The Healthcare Communications Association (HCA) and healthcare comms specialist 90TEN have published a report aimed at boosting creativity and innovation in healthcare and scientific comms.

Cannes or Canned? is the result of an initiative that was started in 2018 after pharmaceutical comms missed out on a Grand Prix and the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity for the second year in a row.

The report makes five key recommendations: create a culture that embraces innovation; empower and value brave, innovative people from within and beyond healthcare; strip back processes and streamline activities to enable communications that are agile and responsive to customers’ needs; get up close and personal with customers; put learning at the heart of healthcare comms.

Cannes or Canned? brought together UK and internationally based senior communicators from seven pharmaceutical companies. They also received input and inspiration from innovators in industries including banking, fashion retail, artificial intelligence and toy marketing.

HCA Executive Committee member Edel McCaffrey said: “Given that the pharmaceutical industry is powered by experimentation and discovery, healthcare should be leading the way when it comes to innovative communications. That isn’t always the case, so we set up this initiative to find out two things: what is holding back our creativity, and what can we do to set it free?”

Peter Impey, managing director of 90TEN’s communications division, said: “As healthcare communicators we help to put the pharmaceutical industry’s life-changing discoveries into patients’ hands, but healthcare is changing fast and unless we think creatively and embrace innovation, we risk losing our voice. These recommendations are a recipe for making our communications braver, bolder and more creative, and I’m very excited to see where they take the healthcare communications sector.”

Healthcare communicators are invited to contact the HCA and join the movement to open up creativity and innovation in healthcare communications.