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A day in the life of the Head of Patient Content at OPEN Health
Written by Jasmine Malone on Wednesday, December 21, 2022
We asked Jasmine Malone to give us an insight into her role as Head of Patient Content at OPEN Health.
Please summarize your role and responsibilities
I am the Head of Patient Content in the Patient Engagement Centre of Excellence here at OPEN Health. This means that I direct the development of all patient or lay audience-facing materials that we deliver for our clients, who range from global pharmaceutical companies to patient advocacy groups.
My role is to support in the direction of all our copy and creative content that is intended for a patient, caregiver or general audience. Our projects are wonderfully varied – from simple patient leaflets on a particular medicine to whole interactive websites on specific disease areas, anything that requires communicating scientific educational information to a general audience comes through my team of patient specialist communicators.
All of our projects involve working collaboratively with a very wide range of external stakeholders. We are huge advocates of co-creation and validation of our work, so we tend to work very closely with patients and patient advocates during every stage of our development process. My role involves a combination of managing this process, while also working with the team to help refine the direction and ultimate output of the content, ensuring that quality is impeccable and that the very best of our talent for creative communication is used to help make our content a joy to interact with.
Please briefly describe a typical working day
A typical working day for me always starts with a very strong coffee as I scroll through the day’s to-do list, emails, and Teams messages. I work and live in Marlow, so have a lovely view from the window whether I am at the beautiful offices in the Wethered or at home near the river.
A big part in my role involves effective prioritisation and working with lots of different people – it’s really important to our process that we take the time we need to get as much feedback as possible on our projects, but to do this we have to be really smart with timelines and a clear methodology on gathering feedback. A key responsibility I have within my role is the creative planning and review of our work – I will spend a big part of my day talking to clients to define briefs and then working alongside our health psychology team to refine the ask and directly with the individual copywriters and creatives on specific challenges.
What aspect of your day/role do you most enjoy?
I consider myself incredibly lucky to do every aspect of the work I get to do. Our team are trusted by our clients to represent them in our interactions with key patient stakeholders in their field. In turn, the people we come across during our work trust us to tell their story in a meaningful way, to take the insights they share with us and turn them into tangible educational materials that will make a difference.
I am acutely aware, every single day that I do my job, that people read or engage with the content our team creates at incredibly difficult times in their lives; a lot of our educational information is intended, for example, for people receiving a new diagnosis of a serious condition or for those needing a new treatment because what they are already on isn’t working. These are life-changing moments, and something I think about all the time. It’s not just a brief. It’s the piece of information that a person will remember for a really long time. And even if they don’t necessarily remember what you wrote, they may remember how it made them feel and getting that right is so important. I am so proud to be able to use my skills, after 20 years in journalism, advertising and agency life, to really deliver materials that will be helpful, with skill, quality and, above all, empathy.
What are some of your reflections from your time at OPEN Health so far?
I joined OPEN Health over 5 years ago in 2017. I was recruited directly, and in the years that have passed since, am still grateful to the colleague that recommended me to the organisation. I joined a team of truly lovely people, all legitimately invested in what they do, not to mention incredibly talented.
As the years have progressed, I’ve watched the organisation grow from strength to strength. OPEN Health has always had a patient-facing specialty which is what drew me to this company in the first place – this patient offering has grown over the years, and we are now an industry-leading patient engagement team, with a unique offering, as well as a great team of really lovely people.
I continue to be proud of working for a company that has championed innovation in patient engagement for over a decade, and continues to demonstrate that commitment to helping those that need it the most.
Interested? Check out some of the projects our team have worked on here
If you’d like to hear more about life at OPEN Health, or how you can apply your scientific writing talents to helping patients, please get in touch
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