-RADR 2 is the bi-directional mapping of SNOMED CT and MedDRA terminologies. This work has been led by SNOMED International and MedDRA MSSO (ICH). Connectivity protocols with electronic healthcare record (EHR) databases have also been explored within United Kingdom and Danish settings, such that ADRs and regulatory information can be made available in the care record. |
| 2.00 – 4.00pm | WORKSHOP: MI in the Digital Era – Charlotte Mason, Sanofi; Daniel Gewecke Daugaard & Holti Kellezi, Dawn Health; Sai Priyanka Vungarala, Novo Nordisk; Shailini Blackwell & Richard Marcil, conversationHEALTH; Alicia Gionfriddo, IQVIA In this workshop, we have invited a panel of speakers to look at different aspects of digital medical information. To start the session, Charlotte Mason from Sanofi will discuss the unmet need for our HCPs and patients in terms of accessing information on-demand. She will discuss how this can be addressed whilst maintaining compliance with industry regulations.Novo Nordisk will present their automated Medical Information chatbot- NAOMI, and share their experience of implementing/launching the chatbot during a pandemic.Dawn Health will then present their take on the future of medical information, and demonstrate how the digital era will revolutionize the industry. This includes the use of infographics in standard responses to make them more visually impactful, compliant access to medical information for HCPs and patients, intelligent NLP chatbots, big data, live chat and next generation patient/HCP MI support programs.Following these first three presentations, there will then be the opportunity for a short debate on the Code implications of digital MI platforms/service.For the final part of the session, ConversationHEALTH & IQVIA will present on:
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| 10.00 – 10.45am | Remote PV & MI Auditing – Sanjay Motivaras, Audit PV With the current pandemic situation, remote audits are becoming more common in order to ensure that companies are still fulfilling their obligations to regulators. This session will go through the areas that companies should concentrate on to ensure that remote audits of their systems go smoothly. |
| 11.00 – 11.45am | Regulatory Intelligence – Nimisha Kotecha, IntuVigilance Ltd Regulatory intelligence collection is one of the pillars of good pharmacovigilance practice and yet possibly one of the most challenging activities in our industry. During this session, I will discuss some of those challenges and offer solutions that make this onerous task easier. |
| 1.00 – 3.00pm | WORKSHOP: Owning and Driving Your Development within Medical Information – Harpreet Sandhu, Grunenthal & Emily Pegg, Takeda Pharma Companies are developing data and scientific insights. But information channels are changing, and many companies have difficulties communicating science effectively with the growing array of stakeholders. Many companies are increasing focus on medical affairs to overcome that deficit. Equipped with deep product knowledge, disease understanding, regulatory and compliance expertise, Medical Information professionals can add value as a part of the medical affairs function and as an individual, you have the opportunities to develop yourself within the Medical Information department, or grow yourself into medical affairs roles.The aim of this session will be to discuss and provide tips and tools to help you to drive your own development.Harpreet will be joined by Dr Emily Pegg, Head of Medical & Scientific Affairs – Oncology, Takeda UK. This provides an exciting opportunity for attendees to hear from a Medical Affairs specialist who is passionate about development.The workshop will look at the following topics:
This will be an interactive workshop providing you with the opportunity to self-reflect and consider the tools you need to grow. |
| 3.30 – 5.30pm | MANAGERS’ WORKSHOP: Leading Change in Challenging Times: Learn from a Military Intelligence Operator & Change Specialist – Analah Fawcett, The Chaucer Group & Emma Dutton, Applied Influence Group In this workshop, Emma Dutton MBE – former officer, leading specialist intelligence operations to influence the Taliban – joins forces with digital transformation change specialist Analah Fawcett, to show you how to manage change in rapidly changing times; giving you the skills to influence your remote workforce and drive a desire for transformation. |
| 10.00 – 10.45am | MI: Product Launches, Discontinuations & Acquisitions – Jack Chivers, Alliance Pharma To provide optimal patient care healthcare professionals need to be empowered with access to the correct medicines at the correct time. This is achieved by pharmaceutical companies introducing new vital medicines while carefully curating their existing portfolio. Launching or acquiring a new product and reversely discontinuing or divesting a product can throw up a number of challenges for Medical Information departments. In this session at the 2020 PIPA conference we will explore these issues and how they can be managed. |
| 11.00 – 11.45am | Using Advanced Technologies to Augment PV Systems – Dr Dave Lewis, Novartis There are significant opportunities and challenges in deploying and adopting advanced IT systems within PV systems. This theme will be developed and discussed within his presentation. |
| 1.30 – 3.30pm | WORKSHOP: Pharmacovigilance Systems Master File Within and Outside the EU – Jana Hyancova, PrimeVigilance This workshop will cover:
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| 4.00 – 5.00pm | Medical Information for Patients – Seema Patel, PrimeVigilance With the vast array of information available to patients in this digital era, how can we help bridge gaps in understanding and improve patient literacy? This presentation will explore the role which Medical Information teams can play in empowering patients with the right information, using the right tools from a US and UK patient perspective. |
