Brendan Gallagher
EVP, Connected Health Innovation
Digitas Health LifeBrands
Enhancing Brands, Engaging Patients
Brendan Gallagher doesn’t just accept things as they are. He consistently pushes his agency and its clients to reimagine what’s possible in the world of health marketing by remaining at the forefront of rising digital trends and social media strategy.
At Digitas Health LifeBrands, Brendan led the launch of the Connected Health Innovations Group, a new capability that combines the agency’s mobile strategy, social content marketing and community management, technology, and partnerships offerings. The result: The ability to leverage digital platforms to enhance brand strategies and more deeply engage patients.
“This group was formed out of a recognition that patients and healthcare professionals are empowered by mobile, energized by social, and are bringing new expectations to the relationship they have with their brands,” says Brendan. “We want to help our clients create meaningful experiences for that new reality.”
Brendan and his team spearheaded several groundbreaking initiatives, such as Start90, a mobile app framework that provides a 90-day promise for optimal therapy, which allows for easier medication tracking and co-pay card management. His team launched a Facebook community for patients with multiple sclerosis, and a first pharma-branded Tumblr to foster patient communication.
Notably, Brendan helped create the annual mDot Connected Health Conference, an industry-leading event that brings together industry heavy weights and startups to inspire new connections and partnerships. For the past two years, Brendan’s social team has lead the online engagement efforts and conversations at the global health conference TEDMED, which in 2014 fostered 176 million impressions over the course of the five-day event.
Under Brendan’s leadership, the Connected Health Innovations Group grew by 50% in the past year with 11 new hires. Brendan’s efforts are reinventing the way the pharma industry operates. Their mission is to “put social, mobile, and technology at the heart of everything we do, that we actually do it, and that what we do has never been done.”
