Interview with Ainara Luque Saavedra,
Global Scientific Communications Lead for Inflammation, Amgen.
Ainara is a speaker at the NEXT CX & AI 25’ event taking place 18-19 November in Vienna. The event explores how meaningful customer experience, engagement and applied AI can engage stakeholders in the pharmaceutical industry. She will be speaking at a session titled Medical Affairs at a Crossroads: Use AI and Digital or Get Left Behind Like the Fax Machine.
SciencePod spoke to Ainara in advance of the event to hear how she is leveraging digital and AI to create powerful in-house systems and customer experiences.
Can you tell us about your role and the challenges you are addressing?
I’m based in Switzerland, and my role involves leading scientific educational activities in the ex-U.S. region, including congresses, activities like symposia, medical advisory boards, educational events, and webinars. The world is evolving very rapidly, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence and how we communicate. Millennials and Gen Z are quietly expanding in the business area, including the pharmaceutical industry. People retain knowledge differently now; they use channels and tools that weren’t used in the past. So, that’s the biggest challenge— adapting as fast as the world is evolving.
What has been your most exciting digital / AI project to date?
During the COVID pandemic, we had to find new ways to deliver our scientific data. Everything had to go fully virtual. We were used to in-person meetings, so we had to get up to speed very, very fast. We created an Amgen-owned platform to stream our activities, like symposia and educational events. We created the platform in-house and the scientific communications team was highly involved; we also had to work with our compliance, legal and regulatory partners. That project had a huge impact.
What lessons have you learned from that project?
That you don’t just deliver something and then that’s it. We had to continue to improve the platform based on feedback. Until now, we’ve been updating it manually which is challenging, so we are looking at how to automate processes. We also need our platforms to speak to each other. We have another platform that takes input from all our activities throughout the year and allows users to search and retrieve information, it’s driven by AI and is constantly being updated. It’s important to invest in AI so we can improve our efficiencies throughout all our platforms; the challenge is how we can connect them because right now they’re independent.
What is the role of digital content in rolling out your digital strategy?
In the near future, the majority of our customers will be from the newer generations, so digital is very important. People are constantly on with their phones; they’re barely using their laptops. We have less time and more inputs— not just from one pharma company, many companies are bombarding you. It’s important to deliver the same messages as before, but in less time and more efficiently.
We need to synthesize information so people can get the key messages in minutes. For example, instead of sharing a full manuscript, share a one-pager that contains the key information. If you want to learn more, you can scan a QR code. Short videos are also key. For instance, if we have a symposium, interviewing experts and asking them about the key messages would be important. We need to be very fast, and with AI tools, we will be able to do it.
Could you share your vision of the future of the industry in terms of Customer Engagement?
Personalised customer engagement is the future. We want to learn from our customers how they want to receive information and how to deliver the message to a specific person. In-person engagement still has value because we are human beings, but when it comes to continuous learning, it will be fully virtual. We need to listen and adapt if we want to effectively deliver our messages to the community.
While Ainara has a connection to Amgen, the opinions and views reflected in this interview are her own and do not reflect Amgen’s position.