Bentley University juniors and seniors enrolled in the Human Relations in Healthcare Organizations class, led by Psychology Professor Helen Meldrum, were recently invited to work with the Publicis Healthcare Communications Group, a global leader in healthcare communications. The students’ work focused on improving the internet presence of Publicis’ full service promotional medical communication agencies – Medicus International in London & New York, Discovery Chicago, and Science and Medicine.

The Publicis senior executives were most interested in the public perception of their Scientific Services department - a division comprised of highly credentialed medical writers and editors who provide quality control, research, creation of digital media, educational materials and publication services. The Bentley project focused on analyzing Publicis’ main competitors’ online marketing positioning strategies both in the US and the UK to learn how they structured and presented their scientific services staff and what makes them appealing to potential clients, who are typically pharmaceutical and healthcare firms.

“Understanding our competitive landscape is absolutely essential in order to continue growing and improving our scientific offerings,” noted Joseph Abrajano, PhD, a medical writer with Publicis. Abrajano also noted, of the students’ work, “We were particularly impressed with their rapidly acquired depth of knowledge and the poise and maturity with which they conducted themselves during the final presentation. The final report has added specific strategic value to our organization because we were able to identify areas for improvement on our sites in order to attract and retain top medial writing talent.”

The students provided their recommendations to enhance the image of the Publicis Medical Education Group companies during a final presentation that was broadcast via Skype to several Publicis agency locations across the US.