IPCAA NEWSLETTER

The meeting was extremely well attended, with representatives present from almost all member companies.

The outgoing President – Anna Frick of AstraZeneca – welcomed delegates and, commenting on the high level of participation, remarked that this was evidence of the continuing, even growing, interest in and support for the Association's goals and activities.

Anna reported on the progress made during the 3 years of her presidency and pointed to ways in which the organisation had become stronger and more efficient, in terms of improved communications, stronger commitment and increased support for task forces, but also financially. She also reviewed achievements against the strategic plan for 2010, see Internal Conference Department Structures article on page 7.

Annual activity reports were made by the Vice President and Executive Director and updates on recent task force activity were also presented to the delegates. In addition the detailed financial report for the previous year was presented by the Treasurer and approved formally by the General Assembly.

The meeting was also updated on recent IPCAA activity in the areas of education, housing, the website, interaction with HCA, and an event evaluation project.

In her comments to close the reporting session, Anna thanked all IPCAA members, the Council and especially the Executive Group, for their support and commitment during her term of office.

Delegates were kept rather busy for quite a while as various issues were subject to member ballot procedures under the supervision of Manfred Piepenburg, Legal Advisor!

Once the electoral process had taken place, the new President – Sylvia Fondanèche of sanofi-aventis – addressed the meeting,

Sylvia explained her vision for IPCAA for the coming years, emphasising that she sees a need for the organisation to

• Ensure solid interaction with relevant partners: medical, scientific and academic societies, regulatory bodies at national and international levels and related industry partners.
• Maintain this position by communicating the guiding principles of IPCAA, its organisation and activity.
• Anticipate and align with trends by initiating appropriate activities proactively.

Following the President's comments on future plans and her introduction of a set of new strategic objectives, the Treasurer – Ingrid Marti of Actelion – presented the proposed budget for 2011, explaining all relevant aspects.

Following the General Assembly, delegates then enjoyed the first of the guest speaker sessions. Run by Ann Hansen of annhansen concept+competence, Denmark, a very interactive presentation entitled “Infrastructure of meetings – participant involvement and learning methods” exposed participants to various novel proposals for attention getting and reinforcement of interactive consultation, aimed at maximising meetings output and effectiveness as a learning medium.

Topics addressed included meetings content and different learning processes and styles, how to create participant satisfaction, the benefits of group working with each member directly involved and active debate.

A workshop was also run by Ann Hansen the next day, as a practical follow up to this presentation and specifically addressed the subject of setting objectives for meetings.

The second day of the Annual Meeting istarted with consecutive workshop sessions:

Prior to the workshop on meetings objectives a session on “Internal Conference Structures”, moderated by Christian-Claus Roth looked at varying approaches within member companies to the handling of participation in international events.

Analysis of industry trends and common solutions to the challenges faced from a changing environment will follow, based on output from this workshop.

The definite highlight of the one and a half days was the guest speaker presentation by Marie-Claire Pickaert, Deputy Director General of EFPIA (the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.)

Ms. Pickaert started by referring to the Leadership Statement on Ethical Practices* issued by the Federation, commenting on which, Andrew Witty, CEO of GSK and President of EFPIA had said “Our industry needs to be in touch with society's expectations and with peoples' appropriate demands for both greater transparency and for a greater commitment to high ethical standards. The leadership statement is made in this spirit. It strongly reaffirms our commitment to our existing Codes of Practice and to their continuous improvement. We believe that full adherence to these codes is essential and that breaches should not be tolerated.”

After explaining the organisational structure of EFPIA, including its various departments and working parties, EFPIA's key projects for 2010-2012 were highlighted; one of these addresses sales and marketing practices and this topic was clearly a very relevant one for the IPCAA audience.

The speaker continued by referring to recent activity from EFPIA involving visits to selected congresses in Europe, to observe current practices at first hand and relate these to interpretations of the Codes – there had been some “surprises” and EFPIA would follow up where appropriate and offer suitable advice to those involved. Another point of interest and discussion was the EFPIA “Events' Pre-assessment On-line Platform”, a vehicle currently under development and a means whereby potential industry sponsors for a future event might be advised if there are concerns about compliance issues.

Marie-Claire Pickaert ended her presentation by reconfirming that EFPIA will continue to work in close collaboration with IPCAA as a means to reach out to medical & scientific societies to raise awareness of high ethical standards applying to interactions between healthcare professionals and the pharmaceutical industry.

*the full text of the EFPIA Leadership Statement can be found at www.efpia.org