How Medical Affairs can follow up congress questions across channels without losing them

A major congress compresses a year of scientific exchange into three days. HCPs stop at the medical booth with a question about a trial subgroup, raise a point after a symposium, ask a medical science liaison about an interaction in a corridor, or send a request to medical information from the hotel. By the end of the week a Medical Affairs team holds several hundred questions, scientific material it will not collect again that year, in notebooks, booth tablets, email inboxes and the memory of the people who were there.

What happens to those questions in the following month decides whether the congress delivered scientific value or only presence. In most companies the questions asked directly at the booth are answered within the agreed time, and the rest are followed up by whoever received them, at the speed their diary allows. HCPs notice. A question that took a minute to ask and six weeks to answer, or that was answered twice by two different people, tells the HCP something about how the company treats scientific exchange. This article describes what a connected congress follow-up looks like, what must be true for it to work across medical science liaisons, medical information and digital channels, and how to recognize that it is failing. It draws on Medical Affairs engagements in US biopharma and global pharma, and on the Medical Affairs Professional Society's guidance on Omnichannel engagement.

Why do congress questions get lost?

Because each channel at a congress was planned separately. The booth team captures questions on a tablet connected to a medical information system. Liaisons record their conversations in a field platform. Symposium questions are collected by the agency that ran the session and arrive as a spreadsheet two weeks later. Requests sent to medical information by email enter a third queue. Each channel closes its own loop, and the HCP who used two of them appears in two places as two different people with two different questions.

The second reason is ownership. The congress has a project team, and the project team ends when the booth is dismantled. Follow-up belongs to the functions, and the functions return to their normal work. Questions that need a liaison discussion wait until the liaison's next planned visit. Questions that need a medical information letter are prioritized behind the daily inflow. Questions that need neither, and could be answered by sending an approved scientific summary through a digital channel, are often not answered at all, because no channel owner was assigned to them.

What must be true for a connected follow-up?

Four conditions, and all of them are organizational before they are technical.

• One record per question. Whichever channel a question arrives through, it is captured once, with the HCP, the question, the channel and the date, in a place every Medical touch point can see. Companies that connect their booth capture, liaison platform and medical information queue into one view find that the volume of distinct questions is lower than the sum of the channels suggested, because the same HCPs asked through several.
• One Medical owner per question. Every question has a named owner inside Medical within a day of being asked. For a question that needs scientific discussion the owner is a liaison. For a question that needs a referenced written answer the owner is medical information. For a question that an approved scientific resource already answers the owner is the digital channel team. The owner is accountable for closing the loop, including when the answer travels through another channel.
• One coherent answer per HCP. An HCP who asked the same question at the booth and of a liaison receives one answer, with the written material and the discussion referring to each other. This requires the liaison to see what medical information sent and medical information to see what the liaison discussed, which is a data access decision Medical, Legal and Compliance make together.
• Questions read as insight. After the congress, the questions are reviewed as a set. What HCPs asked, what they did not ask, which trial results raised doubts and which gaps in evidence they named are a clear view of clinical practice that Medical Affairs will not get elsewhere that year. The review belongs in the medical planning calendar, with a date.

Which channel should answer which question?

The question decides, with the HCP's stated preference second. A question about the clinical interpretation of data, about an off-label use raised by the HCP, or about a patient scenario needs a liaison or a medical information specialist, because the answer is scientific exchange rather than information delivery. The EFPIA Code, the IFPMA Code of Practice and, in the United States, the FDA's guidance on responding to unsolicited requests shape how such answers are given, by whom and with what record. A question that an approved scientific summary, a publication or a recorded symposium already answers can be closed through a digital channel the HCP has consented to, within days rather than weeks, with a route back to a liaison if the HCP wants to discuss it.

The error companies make is to route by channel of arrival. A question captured at the booth goes to medical information whatever it is, and a question asked of a liaison stays with the liaison whatever it is. Routing by the nature of the question is what makes the follow-up both faster and more compliant, because each question reaches the person or channel entitled to answer it.

How quickly should congress questions be closed?

Faster than most companies manage, and the gap is organizational. Medical information functions already work to agreed response times for the requests they receive directly. The same standard rarely applies to questions captured by the booth team or by liaisons, because those questions were never treated as medical information requests. When Medical Affairs sets one response standard for every congress question regardless of channel, and reviews it weekly for the month after the congress, the time to a complete answer falls sharply, and the questions that are still open after the first week stand out.

What does the HCP experience when this works?

An HCP who raised a question about a subgroup analysis at the booth receives, within the week, a referenced answer from medical information and a note that the liaison who covers their center can discuss it. When the liaison visits, they know the question, the answer and the HCP's reaction to it. If the HCP later attends a scientific webinar on the same study, the invitation referred to their question. Nothing in this sequence is promotional, every step is recorded, and the HCP experiences a Medical function that remembers what was asked. IQVIA's paper on Medical Affairs Omnichannel engagement describes this connected scientific experience as the goal, and the congress is where it is easiest to show.

What are the warning signs that follow-up is failing?

• Questions live in several systems. The booth capture, the liaison platform and the medical information queue each hold a share of the congress questions, and nobody has combined them.
• Follow-up ends with the project team. The congress team reports on booth traffic and symposium attendance in the first week, and follow-up has no owner in the second.
• The same HCP is answered twice. Medical information sends a letter and a liaison brings printed material on the same question, without either knowing about the other.
• Digital channels are not used for follow-up. Every question is treated as needing a person, the backlog grows, and questions an approved resource would have answered are left open.
• Nobody reviews the questions as a set. By the next planning cycle nobody can say which topics HCPs raised repeatedly, and the congress produced no insight.

Where should a Medical Affairs team begin?

With the next congress, and with one decision. Every question captured in any channel during that congress will be visible in one place within a day, will have a Medical owner, and will be reviewed as a set four weeks later. The platform work that follows from this decision is modest in most companies, because the systems exist and the gap is between them. The organizational work is larger, since it asks the booth team, the liaisons, medical information and the digital team to share what each has treated as its own. Teams that make this decision for one congress rarely return to the previous way of working, because the questions that used to disappear become material they rely on.