EMJ GOLD: Pharma news, views and analysis · EMJ

S10 E01: GSK's Dheepa Chari on the evolving sphere of scientific communication

·28 min·1 clip

Deepa Chari says AI can help with language, but it cannot generate knowledge.

1. EMJ Gold: Pharma news, views and analysis opens season 10 with a conversation about the evolving sphere of scientific communication. 2. Isabel hosts Deepa Chari, Vice President and Head of Global Scientific Communications at GSK, and Deepa brings 16 years of experience across Pfizer, Amgen, Novartis, and GSK. 3. The episode asks where scientific communication has been, where it is now, and where it is headed next. 4. Deepa describes entering pharma after an undergraduate program in biostatistics, then starting at Pfizer in an entry-level role focused on data management and clinical research. 5. She says that work taught her how clinical trials are designed, how information is synthesized, and how it becomes insight for the medical community. 6. After about five years, she moved to Amgen on the West Coast of the US and later shifted into medical communications. 7. Deepa says publications were her first major focus, especially strategic publication planning and tailoring messages for different audiences. 8. She adds that her role expanded at Novartis into medical content creation and digital channels, with more emphasis on disseminating science beyond the publication. 9. At Pfizer, she says she helped grow a small team into an enterprise-level function that included social channels and plain-language narratives with the patient at the center. 10. She says her current work at GSK is about making the journey from publication to content to digital dissemination more seamless and effective. 11. Deepa says scientific communications has changed because audience preferences have shifted away from reading a journal article from start to finish. 12. She says people now want a short summary, the punchline, and an answer to “What do I do with this information?” 13. She links that shift to a need for more targeted, bite-sized, and personalized communication, which also creates more complexity in planning and workload. 14. Deepa says the pandemic accelerated the move to social media and social platforms as information sources when people were at home. 15. She says this period showed that pharma could no longer rely on traditional paper-based approaches and had to reach people in new ways. 16. Deepa says AI matters because it can help generate insights, create content, personalize material, and measure impact. 17. She also says AI cannot generate knowledge, so human expertise still has to steer the direction of the work. 18. The interview style is calm and reflective, with Isabel asking direct career and strategy questions and Deepa answering in structured examples. 19. People working in pharma communications, medical affairs, or digital strategy would likely benefit most from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for product reviews, clinical trial readouts, or fast news updates may skip it.

As heard by us

Scientific communications is treated as the link between research, physicians, and patients, with AI reshaping how the field works.

Scientific communications comes across here as the practical link between study results and the people who actually use them, from physicians to patients.

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A calm look at how scientific communications bridges study results to physicians and patients.

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