Healthcare & Life Sciences Marketing
Most healthcare marketing plans don't fail on the idea. They fail somewhere between the idea and the review cycle, and by the time the work comes back, the launch window has narrowed.
I've spent most of my career in that gap. Product launches at Novoste. Physician training programs at Saint Joseph's Translational Research Institute (now T3 Labs) & Visconti Center of Robotic Surgery. Brand building for robotic surgery across Indian hospital systems at SS Innovations. Corporate and employer brand work for Bristol Myers Squibb and McKesson.
What makes healthcare different
Two things, and both are structural.
You can't say what you want. Every claim carries a review cycle, and marketers who treat legal and regulatory as an obstacle to route around lose months they never get back.
And you're rarely selling to one person. The clinician has to trust the evidence. The administrator has to justify the spend. Sometimes the patient has to live with the decision. Messaging that lands with one of them can quietly work against you with another, which is how organizations end up with a voice nobody recognizes.
How I work in this space
I start with the claim. What can you actually say, what evidence supports it, and what will survive review, before anyone writes a headline. It sounds slower. It's considerably faster than writing everything twice.
From there: positioning that holds up in front of clinicians, messaging built separately for each audience instead of averaged into one, and execution systems your team can run without me. Launch materials, sales enablement, physician education, campaign infrastructure.
Where I've done this
Novoste Corporation. Go-to-market strategy, positioning, and launch for two cardiac medical device products in a new market segment, each over $1M.
T3 Labs. Omni-channel marketing and physician training programs for a pre-clinical research laboratory and robotic surgery center.
SS Innovations. Built the company brand from scratch and led marketing for physician training, working with Fortis to bring robotic surgery capability to three hospitals in India.
Bristol Myers Squibb and McKesson. Corporate and employer brand strategy and integrated programs.
Kimberly-Clark. Employer and consumer brand work across the healthcare product line.
Who This Is For
Marketing leaders at medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, clinical research organizations, and health systems. Usually someone who owns a launch, inherited a brand that hasn't kept pace with the company, or is trying to move a plan through an organization that is very good at saying no.
How do you work with legal and regulatory review?
I bring them in at the claim stage, before anything gets written. Deciding what you can actually say, and what evidence backs it, is faster than writing the campaign twice. Review stops being the thing that kills your timeline and becomes part of building it.
Can you reach clinicians and patients in the same campaign?
Yes, but as separate messages rather than one averaged into the middle. A clinician needs evidence. An administrator needs justification. A patient needs to know what it means for them. The same campaign can hold all three without saying the same sentence to each.
Do you handle launches or ongoing brand work?
Both, and they are different disciplines. Launches need speed and precision inside a fixed window. Brand and employer brand work needs consistency held over years. I will tell you which one you actually need before we start.
