W2O Group announced that veteran biopharma executive John H. Johnson and healthcare marketing and communications leader Charlene Prounis have joined its board of directors.

Omnicom Health Group was formed in February 2016, and executives say the network entered 2017 with a long list of accomplishments. “Our first priority was to set a vision for our collective agencies,” says Ed Wise, CEO of Omnicom Health Group. “Yes, we are the strongest and largest collection of healthcare specialty communication companies in the business. But we wanted to be absolutely clear about what we wanted to achieve by coming together.”

According to its founders, Outcome Health advances society through technologies that change behavior to positively shape the human condition. “Tracking to deliver its platform to 70 percent of all healthcare practices domestically by 2020, Outcome Health aspires to activate the best health outcome possible for every person in the world,” executives say.

For Pacific Communications, 2016 was a year of growing better, management says. Not only did the agency meet all of its business objectives, including exceeding its forecast, Pacific also succeeded in strengthening several core areas: senior leadership and staff training and development.

According to executives at PALIO, the agency rallies around one timeless value: Do the Great Thing. “With this in mind, the agency focused on five strategic imperatives in 2016: brilliant ideas, strategic excellence, client cultivation, PALIO people, and inVentiv connections,” management says. “These imperatives drove business growth and talent recruitment across PALIO throughout a year of great things for the agency.”

Patients & Purpose is Omnicom Health Group’s full-service, award-winning agency dedicated to patients and marketing health brands. Since the agency was founded back in 2000 as CDMiConnect, it has put patients first, but now as Patients & Purpose, the agency is focused on making patients better – better communicators with their doctors, better managers of their treatments, and better advocates for their health, executives say.

A steady drumbeat of growth has set the pace at PIXACORE (formerly Intstrux) for nearly a decade, according to its executive team. “In each of the past eight years, this independent agency of multichannel thought leaders has achieved impressive annual growth rates exceeding 40 percent,” managers say. “That tempo increased significantly in 2016, through organic growth with existing clients, substantial new business wins, and expansion of the PIXACORE footprint both stateside and globally.”

“2016 will be remembered as the year that our 40-year old agency was reborn as precisioneffect,” agency leaders say. “From day one our ‘new’ agency was bursting at the seams, with growth of 20% year over year, requiring new offices on both coasts, new capabilities, and loads of brilliant new employees to meet our ever higher standards for great.” Those standards paid off as the agency partnered with clients to bring critical advancements to patients and physicians.

During 2016, Precision for Value experienced another year of impressive growth and success, according to its management team. The year was punctuated by new investments; expansion into new facilities; broadened capabilities, services, and brands; and several high-profile product-support efforts.

The need for brand differentiation in the healthcare industry has never been more critical, the leaders of PulseCX state. Therapeutic categories are crowded, promotional noise levels are high, and differentiation of most product features/benefits is imperceptible. The idea of “selling” brand promises is no longer applicable. To drive increased customer engagement (that increases product awareness and acquisition), agency leaders say brands must create an enhanced value proposition that customers can not get elsewhere. They must deliver this value proposition across traditional and emerging channels in a way that customers can experience it for themselves, on their terms (not the brands’). Successful brands today are creating authentic and relevant customer experiences (CX) that connect target audiences with the information, tools, and resources most pertinent to them, depending on where they are in their healthcare journeys.