For the first blog entry, we thought it would be a good idea to have clients and our network of consultants ask us some questions. We picked eight questions from a global audience and then set ourselves the challenge of answering each question, in one draft.

Question 1: Tell us about the company elevator-pitch style. (From the UK)

We are a global health research company. For us, the keywords are

• Patient research – writing and testing of patient-oriented materials

• Usability testing of medical apps – genuine global and multilingual capabilities

We help Pharma and MedTech companies communicate more clearly with patients – their true clients - for them to gain a clearer understanding of their clients’ health. We conduct research with an average of 65 000 participants each year, across 193 countries and territories around the world. That’s us, in a nutshell.

Question 2: What is the point of this blog? (From India)

It’s simply an intellectual outlet. We want to draw on all our disciplines and write about what interests us, whether this is related to our services or not. For example, we have written a series of articles about the anti-vaxx debate. Our professional work has never covered this area, but it is a theme that interests us.

With blogging, I’ve noticed that many corporate posts do not have a great deal to say. There seems to be a trend of perpetual forwarding of blog posts, Facebook-style. Does nobody have anything of substance to say anymore? If a company claims to be specialists in, for example, ‘patient-centric research’ and their entire blog content has not been written by anyone in their company, what does that say about their true in-house expertise?  

We just want to get back to basics and use our blog to educate, with articles exclusively written in-house. That said, we do not wish for our blog to be used as a platform for selling. And some articles are just a bit of fun.

Question 3: You always emphasise that you are not a translation company. Why is that? (From Singapore) 

The simple answer is because we are not one. We organise translations only when this is part of a wider research project, such as when we are working on a clinical trial consent form or a medical app where the content requires translating before testing. We have a large enough network of quality translators to be able to manage translations on our own.  

Developing this network has taken us many years and has been a challenge in itself to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. In our experience, there are translators and there are translators. The former are world-class, impressive, wholly reliable, while the latter are nothing more than a band of opportunists and chancers. We have found that a proportion of the latter group of translators exaggerate their experience to the point of misrepresentation. Take, for instance, the French translator who claimed to have 20+ years in the pharma field, yet had never encountered a QRD template and translated ‘Package Leaflet’ as ‘dépliant de colis’… Anyone in the sector who knows French will know how wrong that is. The challenges of the medical translation will be an ongoing theme of our blog.

Question 4: What’s the hummingbird in the logo all about? (From the USA)

One of the founders of the company was born and raised in Jamaica, where the company was also conceptually conceived. Our logo was designed in Jamaica. We find the imagery of the hummingbird inspiring and is apt as a metaphor for a small, busy company like us. In all respects, GRC is as much a Caribbean and Latin American company as it is British.

Question 5: How did the office in Guatemala come about and do you have plans to establish yourself elsewhere? (From Belgium) 

It happened organically. There was a commonality of career aims between GRC and the now lead person in Guatemala who had worked with the company as an external consultant for 7 years. We decided to join forces and base part of our operations there. Those operations are now equal to those managed in the UK.

The Guatemala office has emerged, naturally, as a hub for Latin American patient research. As we mentioned previously, we are a Latin American company as much as a British one. Our teams are fully integrated and we are very much enjoying learning about each other’s countries.  

Where else would we set up? The majority of our clients are based between New Jersey, New York, and Boston in the USA, so we are in the process of setting up a small office in Boston. We are experiencing an upsurge in demand for US-based usability testing and this is what we would like to build our US operations on. Beyond that, we are interested in building two small regional hubs, one for Middle Eastern and African operations, and the other to handle East Asia / Australasia.

Question 6: What is the skill set of the staff and consultants who work for GRC? (From Germany)

We are currently composed of linguists, qualitative research specialists, a software specialist, a psychologist, a pharmacist and a regulatory affairs specialist. For future in-house staff, we are looking for more health care professionals and usability researchers from both qualitative and quantitative backgrounds.  

For in-country consultants, we tend to partner with experienced researchers, clinical research associates and medical professionals. Regarding in-country consultants, we have one important maxim: “The chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. The point is that it is vital to outsource only to proven, competent people. The in-country consultant must be able to work to the same level of precision and competence as our in-house staff. Outsourcing to consultants who are less than this damages us and our clients. We only outsource to individuals whom we trust. After all, we are only as good as our weakest consultant.

Question 7: What would you say have been your biggest successes and biggest failures in your business so far and what would you do differently? (From Japan)

This is a great question. Starting with mistakes, rather than failures per se, I could fill an entire encyclopaedia, not just with GRC but companies that I co-founded before that: the wrong hires, the wrong partnerships, disappointments with suppliers and vendors, etc. You live and learn. What you should not do is repeat the same mistakes.  

Regarding successes, this would be the depth of expertise that we have developed and the international breadth of our operations. We are hugely appreciative of one client in particular who has handed us a large slice of these opportunities. A huge success for us is the internal company culture that we are nurturing. Another important ongoing success has been our ability to turn an individual consultancy into a functional, scalable company.

Question 8: Where do you conduct your most business and where are your clients based? (From UK) 

The majority of our clients are based in North America, with a small number in the EU and UK. Our clients are from the pharmaceutical, MedTech, biotech and CRO sectors. We also have one long-standing relationship with a global language services provider.

Mark Gibson, Gibson Research Consultancy Founder and Health Communication Specialist