Speaker

Magali Geens

Presentation title

Patient involvement: a new challenge for the industry

Presentation outline

We believe consumers will take the lead in shaping any company or brand in the future. Marketers need to learn how to let go and take down their marketing walls as companies actively listening and involving (health) consumers will outperform competition.

And this also holds in Life Sciences & Healthcare as much as in any other industry. Or even more so! If consumers can be utterly passionate about a bottle of Heinz ketchup and have brand logo’s tattooed on their body parts (not only from Harley Davidson, but also from sandwich spreads like Marmite…), imagine how involved they can get when it concerns their health or the health of their loved ones. On a global level, patients are ever more relying on Doctor Google, health communities, Facebook groups, influential e-patients who tweet away and more alike, to be better prepared for the doctor’s visit or to re-consider the prescription based on potential side-effects or estimated impact of treatment on their quality of life. This presentation will take you on an inspiring modern-day consumer journey and translate the new paradigms into how health care professionals and companies can better adapt to this empowered patient who wants to be involved.

Job title

Managing Partner at InSites Consulting

Biography

Magali’s career overview:
Magali is one of nine Managing Partners at InSites Consulting and responsible for the development of Life Sciences and Healthcare Research. Other industries the company is active in are FMCG, Technology & Services and Media & Entertainment.

Magali joined the company 9 years ago (in 2003) as a qualitative research consultant. At the time they were only 10 people working from a small office in the historic heart of Ghent. Today the company counts over 120 employees in 5 offices (Ghent, Rotterdam, Timisoara, London, New York). In 2009 Magali opened the InSites’ London office together with one of her colleagues Managing Partners.

Today the crazy blend of academic visionaries, passionate marketers and research innovators @ InSites Consulting are determined to challenge the status quo by taking market research forward every day and bringing consumers and health consumers in boardrooms around the globe as they want to be involved!

Within the Life Sciences & Healthcare research team, Magali is also still actively involved as Account Director of a significant client portfolio (including clients like Janssen, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and UCB).

Magali has been a research guest speaker in the Master in Marketing Management class at the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School and she gives many client lectures on the growing importance of patient involvement in the broader health arena.

Educational background

Magali graduated with great distinction from the Master in Marketing Management program at the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. In her senior year she won the Vlerick Business Plan Award.

Before she obtained Masters’ degrees in Sports Management (with the highest distinction, primus inter pares) and Media & Communication from Ghent University (with great distinction).

List of publications

At InSites Consulting we help our clients ‘to let go’ and delegate real power to consumers or – in the health scape – to ‘health consumers’ and patients. We are so passionate about this, we even write marketing books on the subject; like the best seller ‘The Conversation Manager’ by our Managing Partner Steven Van Belleghem. Over the years, our ForwaR&D team has published a lot of relevant papers that put the consumer very central in marketing and marketing research. A full overview of the publications can be found here on our website: http://www.insites.eu/publications.aspx

One paper in particular was interesting in the broader healthcare environment, i.e. ‘And they lived happily ever after - Analyzing user generated content on social media to increase the elderly's quality-of-life’ by Annelies Verhaeghe, Head of our ForwaR&D lab.

With this paper, Annelies won the Young Researcher of the Year Award (ESOMAR). This award calls for the best young minds in the marketing research industry (aged under 30), talented, sharp, incisive people determined to be ground-breaking and to show that they can help to make a better world. This is the link to the free paper download on our website: http://www.insites.eu/publications.aspx?item=1297

Furthermore, over the past 3 years InSites Consulting has done pan-European and global studies among patients and HCPs to better understand new trends and how them impact the health management and the role of patients in it. All studies were led by Magali Geens and results are shared on SlideShare and can be freely downloaded there. A combined SlideShare search on InSites Consulting + Health should get you there fast (or the direct link: http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?searchfrom=header&q=insites+consulting+health). Last year, our Social Media Around the World Study (also in the search result) was the most influential business presentation on the platform with close to 700.000 views. Also these insights are used and applied in the Life Sciences & Healthcare industry.