Kay Square Scientific is a medical communications company (medcom). But what does that mean? What does a medcom actually do?

Medcoms manage, develop, and implement the publication and communication of clinical data.

What is Clinical Data?

When a pharmaceutical, biotech, gene therapy, or device company (generically known as “pharma”) is developing a new product for the healthcare marketplace, they are required to test the product rigorously to ensure its safety and efficacy; before bringing it to the open market. This testing takes several years and requires multiple complex clinical trials. These trials are categorized as Phase 1, 2, 3, and 4, and determine a product’s clinical use, such as indication, dosage, side effects, safety, and effectiveness, as well as the impact on patients’ quality of life, productivity, and health care utilization.

By conducting these trials, pharma companies amass large amounts of clinical data, information about the product gathered through the clinical trial process or during ongoing patient care. These collected clinical data tell a factual, evidence-based story, a story that companies are ethically required to publish and communicate to healthcare professionals (HCPs) who need to make informed decisions in the care of their patients.

How is Clinical Data Communicated?

Disseminating clinical data is where medcoms like KSS provide an invaluable service. We work with Thought Leaders, highly respected medical experts in their field, who influence their HCP peers about new ideas, practices, methods, and products based on their level of experience and skill. Thought Leaders are often referred to as Therapeutic Area Experts (TAEs) or Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). We support our pharma clients in working with TAEs to create a solid communication strategy based on science, which we then use to develop and deliver clients’ technical and clinical data in an effective way. We build quality customized content and events that help tell the factual story of a product, presenting a body of evidence about the product’s efficacy, with the end goal of helping patients. That factual story can be conveyed in a multitude of learning formats, such as medical and commercial content; expert engagement, and live events. A paritial list of learning formats, and therefore some of the projects we work on, include:

• Manuscripts—a written document presenting the complex scientific data from a clinical trial clearly and precisely in a story-like format
• Abstracts—a short written document that summarizes the key points of a manuscript, so HCPs can gain an accurate general understanding of the longer document
• Posters—a physical or electronic poster summarizing data from a clinical trial, using visual graphics such as charts, tables, and figures to convey information
• Live & virtual meetings of all kinds—webcasts, podcasts, live meetings with TAEs and HCPs in multiple formats and configurations

The examples above are generalized for simplicity; there are sub-categories within each type of project. Also, these are just a few examples of medcoms’ work.  

Kay Square Scientific helps to disseminate this important data in an accurate, accessible, and ethical way.