6,000 Physicians to Meet this Week in Philadelphia Without Stepping Foot into the City

6,000 Physicians to Meet this Week in Philadelphia Without Stepping Foot into the City

Area Business Connects Physicians Through Web Conferences, Allowing Them to Learn More About New Drug Therapies

PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- A quickly growing Blue Bell-area company has discovered a new, highly efficient way to connect pharmaceutical companies with doctors through interactive conferences held over the Internet. The Maxwell Group will connect some 25,000 physicians this month through live, online interactive web conferences between doctors in their own offices and leading researchers and opinion leaders working with top pharmaceutical companies.

The service, called MedConference, is being quickly embraced by the pharmaceutical industry, which today is facing both competitive and compliance pressure to improve the process of direct-to-physician brand promotion and medical education. MedConference allows physicians to interact directly with researchers and other physicians who have firsthand knowledge of the science and clinical trial results behind new drug therapies. The conferences, which are attended by physicians using a standard PC with Internet access, allow doctors to see and hear live medical presentations and also have the opportunity to submit questions and comments by voice or online chat. Since launching the service three years ago, The Maxwell Group has quietly become the largest provider of direct-to-doctor web conferences in the world, having managed over 5,000 web conferences to date. Their secret is in their specialization.

"There are plenty of generic conferencing providers but connecting the dots between physicians and key opinion leaders is a whole different ballgame. You need to have a thorough understanding of the goals and objectives of the sponsor, as well as the ability to customize and manage the technology," says Bob Maiden, president of The Maxwell Group, which manages an average of 20 conferences a day from its unassuming world headquarters above a shopping center on Route 202 in Blue Bell, PA. "We provide a complete turnkey package from start to finish. During every live event, one of our experienced facilitators is there to support the speaker, and a toll-free help desk provides any necessary technical support. On the backend, we provide an extensive survey and reporting component that allows drug companies to measure the success of their events."

Those events can be esoteric. A recent day's seminars included topics on new cholesterol reducing statins, the latest research on osteoporosis and the health benefits of new allergy medicines.

Most web conferencing services, however, are designed for internal meetings and employee training - not for physician education. "Doctors need immense amounts of medical information, but their patient loads limit their ability to see pharma sales reps or attend outside conferences," says Maiden. "MedConference brings the experts directly to them whether in the office or at home using their own PCs."

Maiden says the conferences fall into two broad categories. Brand drug promotional events allow drug sales representatives and physicians to jointly participate in the event. These presentations might be attended by a number of the practice's doctors. MedConference has also found a major market in speaker training - a promotional technique whereby pharmaceutical companies train key opinion leaders to present information on new drug therapies to other health providers.

MedConference is currently in use by five of the leading pharmaceutical companies, as well as numerous medical education companies that help to educate doctors on new drug treatments.

For instance, Phoenix Marketing Solutions of Warren, NJ, manages online speaker training sessions and speaker update conferences. "Nothing is more important than being able to communicate new data or label change information to your speakers in a timely and cost-effective manner," says Angela Fiordilino, executive vice president of Phoenix Marketing Solutions. "MedConference allows pharmaceutical companies the opportunity to train their speakers on this new data in a live, interactive format, utilizing key opinion leaders to deliver the new information. More than one session can be planned and executed in order to have an opportunity to update all of your speakers. We view MedConference as the wave of the future in how pharmaceutical companies will more intelligently and efficiently update their speakers."

For more information about MedConference or The Maxwell Group, visit http://www.themaxwellgroupinc.com/.

About The Maxwell Group

The Maxwell Group is the leading provider of live web conferencing solutions to Fortune 1,000 companies. Founded in 1989, The Maxwell Group is a pioneer in the field of online events, eLearning and web conferencing, offering a comprehensive menu of pre-event, live-event and post-event services.

The Maxwell Group manages more live, direct-to-physician, web conferencing events than any other company in the world. This year, the company will conduct more than 6,000 events, reaching some 300,000 physicians around the world. Through MedConferenceLive, the company's proprietary web conferencing platform, The Maxwell Group offers the only fully-integrated web conferencing technology and support service package specifically designed to assist pharmaceutical companies in brand promotion, speaker training, advisory board meetings, clinical investigator training and more. MedConferenceLive improves physician access and time to market in a convenient and flexible format providing pharmaceutical companies a distinct competitive edge.


Source: The Maxwell Group, Inc.

CONTACT: Renee Rozniatoski, Gregory FCA Communications, Inc.,
+1-610-642-8253, renee@gregoryfca.com, for The Maxwell Group, Inc.; or Bob
Maiden of The Maxwell Group, Inc., +1-800-292-0450,
bob_maiden@themaxwellgroupinc.com

Web site: http://www.themaxwellgroupinc.com/


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