Slowing Down to Speed Up: Rethinking Productivity, Trust, and AI in MedComms

Contributor(s): Vidhi Vashisht, Jerolyn Monte, and Ross Ruriani, and Doreen Valentine (ISMPP)

A perspective from the 2026 European Meeting of ISMPP keynote presentation by Michael Siller, MSC, a coach and consultant with expertise in corporate culture and leadership, change management, and intercultural management

Introduction

In medical communications, the pressure to deliver faster without compromising scientific rigor has never been greater. Deadlines compress, expectations rise, and new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) promise efficiency while introducing new uncertainty. The instinctive response is often to push harder and move faster. But what if that instinct is part of the problem? The keynote address at the 2026 ISMPP EU meeting by Michael Siller, Slowing Down to Speed Up! Why Resilience, Adaptability, and Trust Are the Missing Links Between Speed and Academic Rigour in Medical Writing, challenges this approach. Sustainable speed is not achieved through acceleration alone, but through deliberate pauses that strengthen resilience, adaptability, and trust.

The tension between speed and rigor is often framed as a trade-off. One must give way to the other. However, this framing may be misleading. Instead, as Siller argues, this dynamic should be seen as a paradox, two competing demands that must coexist. The challenge, then, is not to resolve the paradox, but to navigate it