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Healthcare and pharma are undergoing profound transformation – from the consumerisation of healthcare to rapid advances in data, technology, and AI.
With the recent launch of STRAT7 Health – our dedicated life sciences team – we sat down with healthcare leads, Lizzie Eckardt and Hannah Potter, to explore the trends shaping the sector and how insight teams can help organisations not just adapt, but thrive.
Lizzie Eckardt
STRAT7 Health Lead
Hannah Potter
STRAT7 Health Lead
Q: Change feels especially intense in healthcare right now. What’s driving that, and how are clients responding?
Hannah: “Change has always been part of life, but right now it feels particularly tumultuous. There are geopolitical pressures, cultural shifts, and rapid advances in healthcare innovation — all happening at once.
What we’re seeing is that pharma clients need partners who understand their broader journey, not just the next project. That’s why we focus on relationships rather than transactions. Client needs are evolving quickly, and we have to flex with them.”
Q: With everything moving so fast, is there a risk of becoming too short-term in our thinking?
Lizzie: “Yes – and it’s a real concern. Across industries, decisions are becoming more reactive. Healthcare traditionally hasn’t worked that way, so it’s a big adjustment.
The challenge now is balancing the short-term need to respond quickly with long-term strategic thinking. Trends matter. Future scenarios matter. And we have to help clients do both.”
Q: Pharma has traditionally been inward-facing. Are you seeing that shift?
Lizzie: “Definitely. Historically, because drug development is long and complex, pharma companies focused heavily on their brand and science. But expectations have changed.
Patients, caregivers, and HCPs are behaving more like consumers. They expect better experiences, more information, and more transparency. And more mainstream conversations — like women’s health, migraine, mental health — are shaping what people expect from their broader healthcare needs.
Pharma companies are having to look outward at what’s happening culturally, not just clinically. That’s a big shift.”
Q: You mentioned that patients, caregivers and HCPs are behaving more like consumers. Can you elaborate on how that’s influencing pharma today?
Hannah: “Consumerisation is huge. We’re seeing services advertise directly to patients — things like digital weight-loss programmes offering GLP-1 treatments. People now come to their doctors informed (and sometimes misinformed) and asking for specific solutions.
Tools like online medical records mean patients often see their results before their clinicians do. They’re more engaged, which is great, but it creates new challenges around communication, misinformation, and expectations.
Pharma now has to speak to HCPs, consumers, and caregivers — all at once — and create a clear, coherent and complementary narratives for each.”
Q: How important is it for pharma to understand the full ecosystem of people influencing the healthcare journey?
Hannah: “When we started our careers, it wasn’t unusual for projects to adopt a narrow lens — one client, one audience, one perspective. That limits the impact of research.
Now, our best work comes from involving the full landscape: patients, specialists, GPs, nurses, pharmacists, carers — anyone who influences or experiences the journey.
Including an integrated point of view based on stakeholders from across the ecosystem massively improves outcomes. And clients increasingly expect this.”
Q: Data and insights seems to be playing a bigger role than ever in healthcare decision-making. How is that changing insight work?
Lizzie: “Robust, accessible data has become absolutely central to decision-making. It’s always mattered, but today stakeholders expect immediacy and insights at their fingertips, not months down the line.
Data also no longer sits in silos. Competitor intelligence, primary research, secondary sources, and market access workstreams increasingly need to operate in harmony. When these elements are integrated, they unlock richer insights and more holistic growth strategies.”
Q: AI and technology is impacting all industries. How are you ensuring you are staying ahead and leveraging them in the right way in healthcare?
Lizzie: “Our approach is focused on ensuring we respond to the disruption from AI in a considered and sustainable way.
AI has the potential to address many of the challenges our clients are facing. Examples include getting to insights at speed, being able to quickly summarise all of the data held, but more recently we have been using it as a way to drive creativity and innovation (often an area that is underplayed with AI).
Our agentic hub and technology toolkit has been a real game changer for us and helps automates workflows, drive innovation and reveal hidden insights. This is woven in to everything we do and not just something we add on to projects, but we are very mindful of what it can do and are honest to call out what it can’t.
Q: Can you give some examples of the types of AI tools you are using?
Hannah: “We are using WhatsApp-based approaches which allow respondents to capture real, in-the-moment experiences — symptoms, treatment administration, HCP interactions, day-to-day realities. It brings the human side of healthcare to life in a way that feels natural and integrated into daily routines, but can leverage AI to get the most our of responses and ensure we have the depth we need.”
Lizzie: “We’re also excited about our segmentation chatbot. It takes all the great work from segmentation studies and turns it into something teams can use every day. Stakeholders can ask a question about a segment and get an immediate response. It’s making segmentation more commercial, actionable, and alive.”
Q: STRAT7 is now a larger group with more capabilities. How is that helping your healthcare clients?
Lizzie: “Being part of the wider STRAT7 group is a huge advantage. We can now do far more with our clients — whether that’s accessing new types of data, applying innovative methodologies, or tapping into strategic, analytics, and AI expertise from other agencies in the group.
This strengthens relationships because we’re not limited to the traditional healthcare research toolkit. We can stretch further and offer solutions that weren’t possible even a few years ago.”
Q: What makes this work exciting for you personally?
Hannah: “The variety. Healthcare is endlessly interesting — there’s always something new to learn. We’ve worked across countless therapy areas, conditions, and patient experiences.
But it’s also the wider market trends — new tech, new expectations, new cultural forces — that keep things fresh. As these evolve, so do the types of research we can do. It pushes us to be innovative.
And there’s an intellectual challenge too: combining science, commercial strategy, creativity, and human understanding. Every project brings a new puzzle.”
Q: Finally — what keeps you motivated?
Hannah: “Relationships. We have clients we’ve worked with for eight to ten years. We’ve been part of their journey, through restructures, brand launches, changing priorities, new challenges.
What motivates us is knowing we’re not just delivering projects — we’re helping people navigate constant change, make better decisions, and ultimately create better healthcare experiences. That’s incredibly rewarding.”
STRAT7 Health is a specialist team consolidated from across the group with expertise in the Pharma and Healthcare industries.
We bring the foresight, strategic clarity and bold thinking that turn complexity into competitive advantage.
About the team
Lizzie Eckardt is UK Managing Director at STRAT7 Incite. She has worked in pharmaceutical market research and brand, marketing and strategy consulting for 20 years. Lizzie is passionate about the intersection of culture and healthcare and specialises in getting closer to lived experience of HCPs and patients. She is also an expert at making those experiences actionable and meaningful for her client’s brands. She has worked with a range of methodologies and loves to innovate and bring consumer approaches into the healthcare world.
Hannah Potter is UK Head of Health at STRAT7 Incite. She’s a creative, strategic insights professional with a focus on the healthcare sector. Hannah has 18 years’ experience encompassing prescription pharmaceuticals, digital therapeutics, consumer health and third sector organisations. She is passionate about ensuring that insights are embedded with strategy development, and enjoys helping clients to navigate increasingly complex and changeable environments to drive growth to their brands.