With approximately 600 registrants, the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) annual meeting went live again this year from May 9th to 11th in Washington, D.C. While the cherry blossoms were no longer in bloom, there was still a lot of beauty to be seen, from the unique and novel poster designs to the pet photos on the meeting app and the emphasis on making data pleasing to look at and engaging.
Overall, the key themes that emerged from the ISMPP meeting this year were innovating presentations, communicating with patients, and using social media. Out was the traditional meeting presentation style relying on dense PowerPoint slides, and in was the TED Talk-style presentation. This was embodied throughout the program, from talks on creativity to those on reducing the carbon footprint of the pharmaceutical industry. While the meeting audience was not sure whether this TED Talk approach will be seen on the podium for reporting on phase 3 randomized controlled trials any time soon, the European Hematology Association provided a compelling case study for the use of this style of presentation to tell scientific stories with their spotlight talks.
Making Data More Engaging
Along the same lines as thinking about how to make data more engaging and easier to interact with, plain language summaries (PLS) were a highly discussed topic. Key innovations include that PLS can now be peer reviewed and indexed in PubMed. PLS can also provide opportunities to engage with patient authors. The overall message was that everyone likes PLS and nearly everyone wants to do them (at least sometimes), but not everyone has the time and the budget.
The use of social media is another way to make data engaging and easy to interact with and was highly favored among the attending journal editors. While many editors and attendees advocated for pushing further into social media and for engaging with digital opinion leaders as the new key opinion leaders, there were also warnings of potential pitfalls, including ensuring compliance with regulatory agency directives and privacy concerns.
Update on Publication Guidance
On the last day of the meeting, two key ISMPP initiatives were addressed: the upcoming Good Publication Practice (GPP4) guidance and the report from the Authorship Task Force. While GPP4 was just recently submitted to a journal and we will have to wait for specifics, these guidelines will address a wider range of publication types, publication enhancers, and interactions with patient authors. However, the guidance will not address social media other than to say that it isn’t in the purview of publication professionals. Although GPP4 has not been published yet, some in the audience were already making suggestions for GPP5, including providing more social media guidance and thinking about the role of artificial intelligence in publications.
Further discussion was also had around the Authorship Task Force and their recently published guidance addressing how to objectively and consistently interpret the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criterion 1 to ensure that authors have made substantial intellectual contributions. Publication professionals are looking forward to see how these guidelines are received and implemented.
Meanwhile, Nucleus Global presented a poster entitled “Future-forward approach to optimizing consumption of publication content.” We reported on the results from our follow-up survey to determine how healthcare professionals interact with publications throughout their omnichannel publication journey.
To learn more about optimizing consumption for your publications and available resources, please visit: https://www.nucleus-global-channel.com/ismpp2022.
Next up for ISMPP is its Fall Meeting in California on September 26-27.
