The new industry chair for the Healthcare Communications Association (HCA) is to boost pharma membership as part of his new strategy for 2004.

Speaking at the HCA forum in London last week, Stuart Rose, former commercial director for Elan Pharma UK outlined his plans for membership, education and training, evaluation, benchmarking and marketing.

He said: “We want more industry involved in the HCA because without it is like having an Achilles heel. To achieve this we will be doing two things: firstly offering member companies more value adding outputs and secondly improving our marketing to give our communications a higher profile.”

This, explained Rose, will show industry members the advantages of the HCA. In addition, consultants will be used to put the new strategy into place. “It's all very well having managing directors from healthcare agencies with great ideas, but we need to pay specialists to put them into practice.”

Current HCA courses will continue meanwhile, but the healthcare body will also explore accreditation. There will be two new courses to choose from: Marketing Insights (aimed at senior agency staff) and Global PR (for agency and pharmaceutical companies). There will also be three new evening forums: Recruitment, Journalist Insights, and Conflict & Confidentiality.

With evaluation, Rose said there would be research and publication with return on investment (ROI), and there will be a new Electronic HCA Evaluation Toolkit. Evaluation workshops will be available, as will SMART objectives factsheets.

Marketing tactics will include re-launching the prospectus, an independent HCA website and third party endorsement from organisations such as the ABPI.

Rose encouraged members to get involved through training courses, seminars and benchmarking. He said: “It's essential that we work together to ensure that the HCA continues to work for all of us.”

Commenting on the new chair's strategy, Angie Wiles, joint managing director of Virgo Health PR and former HCA chair said: “It's really important we have an industry chair who gives the HCA a very clear signal of what we're all about. It will make it far easier for us to branch out with more members from pharmaceutical companies with an industry spokesman leading the helm.”

Asked how Rose felt to be the first industry chair he said: “I'm absolutely delighted to be doing it because I passionately believe in what the HCA stands for.”

Kindly reproduced with permission from PMLive.com.