UPWARD MOVE

Medical Marketing and Media, Sep 2008 by Peterson, Tracy

MEAGHAN ONOFREY plans to put her focus on dialogues and Healthcare in her new position as president of MBS/Vox, the research consultancy unit of CommonHealth that specializes in analyzing physician-patient interactions.

"We're also going to be expanding our in-office methodology, where we take physicians and patients, to include not only a snapshot of a conversation that happened between a physician and patient," Onofrey explains, "but actually a longterm study that includes capturing physicians and patients having multiple conversations with each other, over a long period of time."

It was during an early project at Georgetown University, studying how medical students transition into doctors, where she discovered her passion for patient-physician dialogue. She joined MBS/Vox soon after completing her bachelor's in linguistics and master's in socio-linguists at Georgetown.

"Now it's five years later and I'm the president of the company," Onofrey says. "So, I think it really goes to show that the possibilities are endless when you have a real passion for something."

Onofrey says that she immediately felt welcome at CommonHealth and that's also what attracted her to the company, not to mention that MBS/Vox is the only unit of its kind. That uniqueness seems to resonate with clients as well. "One day I got a call from a client that I had been working with on a really long-term project," she recalls. "And what she said to me was that the insights that we had delivered and the strategy behind it was something that no one else could have given to her. I got goose bumps at that moment because it was such a wonderful experience."

Onofrey finds such experiences inspirational and is committed to encouraging others to find a career that interests them. "I think for me, it's really feeling proud of yourself that's extremely important," she says. "I try to go through every day by doing one thing that really makes me proud to work for the organization." -Tracy Peterson