The Healthcare Communications Association (HCA) has surveyed 40 organisations involved in the provision of communications services to the healthcare industry, covering both agencies and in-house functions. This report entitled 'Common Challenges for Healthcare Communicators: Findings from the 2005-06 HCA Benchmarking Programme' provides a short summary of the findings that have been disseminated in detail to the participants.

The continually changing external environment, with increased scrutiny and regulation of all pharmaceutical companies' activities, makes it ever more important to establish consistent practices and foster close working relationships between all those communicating with pharma audiences.

The HCA benchmarking survey reveals that there are close parallels between the views of people running agencies and those heading pharma company communications teams. Exploration of some of the differences between agency and client company perspectives highlights the importance of even greater collaboration. Participants in the 2006 survey expressed a clear desire to make this happen, and recognise that it will pay dividends in terms of understanding each other's businesses and ultimately delivering increasingly successful outcomes.

Key overall findings

• Whilst the situation varies from company to company, there is an overall trend towards increasing use of communications, including outsourcing to agencies
• Pharmaceutical corporations have an increasingly positive view of the role of PR and Medical Education and what communications can deliver
• The commitment to conduct comprehensive evaluation is increasing, albeit slowly
• As a whole, the industry faces an increased need to bring in and develop new talent, whilst balancing this with maintaining the commitment of highly valued experienced staff
• Communications teams are investing significant time into making sure that understanding of and compliance with the new ABPI code is paramount
• Agencies and in-house communications teams are well aligned in terms of what they believe should happen with respect to agency selection, but practices sometimes fall short of ideals
• Clear communication and closer collaboration seems to be the key to improving working practices between agencies and in-house communications teams
• Pricing and procurement is still an evolving area and one in which agency and in-house teams can work together to ensure the focus remains on value and not just cost

The full report can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here.