Manila, Philippines – Healthcare communications is always a matter of human life. Havas Life, the medical marketing specialist arm of Havas Ortega musters a team of client servicing, creative, and healthcare practitioners to ensure that Science and Creativity are inspired and propelled by their Human Purpose philosophy. Part of the global Havas Health and You network, Havas Life works within a Village of experts from digital, social, media, CRM, e-commerce, and balances data, science, and creatives to come up with collaborative end-to-end solutions that help their clients reach consumers and healthcare professionals (HCPs) alike.
Key to the Havas Life team are two experts that cut their teeth as healthcare practitioners and medical communications specialists.
Amor H. Magno, DMD is the General Manager of Havas Life, the specialized business unit of the Havas Ortega group that offers business solutions to healthcare and wellness organizations.
Prior to joining Havas Ortega, Dr. Amor held various sales and marketing positions in the Pharmaceutical, Consumer and FMCG industries and has won a couple of Asia Pacific marketing excellence awards during her stint at GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson. She also worked with Merck Sharpe and Dhome, Fern C and Pfizer as a sales & marketing consultant where she positively impacted doctor prescriptions and overall sales.
This experience and connection resulted to Havas Life’s latest win with the Our Drugstore Man Inc (ODSMAN) business. ODSMAN is a digital, marketing, and supply chains solution for a wide range of brands and products including medical equipment, devices and supplies, refreshment, household, and restaurant products.
Blue Soon, MD, is the Senior Medical Consultant, and a practicing radiologist. Dr. Blue uses his medical and research background to ensure that science-based communications from Havas Life remain well-grounded in facts. He has been working in the advertising industry for the past 10 years. Starting with McCann Healthcare before joining Havas Ortega, he has helped shape campaigns for a wide range of ethical and consumer brands, including pharmaceuticals infant formula, scientific instruments, nutritional supplements, food and beverage, and medical institutions.
Dr. Blue provides unique healthcare professional insights, input on translation of scientific concepts and principles into colloquial language and creative executions, literature scanning for relevant research, and science writing.
Combining 3 decades of experience in the field of health communications, Dr. Amor and Dr. Blue shares key signals of the future of healthcare:
Health is now digital. So what?
As healthcare becomes more and more digital by the minute, doctor-patient relationship should not only be tighter, but also more updated. Dr. Amor shares, “The pandemic fast-tracked the healthcare industry’s shift to digital. Thus, companies need to be more creative in communicating, engaging, and connecting their brands to the people who need to know.”
“The job for medical communications is therefore twofold: to make sure doctors are aware of this trend; and to help them understand the shift in patient behavior so they can communicate with patients better. We as medical communicators can and should give doctors the tools to explain correct health information to their patients. With our broader understanding of the multiple communication channels available to patients, we are in a unique position to help them.”, Dr. Blue Soon expounds.
Science needs to be more human
“Removing science from the healthcare industry is like telling water not to be wet. But as HCPs, it is our duty to scrutinize information available out there. And at Havas Life we make sure that the Science doesn’t go over the heads of whoever we’re engaging with.”, starts Dr. Amor.
Dr. Blue adds, “I don’t think there is a thing as too much science; but there is a lot of poorly explained science, which leads to misunderstanding and ultimately, health decisions that do harm than good. This has also led to the anti-science establishment movement, where the non-science savvy layman can feel so overwhelmed by the information, and their inability to understand everything that they just shut down and stop listening.
It’s important to realize this as medical and science communicators. We should be able to explain science better; to create comms that cater to individuals with different levels of scientific experience and understanding.”
The better the knowledge, the better the quality of life
Dr. Amor shares, “At Havas Life, we have been increasingly focused on data to gives us a better understanding of the attitudes and behavior of HCPs and patients. With this, we can pinpoint the type of communication they want to be served and how they want to be served. Our philosophy in Havas Life is to make a meaningful difference by driving human purpose into everything that we do. At the end of the day, living is not just about surviving; Life is about thriving.
Dr. Blue adds, “The ability to gather and analyze more and more target audience data, as well as more targeted communication platforms, has led to an evolution in the way we deliver messages. We no longer have to base our recommendations on what we feel, but on what can be proven to work.
“Now, this can easily lead to us dehumanizing our audience, to think of them as targets, and not as people. So, we now couple this with a renewed emphasis on Human Purpose. Our end goal is to make people’s lives better by helping them live healthier lives. And we are only using comms as a way to deliver the right information to them.
“Because we know this and keep this at the forefront of everything we do, I think it says we have a bright future ahead for Havas Life.”
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