Our Capabilities

MS&L's global healthcare team offers a number of services for clinical trial recruitment, new product launches and post-launch communications, as well as a several areas of therapeutic expertise. Some specific examples are below.

MS&L's Strategic Healthcare Services

MS&L Healthcare Media Services
Media is the lifeblood of MS&L and our healthcare practice.  In fact, MS&L was the first PR agency to implement a dedicated Global Healthcare Media Relations group.  We’ve built a strong reputation as an agency that knows what it takes to secure the coveted national placement or grassroots swell of coverage in markets around the world. 

Our renowned media group is comprised of full-time professionals dedicated to nurturing relationships with top media on a daily basis to uncover opportunities for our clients.  They include former producers with decades of media experience, print reporters and PR media specialists from all over the world.  Our experts immerse themselves in the needs and changes occurring within the media.  From knowing the latest agenda-setting reporter and the newest senior producer, to the latest healthcare trend – our media team serves as our eyes and ears in a dynamic media climate. 

We monitor media coverage and spot latch-on opportunities.  We identify market trends and put products into context.  And, we explore emerging corners of the media, from satellite radio to streaming video, to help our clients maximize their share of voice.

Healthcare Leadership
MS&L’s Healthcare Leadership expertise enhances corporate reputation by strengthening relationships with audiences important to our clients’ business. Our services build leadership positioning in key operational, cultural, financial and strategic business areas. MS&L’s insights and proven experience help companies attract and retain the best talent, protect markets, build trust with stakeholders and become recognized as leaders.

MS&L understands that a company’s reputation impacts all of its stakeholders and plays a critical role in determining whether the company meets its business and financial objectives.  That is why we believe the most strategic and effective corporate communications programs involve each of the six key components of reputation:  quality of products and services, quality of management, financial performance, innovation, people management, and corporate citizenship.  For example, for Inova Health System, we used our proprietary BrandVision process to point out the assets/liabilities of their brand and develop a strategic platform to elevate the organization’s reputation in an extremely competitive marketplace - regionally as well as nationally.

MS&L Healthcare Digital Expertise
MS&L is a leader in helping healthcare clients tap new technologies — the Internet, the blogosphere and beyond – to reach patients and physicians.  In today’s marketplace where patients are more informed, better connected and often skeptical, traditional communication solutions are not enough to motivate patients to act.  Consumers increasingly turn to the Internet for information about treatments they are considering, and they trust word-of-mouth and referrals from other patients in higher percentages than other forms of advertising and marketing.
To reach patients and influencers such as physicians, nurses and caregivers, MS&L’s full-service interactive office runs the gamut from traditional Web development to industry-leading corporate blogging and innovative online marketing and outreach.  We have expertise in Web design, content management, blog development/ management, blogger media relations, program- and product-based microsites, database development, viral Web movies, online newsroom development, interactive infographics and corporate sustainability reporting online.

Medical and Scientific Communications
MS&L offers specialized expertise in communicating medical and scientific information to consumers and professionals.  It’s all about an acute understanding of the science and data and delivering a health message that is understood and connects to consumer lives across the globe.  Using experts around the world, including a PharmD and author of “The Pill Book,” a chemist who specializes in European thoughtleader development and a former associate director of the FDA, we help our clients communicate: 

• The science behind consumer products
• Complicated health news to consumers 
• Medical data
  

We apply this expertise across the spectrum of our services:

• Medical/health/science writing, including bylined articles
• Message development and spokesperson training
• Media outreach 
• Professional medical education  
• Data analysis and outreach, including for professional publications
• Opinion leader and professional outreach
• R&D communications
  

Global Health Affairs & Health Policy
Our Global Health Affairs unit is led by former FDA Associate Commissioner Peter Pitts.  With a team of top-level experts in MS&L’s US and EU offices, MS&L helps clients understand and influence government thinking on key health policy issues. Our services include:

• Monitoring emerging health issues to protect clients, particularly legislative and regulatory activities
• Developing communications strategies to support or thwart issues, including outreach to key agenda-setters, coalition-building, e-fluencer campaigns and media outreach
• Addressing reimbursement challenges
• Preparing for competition from generics in key countries or regions
  

Issues and Crisis Management
MS&L’s philosophy is that issues management is a tool that when utilized properly, does more than make difficult or potential crisis situations go away. Effective issues management can improve the overall management of organizations by providing the tools and techniques that diminish the likelihood of crisis, mitigate imminent crises and maximize opportunities in times of crisis.

On a daily basis, MS&L’s issues management experts work to support our clients on healthcare issues that are data, manufacturing, ethically or media-oriented.  We have a proven process that helps our clients systematically address the key issues and guides the right actions. MS&L has built an exceptionally disciplined, stable pool of talent for dealing with these issues.

Advocacy Relationship Management
For MS&L, advocacy groups are familiar ground.  Many of our top staff has been drawn from advocacy groups specializing in health and public health campaigns. Our approach is to identify and work with these groups on messages appropriate to the issue and the target audience.