A day in the life of the Global Head of Publications

We asked Mina Patel to give us an insight into her role as Global Head of Publications at OPEN Health.

Please summarise your role

As Global Head of Publications, my role is to provide support across all OPEN Health companies on matters related to publications activities. It can be broadly divided into two areas: (i) to ensure compliance with Good Publications Practice and that processes are aligned across companies, and (ii) to develop communications strategies and provide leadership to support publications accounts.

What career path led to your current role?

After completing my PhD in Pharmacology, I spent almost 10 years as a research scientist in drug discovery for a major pharmaceutical company. I was looking for a change but knew I wanted to keep my passion for science alive, so I retrained as a medical writer in a medical communications company. That eventually led me back to a role within the pharmaceutical industry in medical affairs and ultimately to a role building and leading a publications department. I built publications departments at several mid-sized bio-pharmaceutical companies before returning to a medical communications agency last year when I joined OPEN Health.

What aspect of your day/role do you most enjoy?

I absolutely love the science and thinking about the strategy for publications. The diverse therapeutic areas I am involved in challenges me every day; this helps the teams I work with to get the best out of me. I’m also very lucky to work with colleagues who have great therapeutic area knowledge that I can rely on when I’m working in a new therapeutic area. Reviewing all types of publications-related tactics, such as gap analyses, scientific platforms and of course, manuscripts, is another aspect of my role. Mentoring my colleagues is something that gives me great satisfaction, knowing that I’m helping the team in a very tangible manner. While most would say that process is not something they enjoy, I do believe it is vital as process protects everyone involved with the tactics we deliver. Publications are highly visible and important aspects of the clients’ communication strategy; clients have a legal and ethical requirement to make the data from their clinical development programmes available. We play an important role in partnership with our clients to keep everyone involved working in a compliant and ethical manner. The fact that no two days are alike is one of the best things about my role.

What makes working at OPEN Health great? What’s different about working here?

The people. There are many talented people that I can learn from, and I’m fortunate to call them colleagues.

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