medical affairs - Digital Science https://www.digital-science.com/blog/tags/medicalaffairs/ Advancing the Research Ecosystem Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:48:55 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 https://www.digital-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/cropped-favicon-container-2-32x32.png medical affairs - Digital Science https://www.digital-science.com/blog/tags/medicalaffairs/ 32 32 How experts are redefining research visibility beyond traditional metrics https://www.digital-science.com/blog/2025/09/research-visibility-beyond-traditional-metrics/ Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:43:04 +0000 https://www.digital-science.com/?p=94573 A panel of experts explores publication success, new measures of impact, and how digital transformation and AI are reshaping the game.

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On-Demand Webinar: The Future of Research Visibility: Beyond Traditional Metrics

Introduction

Success in scientific publishing has long been measured by citations and impact factors. Yet in today’s Medical Affairs landscape, the definition of value is shifting rapidly. This article recaps insights from the recent panel discussion The Future of Research Visibility: Beyond Traditional Metrics, where experts from across the field explored how publication success is evolving, which new measures of impact matter most, and how digital transformation and AI are reshaping the game.

Bringing a wealth of diverse perspectives, the panel featured Shehla Sheikh, Head of Medical Communication & Publications at Kyowa Kirin; Kim Della Penna, Scientific Communications Director for Lymphoma, Myeloid, and Multiple Myeloma at Johnson & Johnson; Myriam Cherif, Founder of Kalyx Medical and former Regional Medical Director at GSK; and Carlos Areia, Senior Data Scientist at Digital Science. The discussion was moderated by Natalie Jonk, Enterprise Marketing Segment Lead, who guided the conversation through the critical challenges and opportunities shaping the future of research visibility.

Success: Still a moving target

Defining success remains one of the greatest challenges. For some organizations, it’s still as simple as getting the data published. For others, success means shaping clinical guidelines or influencing real-world decision-making.

Kim explained:

“A lot of these tools help us see who is engaging with our publication. Are they sharing the publication, did they find it important enough to share? Where is the data being incorporated? Is it being used in policy and guidelines, cost data, real-world healthcare data or by population health decision makers for access?”

Myriam emphasized how the lens has broadened over the past decade:

“A decade ago, people just looked at impact factors and citations. Now, we discuss with HCPs how data applies to patients. Sometimes a paper may be more practical for certain regions. We’ve moved toward a more holistic approach.”

Metrics beyond the traditional

Today, a wealth of data is available, but the challenge is deciding which metrics are truly meaningful. Downloads, mentions, and social media shares are only part of the story.

Carlos noted the complexity:

“Things are changing quite fast with data. How do you track success when different publications have different goals? Sometimes the goal is to see how quickly new studies get into clinical guidelines. Other times, it’s about reaching a very specific group of oncologists in one country.”

Sentiment analysis is also emerging as a key tool:

“We can now see if a publication has been well or badly received by, for example, a group of cardiologists. Medical Affairs is adapting rapidly to what real-time data can offer,” Carlos added.

The discoverability dilemma

Shehla raised a critical issue: ensuring publications are findable by the right stakeholders.

“Discoverability is super important. A lot of data ends up in supplementary indices, which aren’t always accessible. If it’s not directly available through the paper, that’s problematic. It raises the question: how much do we include in the main publication versus holding back for supplementary materials?”

The difficulty, she argued, isn’t just in publishing but in making materials trackable. Without DOIs or identifiers, measuring performance across channels becomes impossible.

Carlos emphasized that when any content type, including supplementary data, infographics, and plain language summaries, is uploaded to Figshare and assigned a DOI, it becomes both accessible and trackable.  This is a critical step that several Digital Science customers are already using to monitor and demonstrate the impact of their materials and gain really deep insights regarding who is engaging with their content.

Formats and channels that resonate

Visual and digital formats are transforming scientific communication. With tools like Altmetric and Figshare, it’s now possible to track which content resonates with different audiences,  for example, whether visual abstracts work best for patients, short videos for junior doctors, or news platforms or Medscape for senior clinicians.

Key takeaways from the discussion included:

  • Infographics and visual abstracts help make complex data more digestible for both HCPs and patients.
  • Social media engagement, accelerated since COVID-19, has expanded the demographic reach of publications.
  • Podcasts, YouTube, and blogs are emerging as alternative channels for research dissemination.

Shehla summarized the opportunity:

“Data visualization has been a game changer. It helps people understand complex results without dumbing them down. But it has to be a true representation of the data.”

Strategic decision-making with engagement data

Engagement data is no longer just descriptive – it’s strategic.

Myriam explained:

“This data helps us know which publications to amplify and in what format. If a subgroup analysis is relevant for Asia or South America, we integrate it into the regional strategy. Affiliates want to know how to use this data locally, whether in slides or field medical materials.”

Carlos added an example of reverse engineering success:

“We worked with a partner who had two trials presented at the same congress. One made it into a guideline in a specific country much faster than the other. By looking back at the local attention it had on social media, news and others, we tried to understand why.”

The future: AI, social media, and trust

Looking ahead, AI and digital platforms are set to further disrupt how success is measured.

Myriam highlighted new challenges:

“Citations and downloads will matter less. AI tools are already being used by HCPs to answer questions on diseases and treatments. But a recent study showed less than 15% overlap in references across Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity when asked the same question. Metadata and referencing are going to be critical to ensure our publications are being picked up correctly.”

Kim added:

“We need to optimize what we create so AI can pick up data through correct tagging. Who is engaging, what types of data they’re engaging with, and what channel they use – these are all factors we have to plan for.”

Carlos cautioned on the risks:

“AI is a wonderful tool if used correctly – but like computer scientists used to say: it’s ‘garbage in, garbage out’. AI is very confident even when it’s wrong. The real value comes from using the right data together with AI to help people understand it better and extract the needed insights from it, whilst mitigating its potential for misuse and misinformation.”

Conclusion: Toward a holistic, dynamic view of impact

As the panel made clear, measuring publication performance can no longer be reduced to a single number. Success is multi-dimensional, context-specific, and evolving alongside technology and stakeholder expectations.

Traditional metrics such as citations and impact factors remain useful, but they are no longer sufficient. Engagement data, sentiment, and discoverability are now central to understanding whether a publication truly resonates and reaches its intended audience. At the same time, AI, social media, and new digital formats are reshaping how, and by whom research is consumed. And sometimes, the most meaningful measures are the informal ones: when medical scientific liaisons hear health care professionals discussing a paper, when KOLs reference it unprompted, or when data directly influences patient care.

A call to reframe success

The future of publication success will depend on Medical Affairs teams embracing this broader, more dynamic definition of impact. By combining rigorous traditional metrics with innovative digital measures, and by ensuring content is discoverable, trackable, and presented in accessible formats, organizations can create lasting value. Most importantly, reframing success around real-world influence and patient outcomes ensures that research doesn’t just get published, it makes a difference.

Continue the conversation

At Digital Science, we’re committed to helping Medical Affairs professionals thrive in an era where research visibility and impact are being redefined. To deepen the insights shared in this panel, we invite you to explore our latest white paper, Empowering Medical Affairs in the Digital Age,” authored by thought leader Mary Ellen Bates. Inside, you’ll find practical strategies to navigate evolving challenges, demonstrate value, and drive measurable outcomes.

Mary Ellen Bates will also be leading our upcoming webinar, “From Data Chaos to Strategic Impact: Transforming Medical Affairs in the Digital Age” (Tuesday 28 October 2025).

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Resources for industry https://www.digital-science.com/blog/2021/04/resources-for-industry/ Thu, 15 Apr 2021 10:47:44 +0000 https://www.digital-science.com/?post_type=story&p=50062 Find out how you can implement search strategies, connect with a diverse range of data sources and so much more.

The post Resources for industry appeared first on Digital Science.

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Featured ResourceNew agile methods to extract deeper knowledge

Find out how we provide an open and iterative approach by connecting our tools with those of the research community. We develop special functions within a matter of days allowing you to implement a search strategy, connect with a diverse range of data sources and so much more.

Life Science Vendor Resources

Providing valuable data on funding flows for market model development

Find out how Illumina uses Dimensions to understand trends in academic funding, KOL identification and to find leads for sales.

Quotes icon
“It is really beneficial to be able to use the same keywords across the 3 different content types – grants, pubs and clinical trials – in one platform.”
Aruna Rajan
Staff Market Research Analyst, Illumina

Life Science Vendor Resources

Getting started with Dimensions L&C

In this video learn how to run semantic search in Dimensions L&C to get a list of precise and comprehensive results. We will also explore the ontological tree within Dimensions L&C, which contains over 40 million concepts related to life sciences and chemistry, and finally we will see a quick overview of the analytical and search tools Dimensions L&C has to offer.

Generate insights quicker using Co-occurrence Analysis

In this video learn how to run a Co-occurrence Analysis in Dimensions L&C, a powerful tool which enables you to generate insights from millions of scientific documents within seconds. We will explore general and specific use cases for this function to enable you to get the most out of Dimensions L&C.

Understand disease mechanisms

In this video learn how to use “co-occurrence analysis” in Dimensions L&C to get a better understanding of disease mechanisms. We will generate insights from hundreds of millions of scientific documents by correlating a disease with semantic concepts – such as signalling pathways, genes & proteins and pathophysiological processes – to quickly generate hypotheses on disease mechanisms, which is an important first step in drug target identification and the drug development process in general.

Understand drug candidate mechanisms of action

In this video learn how to use “chemistry search” to discover chemical compounds similar to your drug candidate or containing a specific chemical substructure of your interest. We will run a comprehensive search to identify documents, such as patents, publications, grants and clinical trials, that mention relevant compounds and apply a powerful semantic concepts extraction analysis to generate insights on the compounds’ mechanisms of action and therapeutic applications.

Clarify the mechanism of action

To select the best therapeutic application for repositioning a known drug or avoid undesirable adverse events for novel compounds, it is critical to have a clear understanding how the drug or compound works.  

To uncover these insights, you need to find and analyze all information available on a drug/compound or those similar to it. The powerful semantic search of Dimensions L&C allows you to search through 40 million concepts, including new compounds, approved drugs, genes, and proteins alongside chemistry search and co-occurrence analysis.  This enables you to identify more relevant documents and gain deeper insights about drug and compound connections to proteins, disease, signalling pathways, pathophysiology, and toxicities.

Analyze disease mechanisms

Understanding target and disease biology is crucial for success when bringing a new drug to market. However, the data supporting this understanding is spread across hundreds of thousands and millions of scientific documents, including publications, patents, grants, and clinical trials.  Dimensions L&C provides a powerful semantic search with up to 40 million concepts that incorporate genes,  proteins and diseases, derived from hundreds of millions of scientific documents, together with co-occurrence analysis.

This enables you to quickly discover more relevant documents and gain deeper insights regarding disease mechanisms and the connections between diseases, proteins, signalling pathways, and biological processes in a real-time.

Identify drug targets

Identification of a “right” drug target is a critical step in drug development that helps to avoid later stage failures of drug candidates in clinical trials. To make an evidence-based decision on drug targets, a compilation and analysis of multiple scientific documents are required.

Dimensions L&C provides a powerful semantic search of up to 40 million concepts, including genes & proteins, diseases and corporate information, together with co-occurrence analysis. This enables you to rapidly discover more relevant documents and gain deeper insights as to potential drug targets and their connections to diseases, drugs, biological and pathological processes, and commercial potential in a real time.

Driving Innovation & Collaboration Across Boehringer Ingelheim

In this case study, Dr. Karlheinz Spenny and his team at the SIC share what triggered their internal innovation campaign to move from their legacy literature management solution to the Enterprise edition of ReadCube and their experiences along the way.

What’s inside:

  • Factors driving the switch from BI’s legacy literature management/citation tool
  • Why BI chose Papers Enterprise
  • Preparing for & managing change through transition
  • The rollout & reactions
  • Standout features
  • Reflections post-deployment
Quotes icon
“What we have achieved within just 7 months after the roll-out of ReadCube can only be considered a jump to the next level of literature management for our research scientists and has positioned BI as front-runners within our industry.”
Dr. Karlheinz Spenny
Boehringer Ingelheim

Navigating Networks Of Oncology Biomarkers

Using large-scale analytics of published literature, biomarkers across six cancer types were successfully characterized in terms of their emergence in the published literature and the context in which they are described.

This novel approach could help identify biomarkers and biomarker panels, which may be otherwise missed through traditional search methods, for expert review and exploration in a clinical setting.

Navigating Networks Of Oncology Biomarkers

Research is continually evolving and dynamics within and between fields change constantly. Landscape assessments ensure you understand the lay of the land and are prepared to adapt to change. Our analysts use Dimensions to help you:

  • Identify major global research areas.
  • Understand how scientific fields are changing. 
  • Assess emerging trends within a specific field of study. 
  • Recognize the experts in these fields.

Enhancing your Gap Analysis with Machine Enhanced Literature Retrieval

Dimensions data can be used to enhance your literature gap analysis. Dimensions is particularly suitable for performing literature gap analyses on a large scale, combining standard abstract searches with high precision full-text queries and subsequent aggregation. This allows creating heat maps on numbers of publications for combinations of terms, e.g., drugs versus adverse events, with the option to directly view the set of publications for a particular combination. Such an approach takes minutes to run and can be repeated to track changes over time.

Real word databases identification 

While real-world databases are of increasing interest to researchers, there is no comprehensive dataset listing all real-world databases. We have created an algorithm which finds publications presenting real-world databases:

  • Several search methods were applied to select articles which present research using real world databases
  • Publications were identified which were frequently cited by the above articles, to arrive at the initial publications announcing real world databases
  • With this approach the number of known real world databases could be doubled

How to Run Your Biotech R&D Virtually

Hire more people, take your groundbreaking data and hit milestones in just 3 steps! We provide a suite of research solutions to hire, store and share data across your companies to make your research efficient and cost-effective. Anyone working in a lab will benefit from this session.

Pinpointing Global Expertise In Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Disease types associated with NAFLD present a tremendous research and development challenge for life sciences organizations and also a great opportunity for them to create value and innovation. Find out how Digital Science offers the data capabilities to help you uncover insights and expertise in disease-related topics and key indication areas.

Identifying Global Expertise in CAR-T-time data

Digital Science offers data capabilities and the connected data to help life science organizations understand the Car-T research and development landscape. Find out how Digital Science offers the data capabilities to help you uncover insights and expertise in disease-related topics and key indication areas.

Medical Affairs Resources

Measuring the value of medical affairs

As a medical affairs professional or publications planner in the pharmaceutical industry, we understand that you need to demonstrate the impact of the work you do. Download our whitepaper today to find out how altmetrics can help you.

Get better insights for medical affairs

Spend less time searching for the right information and more time acting on it. Dimensions is a comprehensive discovery and analytics platform with millions of data points, and an ideal information source for medical affairs professionals. 

Finding the right experts just got easier

Since finding KOLs is a frequently performed and important activity, the Dimensions team created a new tool that makes it even easier. It features a simple and intuitive user interface that accesses all of the data Dimensions has to offer.

Resources for Industry

Peter Door Biodata video

Featured Resource: New agile methods to extract deeper knowledge

Find out how we provide an open and iterative approach by connecting our tools with those of the research community. We develop special functions within a matter of days allowing you to implement a search strategy, connect with a diverse range of data sources and so much more.

Life Science Vendor Resources

Providing valuable data on funding flows for market model development

Find out how Illumina uses Dimensions to understand trends in academic funding, KOL identification and to find leads for sales.


“ It is really beneficial to be able to use the same keywords across the 3 different content types – grants, pubs and clinical trials – in one platform.”

Aruna Rajan, Staff Market Research Analyst, Illumina

Pharma and Biotech Resources

Getting started with Dimensions L&C

In this video learn how to run semantic search in Dimensions L&C to get a list of precise and comprehensive results. We will also explore the ontological tree within Dimensions L&C, which contains over 40 million concepts related to life sciences and chemistry, and finally we will see a quick overview of the analytical and search tools Dimensions L&C has to offer.


Generate insights quicker using Co-occurrence Analysis

In this video learn how to run a Co-occurrence Analysis in Dimensions L&C, a powerful tool which enables you to generate insights from millions of scientific documents within seconds. We will explore general and specific use cases for this function to enable you to get the most out of Dimensions L&C.


Understand disease mechanisms

In this video learn how to use “co-occurrence analysis” in Dimensions L&C to get a better understanding of disease mechanisms. We will generate insights from hundreds of millions of scientific documents by correlating a disease with semantic concepts – such as signalling pathways, genes & proteins and pathophysiological processes – to quickly generate hypotheses on disease mechanisms, which is an important first step in drug target identification and the drug development process in general.


Understand drug candidate mechanisms of action

In this video learn how to use “chemistry search” to discover chemical compounds similar to your drug candidate or containing a specific chemical substructure of your interest. We will run a comprehensive search to identify documents, such as patents, publications, grants and clinical trials, that mention relevant compounds and apply a powerful semantic concepts extraction analysis to generate insights on the compounds’ mechanisms of action and therapeutic applications.


Clarify the mechanism of action

To select the best therapeutic application for repositioning a known drug or avoid undesirable adverse events for novel compounds, it is critical to have a clear understanding how the drug or compound works.  

To uncover these insights, you need to find and analyze all information available on a drug/compound or those similar to it. The powerful semantic search of Dimensions L&C allows you to search through 40 million concepts, including new compounds, approved drugs, genes, and proteins alongside chemistry search and co-occurrence analysis.  This enables you to identify more relevant documents and gain deeper insights about drug and compound connections to proteins, disease, signalling pathways, pathophysiology, and toxicities.


Analyze disease mechanisms

Understanding target and disease biology is crucial for success when bringing a new drug to market. However, the data supporting this understanding is spread across hundreds of thousands and millions of scientific documents, including publications, patents, grants, and clinical trials.  Dimensions L&C provides a powerful semantic search with up to 40 million concepts that incorporate genes,  proteins and diseases, derived from hundreds of millions of scientific documents, together with co-occurrence analysis.

This enables you to quickly discover more relevant documents and gain deeper insights regarding disease mechanisms and the connections between diseases, proteins, signalling pathways, and biological processes in a real-time.


Identify drug targets

Identification of a “right” drug target is a critical step in drug development that helps to avoid later stage failures of drug candidates in clinical trials. To make an evidence-based decision on drug targets, a compilation and analysis of multiple scientific documents are required.

Dimensions L&C provides a powerful semantic search of up to 40 million concepts, including genes & proteins, diseases and corporate information, together with co-occurrence analysis. This enables you to rapidly discover more relevant documents and gain deeper insights as to potential drug targets and their connections to diseases, drugs, biological and pathological processes, and commercial potential in a real time.


Driving Innovation & Collaboration Across Boehringer Ingelheim

In this case study, Dr. Karlheinz Spenny and his team at the SIC share what triggered their internal innovation campaign to move from their legacy literature management solution to the Enterprise edition of ReadCube and their experiences along the way.

What’s inside:

  • Factors driving the switch from BI’s legacy literature management/citation tool
  • Why BI chose Papers Enterprise
  • Preparing for & managing change through transition
  • The rollout & reactions
  • Standout features
  • Reflections post-deployment

“What we have achieved within just 7 months after the roll-out of ReadCube can only be considered a jump to the next level of literature management for our research scientists and has positioned BI as front-runners within our industry.”

Dr. Karlheinz Spenny, Boehringer Ingelheim


Navigating Networks Of Oncology Biomarkers 

Using large-scale analytics of published literature, biomarkers across six cancer types were successfully characterized in terms of their emergence in the published literature and the context in which they are described.

This novel approach could help identify biomarkers and biomarker panels, which may be otherwise missed through traditional search methods, for expert review and exploration in a clinical setting.


Landscape analysis 

Research is continually evolving and dynamics within and between fields change constantly. Landscape assessments ensure you understand the lay of the land and are prepared to adapt to change. Our analysts use Dimensions to help you:

  • Identify major global research areas.
  • Understand how scientific fields are changing. 
  • Assess emerging trends within a specific field of study. 
  • Recognize the experts in these fields.

Enhancing your Gap Analysis with Machine Enhanced Literature Retrieval

Dimensions data can be used to enhance your literature gap analysis. Dimensions is particularly suitable for performing literature gap analyses on a large scale, combining standard abstract searches with high precision full-text queries and subsequent aggregation. This allows creating heat maps on numbers of publications for combinations of terms, e.g., drugs versus adverse events, with the option to directly view the set of publications for a particular combination. Such an approach takes minutes to run and can be repeated to track changes over time.


Real word databases identification 

While real-world databases are of increasing interest to researchers, there is no comprehensive dataset listing all real-world databases. We have created an algorithm which finds publications presenting real-world databases:

  • Several search methods were applied to select articles which present research using real world databases
  • Publications were identified which were frequently cited by the above articles, to arrive at the initial publications announcing real world databases
  • With this approach the number of known real world databases could be doubled

How to Run Your Biotech R&D Virtually

Hire more people, take your groundbreaking data and hit milestones in just 3 steps! We provide a suite of research solutions to hire, store and share data across your companies to make your research efficient and cost-effective. Anyone working in a lab will benefit from this session.


Pinpointing Global Expertise In Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Disease types associated with NAFLD present a tremendous research and development challenge for life sciences organizations and also a great opportunity for them to create value and innovation. Find out how Digital Science offers the data capabilities to help you uncover insights and expertise in disease-related topics and key indication areas.


Identifying Global Expertise in CAR-T-time data

Digital Science offers data capabilities and the connected data to help life science organizations understand the Car-T research and development landscape. Find out how Digital Science offers the data capabilities to help you uncover insights and expertise in disease-related topics and key indication areas.

Medical Affairs Resources

Measuring the value of medical affairs

As a medical affairs professional or publications planner in the pharmaceutical industry, we understand that you need to demonstrate the impact of the work you do. Download our whitepaper today to find out how altmetrics can help you.


Get better insights for medical affairs

Spend less time searching for the right information and more time acting on it. Dimensions is a comprehensive discovery and analytics platform with millions of data points, and an ideal information source for medical affairs professionals. 


Finding the right experts just got easier

Since finding KOLs is a frequently performed and important activity, the Dimensions team created a new tool that makes it even easier. It features a simple and intuitive user interface that accesses all of the data Dimensions has to offer. 

The post Resources for industry appeared first on Digital Science.

]]>
Measuring the value of medical affairs https://www.digital-science.com/blog/2021/02/measuring-the-value-of-medical-affairs/ Mon, 08 Feb 2021 15:21:21 +0000 https://www.digital-science.com/?post_type=story&p=46156 With the rise of altmetrics it is now easier to identify key opinion leaders and Digital Online Influencers.

The post Measuring the value of medical affairs appeared first on Digital Science.

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Measuring the value of medical affairs

As a medical affairs professional or publications planner in the pharmaceutical industry, we understand that you need to demonstrate the impact of the work you do. Some questions you may ask yourself might include:

  • How can I explain to my managers and CMO the full reach of the articles I write, beyond counting citations?
  • Is it possible to know what patients and doctors are saying about the research I publish for my company?

Until very recently, these questions were nearly impossible to answer. But with the rise of altmetrics (“alternative metrics” from the social web that help authors understand who is talking about their research and what they are saying), it is now easier than ever to identify key opinion leaders (KOLs) and their online equivalents, Digital Online Influencers (DOIs). In partnership with experts at medical affairs consultancy IMPRINT Science, we have tested and identified key tactics for using altmetrics to measure the value of your medical affairs publishing efforts.

Download our whitepaper today to find out how altmetrics can help you.

The post Measuring the value of medical affairs appeared first on Digital Science.

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Media monitoring https://www.digital-science.com/blog/2020/03/media-monitoring/ Sun, 01 Mar 2020 12:48:39 +0000 https://www.digital-science.com/?post_type=story&p=46100 Tools To Tell The Story Of Your Research

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On the surface, Altmetric and traditional media monitoring tools seem to provide much the same service; the ability to track, collate and report on online conversations. In reality, although there are similarities, there are some key differences to note which mean that when used in conjunction, these two tools become a powerful combined resource for gathering the insights you need:

one pager about Altmetric and media monitoring

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