New Hungary office: Honoring heritage while looking forward

Earlier this year, we celebrated the opening of our 15th office worldwide in Szeged, Hungary – a community with a long history of resilience and rebirth on the world stage. We wanted to share the journey to Szeged through the eyes of Zsófia Székács-Pecze, who led the site selection and renovation process on behalf of Envision Pharma Group.

Click the button below to read Zsófia's blog post!

Close

We are delighted that Envision Pharma Group employees have provided strategic account management advice that has helped shape a new medical communications career guide for the industry, ‘The business of medical communications: A guide to getting started in account management’, published on 22 January, 2018.

This first edition of the careers guide aims to provide information for people considering a move to medcomms relating to the industry, career path, and required skills and qualifications. The publication contains contributions from several specialists in the field, as they describe insights on their day-to-day work along with personal career journeys and highlights. Among the Envision team members who contributed to the development of the career guide was Account Executive Laura Gill (pictured), who provided an extensive personal profile on her background, experience and role in the account management team.

Laura notes in the guide, “In the past 6 months, I have already worked on a range of medical meetings and commercial projects including the launch of a new e-learning platform. My day-to-day tasks include financial management, tracking projects, liaising with internal teams and developing relationships with clients. At Envision Pharma Group, alongside our key roles and responsibilities, it is hugely important to maintain a strong work life culture that balances fun and hard work; this is as important as the actual work you deliver.”

The guide – which features quotes from Envision Client Solutions team members on why they enjoy working in medcomms – was authored by Lindsey Heer, a former Account Manager at Envision, and can be downloaded from FirstMedCommsJob.com’s website here.

Close

In early November, forty-five delegates from twenty-five pharmaceutical and healthcare companies gathered at the iconic Liberty Hotel in Boston for the inaugural iEnvision Summit. This meeting provided the opportunity for our partners to experience first-hand the latest iEnvision developments, with a view to planning for a transition to the new system from 2018 onwards.

Delegates enjoyed a varied agenda that kicked-off with a much-anticipated tour of the new iEnvision suite. Further highlights of the meeting included sessions on the future of Medical Affairs with a focus on efficiency, effectiveness, and medical plan alignment; opportunities to get hands-on with iEnvision; and information on the iEnvision transition process.

A series of workshops helped our clients begin to think about the strategy and planning for their individual transitions to iEnvision, thereby establishing effective communities to support industry standards, tactical usage, and the further evolution of the iEnvision business platform. The meeting also explained exactly how Envision is transforming not only our software but also our organization to meet the evolving, future needs of our clients.

We would like to thank all our delegates for their insights and suggestions and all contributions at the Summit. These will help inform both our strategic roadmap and the community activities moving forward.

Client feedback confirmed that the meeting was very well received and generated a lot of interest in iEnvision. Additional client summits will follow in 2018 in Europe, the USA, and Japan.

We look forward to welcoming our clients to future iEnvision summits and other iEnvision events.

Close

To underpin its commitment to clients to provide pioneering scientific multichannel medical communication solutions alongside its purpose built industry-leading software, Envision is delighted to announce the acquisition of Touch Creative Design Agency.

The Touch team brings a wealth of experience, creativity, and an impressive portfolio of innovative projects within the healthcare arena. Touch will collaborate with Envision to deliver significant creative and digital capabilities to extend Envision’s ever-expanding multichannel offering. Bringing the organisations together will also give the agency extended reach and investment to support new initiatives.

Envision’s Chief Strategy Officer, David Thompson, commented, “We are thrilled to welcome Touch to the Envision family. The addition of Touch to the group augments our existing capabilities and further cements our core principle of marrying scientific expertise and technology. Touch’s cutting-edge ideas, skills, and experience enhances our multichannel offering and ensures clients continue to receive best-in-class Medical Affairs solutions.”

Touch Managing Director, Vonig Watson, stated, “For 13 years Touch has established itself as a talented pharma/healthcare creative communications agency, with innovation, reliability, and creativity at its core. It is with great pleasure that Touch has now become part of Envision, enabling our combined multichannel communications expertise to be extended to a wider audience and, ultimately, to benefit more patients worldwide. Together we aim to raise the bar in delivering full-service pharma/healthcare multichannel communications for our clients.”

About Envision

Founded in 2001, Envision Pharma is an international, innovative global technology and scientific communication company serving pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies. Initially focusing on re-inventing the way biopharma companies managed their global data communications programs through the use of smart technology and best-in-class publication planning, Envision has evolved into a number of parallel business verticals, now offering a unique blend of Medical Affairs – focused, strategic multichannel data dissemination and consultancy services, enhanced with industry-leading, complementary technology solutions.

Envision now has 14 offices, five in the UK – Bishop's Stortford, Horsham, London (Hammersmith), Marlow, and Wilmslow; one in Serbia; six in the US – Philadelphia, PA; New York, NY; Southport, CT; Madison, NJ, Stirling, NJ; and Glastonbury, CT; and two in Asia Pacific – Tokyo and Sydney. The company employs more than 600 team members, including over 200 highly qualified in-house medical writers and over 100 technology solutions team members involved with platform development and customer support.

About Touch

Founded in 2004 and located in Bishop's Stortford, UK, Touch Creative Design is a pharma/healthcare focused agency with multi-industry experience – predominantly healthcare focused they also work across other industries. This experience keeps their ideas fresh, allowing them to evaluate and experiment with the latest technologies and learn what works with respect to customer engagement. Specialities include creative strategy development, digital and technology-based experiences, exhibitions and event services, branding and traditional creative media. www.touchcreative.co.uk/epg

The acquisition was supported by Envision’s equity partners – Ardian, the independent private investment company www.ardian.com, and GHO Capital, the specialist European investor in healthcare www.ghocapital.com. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

For further information, please contact:

David Thompson
Chief Strategy Officer
Envision Pharma Group
Tel: +44 (0)7557 238911

Close

Envision Pharma Group is delighted to continue to support the important work of the Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) in furthering the aims of the Medical Affairs (MA) community.

MAPS is collecting feedback on MA professional development around medical leadership, data generation/distribution, and insights, to help inform how the society can best support the MA community. If you would like to participate in their short survey, the findings of which will be presented at the MAPS 2018 annual meeting in Miami, please follow the link below.

Please note Envision is not associated with the survey and will not see any results other than the aggregated responses presented at the annual meeting.

The survey can be found here:

Click here to take a brief survey and help us as we shape our future, together

As an appreciation for taking the time to complete the survey, MAPS will automatically enter survey respondents into a raffle for a chance to win one of two great prizes: a complimentary conference registration for their premier event, the MAPS 2018 Annual Meeting, taking place February 25-27 in Miami; or a free, one-year premium membership in MAPS with access to their soon-to-launch Medical Affairs Network.

Posted on behalf of Kirk V Shepard, MD, President 2016-2017, Medical Affairs Professional Society.

Further information on MAPS can be obtained from: http://www.medicalaffairs.org/

Close

Envision Pharma Group is delighted to be recognised as the top performing mid-market company and one of the Top 20 fastest-growing businesses in Sussex, having achieved sustained sales growth over the last three years.

Accountancy and business advisory firm BDO LLP’s most recent Best in Business research on the mid-market – which included companies with a turnover of between £10 and £300 million – has revealed Envision Pharma Group to be a real success story in Sussex.

This latest accreditation also shows Envision occupying the number one position in Sussex for the second year running, with a compound annual growth rate of 52% in revenues. BDO’s findings highlight the ongoing importance of such companies to the local economy.

Kevin Cook, Partner at BDO Guildford, commented: “Mid-market companies continue to drive growth in Sussex despite uncertainty caused by the Brexit negotiations. Envision Pharma Group is a great example of a business that, led by a strong management team, continues to embrace market opportunities and is well positioned to take advantage of any opportunities the changing economic landscape presents. We have a tremendous base of entrepreneurial and aspirational companies to be proud of locally.”

Envision Pharma Group’s Chief Strategy Officer, David Thompson, added: “Our efforts to augment the company's position as the leading scientific and technology company in the pharmaceutical services industry to a fully-fledged strategic multichannel partner for our medical affairs clients is starting to gain significant traction. This, in turn, is leading to further opportunities for both our talented staff and to new individuals joining the organisation. It’s a very exciting time.”

Click here to download the Best in Business Surrey and Sussex 2017/18 Report from the BDO Website.

Click here to read the article on the BDO Website.

Close

The Envision Pharma Group’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Joseph Kohles has joined the Executive Leadership Committee for the Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS).

MAPS is the premier non-profit global society of Medical Affairs professionals across a spectrum of fields, experience, and locations. Joe’s appointment to the Committee will support the society as it transforms the Medical Affairs industry and increases its value to companies and, ultimately, benefits patients and consumers.

Speaking about MAPS, Joe said, “MAPS serves a critical need in the industry by uniting medical affairs professionals to share best practices, functional education, and generally promoting the value of the med affairs unit”.

Joe has been instrumental towards driving Envision’s strategic direction since joining the Group 2 years ago, and has more than 20 years of research and industry-side pharmaceutical experience, both in medical affairs and clinical research.

His previous industry experience included leading the oncology medical affairs team for a large Fortune 100 pharmaceutical company in the USA. In this capacity, he guided the overall medical strategy and led the team in execution of clinical trials, data analyses, publications plans, and overall medical support.

Joe has a broad range of experience across multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, osteoporosis, pain and diabetes, and he has written and published more than 20 peer-reviewed manuscripts and over 60 abstracts and posters spanning basic research, preclinical, clinical, health outcomes, and pharmaco-economic analysis.

MAPS has a mission to advance the Medical Affairs profession and increase its impact across the Life Sciences industry by promoting excellence across Medical Affairs functions; developing guidelines to support industry standards and best practices; fostering advocacy for Medical Affairs position; and providing education and encouraging professional collaborations that support the practice of Medical Affairs.

With a non-profit status, MAPS is able to reinvest all revenue back into the society, which gives it the ability to create valuable programs and resources that support the Medical Affairs community.

To find out more about MAPS or to become a member, click the below link:

http://www.medicalaffairs.org

Close

Dr Rebecca Lew, PhD, CMPP, of ProScribe, part of the Envision Pharma Group delivered the “Best of ISMPP” session at the recent ISMPP Country Champions Meetings in Tokyo on November 21 and in Singapore on November 25.  These meetings were a mixture of presentations and roundtable discussions designed to increase the awareness of the Good Publications Practice Guidelines (GPP3) in the Asia Pacific region and the practicalities of their implementation – a full agenda of the topics covered is available here.

Dr Lew’s presentation summarized the key takeaways from the 2016 ISMPP Annual Meeting and customized them for the Asia Pacific region. The Country Champion events bridge the information gap between the inaugural Asia Pacific Meeting of ISMPP in 2015 and the next iteration of this biennial meeting (Tokyo, September 5, 2017).

As awareness of GPP3 grows in the Asia-Pacific region, the need for compliant, technology-enabled, medical writing support is increasing. Consequently, Envision is delighted to announce that the ProScribe leadership team, Professor Karen Woolley, PhD, CMPP, and Mark Woolley, PhD, will be relocating to Tokyo to drive the expansion of our Japan team and enhance the range of services we provide in the region. Professor Karen Woolley is a renowned expert in the delivery of compliant publication programs, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, and is an author on the GPP3 Guidelines published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. A translation of this publication is now available in Chinese, with a Japanese translation coming soon.

In the near future, we will be bolstering our current writing and client solutions team in the Tokyo office with Japanese-language customer care support for Datavision® and our other technology solutions.

Datavision® is the industry-standard, purpose-built publication-planning software solution, developed and maintained by The Envision Pharma Group for the management of global publication plans. It is currently used by more than 60 pharma and medical device companies to ensure consistent operating practices across international boundaries. Datavision® manages the various publication-related activities of more than 35,000 registered users across these global clients, their affiliates, their supporting agencies and external authors.

Please visit our website for more information on our full range of Medical Affairs services, our industry-leading software solutions, including Datavision®, Visiontracker®, Visiontracker HEORTM, MedinfoTM, Clear®, and LibraryTM.

Close

For the second year running, Envision Pharma Group has won the Best Original Research prize at the Annual Meeting of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP). ‘Development and reporting of research reporting guidelines — who and what are missing?’, conducted by Dr Serina Stretton, Dr Lauri Arnstein, and Professor Karen Woolley, was presented at the Annual Meeting of ISMPP, May 1-3, National Harbor, Maryland, USA.

This year’s success follows on from winning the Best Original Research Prize at last year’s ISMPP meeting. The ‘Forewarned is forearmed: Trends in industry-sponsored clinical trials relevant to publication professionals’ research was conducted by Dr Michelle Anderson, Masayo Hisayama, Dr Jessica Deckman, Dr Cassandra Haley, and Professor Karen Woolley.

Similar to the global nature of the medical communications profession, these research projects involved an international and multi-disciplinary research team of Envision employees from the US, UK, Japan, and Australia and, as may be expected at a leading medical communications conference, Envision’s presentations included augmented reality features, such as video clips, animated graphics, and Japanese audio translations.

Karen Woolley commented, “Research is not easy, but research is needed to inform, guide, and, is some cases, defend our profession. We want to thank ISMPP for providing members with a forum for sharing research results. We’re also humbled and delighted that our peers have recognized the quality and relevance of our research. To win the ‘Best Original Research’ prize for the second year in a row is a credit to the curiosity, ingenuity, and effort of our scientific teams. Importantly, our creative and editorial teams always ensure we can share our results with ISMPP attendees in visually appealing and interactive ways. The best research is always a team effort!”

Successive wins provide independent endorsement of Envision’s thought-leadership position in the industry. Envision staff have to know the field to ask relevant questions and the answers help Envision’s clients and the broader medical communications profession.

Close

Envision Pharma Group offices have successfully obtained certification to International Standard Organization (ISO)/IEC 27001.

ISO 27001 is the international standard for cyber security. By attaining this certification, Envision have demonstrated a clear commitment to Information Security Management to third-parties and stakeholders, providing a process and framework to ensure the fulfilment of commercial, contractual and legal responsibilities, and providing for a common security approach within the Envision business units and a formal basis for inter-operability between Envision and its customers.

ISO Certification is obtained only after a rigorous external audit process and our global locations comprising Horsham in the UK, Southport, Glastonbury, Madison, Philadelphia in the US along with Sydney in Australia are now ISOQAR Registered and carry the Certificate Number 14800.

Envision is committed to the policy for the ongoing development and continual improvement of our information security management systems, therefore, meeting the strict requirements of ISO 27001.

Our Information Security Policy applies to all Envision systems and information, and is one of our key values as an organisation – trust. Envision adheres to the highest ethical standards, we keep our promises and we aspire to create open, honest working relationships.

ISO develops standards, accepted as preeminent in over 140 countries including the USA, Australia, Japan and the UK. These standards facilitate international exchange of goods and services, support sustainable and equitable economic growth, promote innovation and protect health, safety and the environment.

Close

Datavision® facilitates the compliant and transparent management of publication planning and delivery; the automated capture of various internal metrics (eg, time to submission, review times, approval times) allows the identification of inefficiencies and the optimization of the publication development process.

However, assessment of the ‘effectiveness’ or ‘impact’ of a publication often relies on the use of external metrics; a traditional measure of impact of a publication is the volume of citations in peer-reviewed literature. Envision has partnered with Scopus, a trusted provider of citation data, to ensure that Datavision records do not end at publication and that citation counts can be available for all publications tracked within the system.

Citation counts will be available to all Datavision users, with full details of the citing articles available via click-through to the Scopus system (available using an active Scopus subscription).

Russell Traynor, Envision’s Platform Director for iEnvision and former chair of the International Society of Medical Publication Professionals noted: “Citation metrics provide an invaluable benchmark for assessing the value and rigor of a piece of research. We are excited to be partnering with Scopus, as a leading provider of citation data, to bring this benchmarking ability to our global community of Datavision users.”

Russell added: “We are excited by this collaboration and hope that the addition of citations as an external measure of ‘impact’ will allow better assessment and optimization of the effectiveness of publication programs.”

For further information, please contact: Synnove Smeets (Synnove.Smeets@EnvisionPharmaGroup.com) or Russell Traynor (Russell.Traynor@EnvisionPharmaGroup.com).

About Envision

Founded in 2001, Envision Pharma Group is a global, innovative technology and scientific communications company serving pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies.

Envision is a leading provider of evidence communication services and industry-leading, technology solutions that have applicability across areas of Medical Affairs responsibility.

Under consistent leadership, Envision has grown steadily across its three core business areas in support of Medical Affairs:

Evidence Communication—including strategic publication planning, data dissemination services, medical education, and Market Access communications;

Technology Solutions—design, development, implementation, and support of innovative and strategic management software, purpose-built for life-science clients, including: publication planning and management (Datavision), clearance and approval (Clear®), activity request and evidence generation management (Visiontracker®), workflow management for Health Economics and Outcomes Research activities (Visiontracker HEOR™), workflow management for Early Access Program activities (Visiontracker EAP™), searchable repository for the appropriate sharing of scientific content (Library™), and a next-generation solution for managing medical information enquiries (Medinfo™); and

Operational Excellence—policy, process, and compliance support and consultancy for Medical Affairs.

Envision has twelve offices: four in the United Kingdom – Horsham, Wilmslow, Marlow, and London; six in the United States – Philadelphia, PA, Southport, CT, Madison, NJ, Stirling, NJ, Glastonbury, CT, and New York, NY; and two in the Asia-Pacific region – Tokyo and Sydney. The company employs 550 team members, including more than 200 highly qualified and experienced in-house medical writers and more than 100 technology solutions team members who provide software development and customer support. Envision provides services and technology solutions to more than 75 companies, including 19 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies.

About Scopus

Launched in 2004 by Elsevier, Scopus is used by thousands of academic, government and corporate organizations to detect trends, find partnerships and identify experts to stay on the cutting edge of research. Combining the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research, Scopus is the tool to use if you need to keep track of global science.

Subscription pricing for Scopus varies according to the size of your organization. For more information about Scopus and subscription options, visit https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus

Close

The ‘impact’ of a peer-reviewed publication is an integral part of the assessment of the effectiveness of an individual publication or cumulatively, of a publication plan. While citations have long been considered the standard measure of publication impact, they may on occasions take months or years to emerge.

The shift to an online publication environment and the rise of social media have allowed the real-time assessment of indicators of dissemination (eg, via Twitter), interest (eg, news coverage), and readership (eg, Mendeley). Envision has partnered with Altmetric, the leading provider of such metrics, to facilitate access to these informative data via the Library content management solution – part of the expanding iEnvision suite of medical project management software solutions.

Fully integrated into the publication details held within Library, Altmetric badges and associated attention scores provide constantly updated, at-a-glance indicators of the engagement relating to published articles, and permit click-through-access to the Altmetric.com website for more detailed information on the demographic, geographic, and contextual nature of these data please see Altmetric links below.

Library is built on the iEnvision™ Medical Project Management platform, purpose-built to meet the needs of Medical Affairs and related functions. Library can be fully integrated with current versions of Datavision^® (publications management), as well as other third-party and corporate applications.

Russell Traynor, Envision’s Platform Director for iEnvision and former chair of the International Society of Medical Publication Professionals noted: “We are excited to announce this collaboration and hope that the addition of Altmetric data to Library will provide additional insights and value to the users of our solutions.”

Catherine Williams, Chief Marketing Officer, of Altmetric commented: “We’re really pleased to see Envision integrating our data and badges into the Library platform. The attention insights provided will be useful for pharmaceutical companies and communications agencies in assessing the performance of their own publications as well as those of their competitors, and will be a powerful tool for more informed strategic planning.”

For further information, please contact: Synnove Smeets (Synnove.Smeets@EnvisionPharmaGroup.com) or Russell Traynor (Russell.Traynor@EnvisionPharmaGroup.com).

Follow us on Twitter – @EnvisionPharma – or LinkedIn for company updates

About Envision

Founded in 2001, Envision Pharma Group is a global, innovative technology and scientific communications company serving pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies.

Envision is a leading provider of evidence communication services and industry-leading, technology solutions that have applicability across areas of Medical Affairs responsibility.

Under consistent leadership, Envision has grown steadily across its three core business areas in support of Medical Affairs:

Evidence Communication—including strategic publication planning, data dissemination services, medical education, and Market Access communications;

Technology Solutions—design, development, implementation, and support of innovative and strategic management software, purpose-built for life-science clients, including: publication planning and management (Datavision^®), clearance and approval (Clear^®), activity request and evidence generation management (Visiontracker^®), workflow management for Health Economics and Outcomes Research activities (Visiontracker HEOR™), workflow management for Early Access Program activities (Visiontracker EAP™), searchable repository for the appropriate sharing of scientific content (Library™), and a next-generation solution for managing medical information enquiries (Medinfo™); and;

Operational Excellence—policy, process, and compliance support and consultancy for Medical Affairs.

Envision has twelve offices: four in the United Kingdom – Horsham, Wilmslow, Marlow, and London; six in the United States – Philadelphia, PA, Southport, CT, Madison, NJ, Stirling, NJ, Glastonbury, CT, and New York, NY; and two in the Asia-Pacific region – Tokyo and Sydney. The company employs 550 team members, including more than 200 highly qualified and experienced in-house medical writers and more than 100 technology solutions team members who provide software development and customer support. Envision provides services and technology solutions to more than 75 companies, including 19 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies.

About Altmetric

Altmetric was founded in 2011 and has made it a mission to track and analyze the online activity around scholarly literature. It collates what people are saying about published research outputs in sources such as the mainstream media, policy documents, social networks, blogs, and other scholarly and non-scholarly forums to provide a more robust picture of the influence and reach of scholarly work. Altmetric works with some of the biggest publishers, funders, and institutions around the world to deliver this data in an accessible and reliable format.

Altmetric is supported by Digital Science – a technology company that combines world-class technology with a resolute focus on scientists and those who support the research process. Find out more at altmetric.com and follow us on Twitter @altmetric.

Digital Science is a technology company serving the needs of scientific and research communities, at the laboratory bench or in a research setting. It invests in and incubates scientific software companies that simplify the research cycle, making more time for discovery. Its portfolio companies and investments include a host of leading and admired brands including Altmetric, BioRAFT, Figshare, GRID, Labguru, Peerwith, Overleaf, ReadCube, Symplectic, TetraScience, Transcriptic, and ÜberResearch. It is operated by global media company, the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Visit http://www.digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on Twitter.

Close