October 24, 2024 •Array Team
In his book, “Think Again,” organizational psychologist Adam Grant writes, “If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.” For life science stakeholders, understanding what meeting attendees don’t know provides the wisdom to strategically plan future engagements. Working with an audience engagement partner who can help you develop a strategy for identifying both the knowledge and knowledge gaps will provide insights not just into the meeting, but into what’s needed next.
Data collection is integral to life science meetings. By now, most technology providers have tools that make it easy to gather compliance-based information, as well as do polling, surveys and Q&A to also get attendees’ thoughts, knowledge and opinions. There is a lot of fact-gathering in this process, but often it is done without a strategy.
Gather the right data
One of the first steps Array takes in working with a life science partner is to sit in on one of their planning meetings. From this, we learn what the goals and objectives of the meeting are, how the organizer intends for it to flow, and what information needs to be in the final report. Our experts then help connect the dots between all these pieces to recommend a strategy for configuring engagement features to the most meaningful metrics. We call this engineering engagement. The goal is to ensure attendees enjoy the meeting experience our partner intended, sharing information without feeling overburdened by questions. Strategically designing the use of engagement features that collect data down to the individual level is the first step in helping our clients verify return on education, learn opinions and sentiment, and see those critical (and often unnoticed) knowledge gaps.
Attendees experience the meeting via managed iPads, or the Array online platform if virtual. They can follow slides, access additional information resources, take notes, ask questions, participate in polls and surveys, and more. While they are focused and energized by the engagement, each interaction collects metrics. For example, pre- and post-tests help assess knowledge gained or changes in behavior towards treatments, polls gauge attendees’ sentiment or test their understanding of concepts, and surveys identify their thoughts and opinions. After the meeting, it’s easy to identify if a large percentage of attendees learned or accepted the content and have a clear indication of exactly who still needs additional training or follow up, both important ROI metrics. For many meetings, this is the extent of knowledge gained.
Use actionable insights
Armed with the engineering engagement strategy we created together during planning however, our partners are just starting to dig into the real insights. They have demographic data that provides the context for deeper analysis into whether there are patterns or trends, such as particular segments of attendees who had a better or worse understanding of specific concepts. Maybe this is across education level, region, or years of experience.
If they deployed our confidence based polling, they can also compare the percent of correct answers versus average confidence in the answers. This also reveals knowledge gaps and a need to identify the potential source of misinformation to resolve the gaps where incorrect answers were given confidently.
All of these are actionable insights in that they clearly help inform stakeholders’ future engagement with healthcare professionals.
See value in the gaps
The next level of analysis is around the gaps—where knowledge becomes wisdom. Where did attendees respond in a way you didn’t expect? What do their engagement patterns tell you? If, for example, it was expected that everyone was going to be excited about the drug or treatment that is the focus of the meeting, yet our analysis shows people didn’t take notes, save slides, ask questions or seem to engage around its key points, that signals there is a barrier or challenge that needs to be understood. If a clinical trial’s enrollment parameters seemed easy to understand yet many attendees were confused during testing, what kind of notes did they take? Did most make notes on one of the slides relevant to the enrollment criteria? Is it possible this portion of the presentation was confusing? Where are the gaps between how the stakeholders expected the participants to think and act and how they ultimately received the content? Seeing these gaps and knowing what questions to ask around them brings critical thinking to the follow up strategy. It enables you to develop direct one-on-one outreach or subsequent meetings with the right information and resources at hand to achieve your educational or behavioral goals.
It's far too easy to deploy technology that checks the boxes on information gathering. In many cases, you will get what you need for compliance and to answer the key questions in the meeting’s objectives—and nothing more. By working with a technology partner who will help you create a strategy for seamlessly gathering metrics with a means to look not only at what was said, but at what wasn’t, you can turn a meeting into an opportunity and knowledge into wisdom with real impact.