Get to Know Us: Conference Intelligence Research & Tripp
Conference intelligence research focuses on how new data, findings, or insights are received by professional communities. Our clients often partner with us to get a sense of how their (or their competitor’s) data are being buzzed about after particular conferences. After years of these types of analyses, it’s also allowed us to identify the ‘game changers’ when it comes to new data and impact to decision-making.
Today, we’re talking with Manager of Listening and Linguistics at inVibe, Tripp Maloney, about conference intelligence market research projects. Tripp has overseen a multitude of data release and conference projects during his tenure at inVibe – from conferences like ASCO and SABCS to ASH and IMS – and is a master at breaking down HCP reactions and interpretations of data.
Let’s Listen: Perspectives on Conference Research
Q: To jump right in, Tripp, what do you find most rewarding about conference research?
Tripp: Conference research provides a valuable link between our work in the clinical trial space and our commercial research. While we generally work with commercial teams for our conference research, the new data that comes out at these conferences is at the cutting edge of the science, with new treatments or strategies emerging to advance the state of care. Listening to HCPs describe how new data could change things for their patients, I find it easy to get caught up in all the excitement!
Additionally, focusing down to individual abstracts can really help crystallize our understanding of a treatment landscape. When HCPs talk about those big-hitter data releases, it really helps give me a ‘prescriber’s-eye view’ of what a therapeutic area looks like. Plus, each subsequent project in that space makes more and more sense with the context of our previous work. Building that expertise with regular, recurring projects is an opportunity that market researchers don’t always get, so I’m grateful for these chances to learn.
Q: Can you share an example, blinded if needed, of a conference project or insight that you found particularly fascinating?
Tripp: Absolutely! One of the most interesting intangibles that comes into play when thinking about new data is the concept of ‘treatment inertia’ – that is, doctors finding their current regimens more understandable and predictable than new options. This phenomenon can dampen reactions to new data that we expect to make a big splash.
We have done work in a few different disease states where treatment inertia played a huge role, but there is one case in oncology that I always come back to. We were following new data releases for a second-to-market treatment in a fairly novel MOA that showed really positive survival endpoints and durability. Oncologists who read these results sounded completely on board in a vacuum, but when we asked about actual expected changes to their practice, they started hedging, citing greater familiarity with the first-to-market treatment.
The really interesting part, though, is how ONC attitudes evolved over time. As more data for the new treatment accumulated across conferences and with more granular sub-population data, the reason to shift (or not) pivoted slightly. While the familiarity gap was still present in ONC responses, they began to focus less on differentiating the two treatments on that basis – or at all! Rather, they began talking more about a perceived “class effect” – that the positive data for the newcomer treatment was more of an endorsement of the MOA in general than it was a distinction unique to any one treatment. Since the differences in outcomes across treatments were seen as marginal and could only be measured indirectly, this kind of data was going to upend ONCs’ treatment algorithms.
This was a real eye-opener for me earlier in my career; ‘intangibles’ like treatment inertia that personally affect ONCs can be really powerful, and it requires a particular kind of disruption in a therapeutic area to overcome these effects.
Q: I’m going to be sharing a video presentation clip from our ASCO 2022 NSCLC research. Anything you’d like folks to know about either that project or the insights from it?
Tripp: One major standout in that research was how hard ONCs focused on targeted treatments. With NSCLC being a fairly large and relatively well-understood disease state, biomarkers are an intuitive way to stratify the patient population and really zoom in on what treatment will be best for them. One of the abstracts we focused on dealt with KRAS-targeted treatment specifically, and the excitement we heard from ONCs about the results has always stuck in my mind. They were highly invested in the details, praising the narrow scope of the KRAS study as more actionable. This may not be as surprising for folks who have worked in solid tumor for a while, but the face of innovation definitely looks different here than it does in rarer or less-developed indications, where studies may have more far-reaching implications.
Q: So Tripp – the clip that I’m about to share is a made by a new feature of inVibe’s dashboard, correct?
Tripp: Yes! We’ve recently launched a new AI-based feature that can comb through data and put together these mini audio presentations with a bit of tweaking from our Research team (more details to come on that in a future post). We thought it would be fun to look back to our own 2022 research to see what it could tell us about the data – and spoiler alert – it did a great job!
Now for some cool stuff -- Check out the AI-generated insights presentation from ASCO 2022 NSCLC below! You’ll hear HCPs discuss some of the game-changing data they heard at ASCO and what they saw as the future of NSCLC treatment back in 2022.
Q: Alright, to wrap us up, is there an upcoming conference, treatment, or data release that you’re looking forward to hearing more about?
Tripp: Long story short: I’m extremely excited to read the next chapter in CAR-T research. For the last few years, we’ve heard so much about CAR-T in the ONC/Hem-ONC spaces, even when we weren’t asking about it directly. It’s been the ‘next big thing’ for a really long time. From a clinical perspective, it seems like a lot of that excitement is still there, but the role appears to be shifting.
In blood cancers, other MOAs are really starting to compete with CAR-T. The difference in enthusiasm between how ONCs discuss CAR-T and bispecifics has been getting smaller and smaller. I’m really interested to see this trend continue to play out; will bispecifics get that same level of hype and excitement if they turn out to really be comparable, or will the interest in CAR-T subside to the same level as more-established ROAs?
In the meantime, I’m keeping an eye out for when and how CAR-T discussions will be affecting conferences outside of oncology, especially in the autoimmune space. Are the side effects associated with the MOA going to be too much, or are the huge potential efficacy gains going to dominate the discussion? I honestly have no idea yet – but I can’t wait to find out!
What’s next?
It is an exciting, if kinetic, time to be involved in the development of new treatments. Conference intelligence voice research can help you better understand reactions to new data and its potential impact on the current landscape.
inVibe is uniquely poised to find the most important and actionable elements of new data, condense that information into a digestible format, and offer strategic partnership to stay on top of the shifting landscape. Whether you have questions about how prescribers react to new data or what priorities are driving their current strategies, we can work with you to answer them.
If you would like to know more, contact us.
