Challenges:

• Teams' 1st experience of attending a 15-member KOL advisory board meeting (KOLs across 5 countries - India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka)
• Collating comments from multiple authors and cultural background knowledge to appropriately position the drug class
• Avoiding bias in favor of the sponsor company's drug from the same class

Mitigations:

• Conducting extensive literature search, and evidence-based reporting to prevent bias for sponsor's drug
• Adopting a staggered approach for reviews, core group of authors first then to all authors, thus avoiding multiple iterations and drafts
• Efficient communication with sponsor company representatives for updated insights of drug class

Achievements:

• Document published in 5 months
• Consensus document considered an unbiased report, although sponsor's drug was also under discussion in the document
• Several KOLs from this endeavor are now our advocates and refer us for such publications from renowned medical societies in India and South Asia