AAPS workshops grow through the hard work of AAPS volunteers.
By Joseph W. Polli, Ph.D., FAAPS, President
What is your favorite American Association of Pharmaceutical (AAPS) event? It may be the AAPS workshops. The workshop program has become significantly more robust and effective in recent years. Volunteer leaders, staff, and the Board of Directors have collaborated to streamline the process while giving a broader segment of members the opportunity to comment on what they want to see in a workshop’s program. When organizers propose a workshop, AAPS asks “Will it attract enough participants to advance the body of science and build networking opportunities?” and looks for ways to make a program interactive, impactful, and affordable.
Much of the improvement has been driven by better listening: AAPS uses anonymous surveys of members who are likely to be interested in a topic to determine if a proposal resonates, and then follows the event with a survey where attendees tell us what happened. Our workshops consistently receive high Net Promoter Scores, which means the attendees are very likely to recommend AAPS programming to others. For example, the Net Promoter Score from the 2019 Novel Approaches for Targeting Brain Barriers for Effective Delivery of Therapeutics workshop was 57 based on an index of -100 to 100.
Sometimes, a proposed workshop’s topic is better suited to another format, such as a webinar. AAPS staff work closely with organizers to find the right venue for the conversation they want to have and the research they want to present. AAPS is testing new strategies for content delivery to create value for our members, such as a webinar series leading up to an in-person workshop or an ecourse. Be on the lookout for a new ecourse this spring focused on pharmaceutical statistics and quality by design best practices built from a series of AAPS webinars done in collaboration with Synolostats LLC.
In 2019, AAPS hosted six member-initiated workshops and seven preconference workshops before PharmSci 360. The PharmSci 360 Scientific Programming Committee (SPC) chooses workshops for the meeting that align with the event’s tracks and themes. Examples of preconference workshops from last year include Best Practices for the Development and Fit-for-Purpose Validation of Biomarker Methods and How to Administer? Design and Testing of Clinical Administration of Parenteral Drug Products. The call for 2020 PharmSci 360 programming—including preconference workshops— will open in February. Look for announcements in AAPS Newsmagazine and your email, and please submit your ideas!
AAPS is very active working with partners to take our programming to members around the globe. Partnerships with organizations that have a network and experience in a particular geographic region are vital to AAPS achieving its strategic goal of reaching the global pharmaceutical sciences community. Last fall, AAPS partnered with Bioanalysis Zone to host the workshop Opportunities and Challenges in Translating Cell and Gene Therapy Products in London, England, sponsored by Charles River. We also cosponsored the workshop Novel Approaches Targeting Brain Barriers for Effective Delivery of Therapeutics in the spring with the International Brain Barriers Society, which brought together stakeholders from around the world to collaborate on this important area of research. Additionally, AAPS began a partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Pharmacy Professional Development to grow the well-respected Land O’ Lakes conferences, which are annual meetings focused on bioanalytics and pharmaceutical analysis. AAPS members have been involved in Land O’Lakes conferences for years, so we are excited about this growing relationship. In 2020, AAPS is also working with CPhI to bring programming to the CPhI North America conference. This is a wonderful example of partnering to share science with a closely related pharmaceutical audience, and it is a strong platform to extend AAPS internationally. Finally, AAPS is working with a group of members who have proposed a workshop to be held in India in early fall—it’s the kind of scientific programming in which AAPS is excited to engage our members around the world. We will continue to work with other associations in the pharmaceutical sciences space to create future opportunities for our members to share their science.
Year-round programming continues to be strong in 2020. AAPS is planning five member-initiated workshops—all one-to-three day, in-person events. We already have a few on the calendar, including Drug Transporters in ADME and two Land O’ Lakes conferences on bioanalysis and pharmaceutical analysis. Look for more information on member-initiated workshops as the year progresses.
Another exciting update to our workshops will be the increased involvement of scientific industrial partners in 2020. A task force of AAPS members and partners has developed a new approach to integrating company sponsors into all AAPS workshops. The task force’s goal is to support the science by engaging with partners, who employ many of our member-scientists. Through participation in workshop programming, partners can bring additional research, insight, and solutions into the conversation. Past Member-at-Large Annette Bak, head of the Advanced Drug Delivery team at AstraZeneca, and current Member-at-Large Reina Bendayan, Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of Toronto, are part of this team. “Active participation of our industrial partners is vital and effectively complements the workshop's scientific content,” explained Bendayan. Overall, inclusion of industry partners, which will be implemented in 2020, will benefit the workshop attendees with new scientific interactions and our industrial partners with more opportunities to engage with AAPS members.
The Board of Directors thanks all those who have submitted workshop proposals, evaluated topics, served on the SPC, and participated in workshops. Do you have a good idea for a one-to-three day in person event? Let’s talk! You can always email me at president@aaps.org, or you can complete the formal workshop proposal form on the AAPS website.