DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION SERIES - Putting the care back into healthcare communications

 

At Cheemia, my purpose and my team's purpose is to unleash the human potential to create a healthier world and we do that by inspiring pharma leaders to shift their thinking and their actions from just delivering messages to healthcare professionals to strive to become their trusted advisers. And through this series, I want to really spark connections, inspire change, and drive meaningful transformation that improves outcomes for healthcare professionals, but more importantly for the patients.

I'm passionate about helping pharma professionals to feel confident about using technology to improve healthcare professional engagement. And that's why I've been interviewing inspiring leaders to learn from them and tap into their experience and give them a platform so they can share their expertise and insights with you.

I was delighted to interview Fi Edwards and Katie Langdon who are sisters and founders of Skin + Blister, the agency that exists so that nobody feels lost in healthcare.

Fi is a founder and managing director. She's passionate about impactful communications that really help improve lives. Fi has worked in pharmaceutical marketing for her entire career and she loves collaborating with commercial teams to find solutions to big strategic challenges. She's an empathetic leader who advocates for remote culture and Fi is determined to retain amazing talent within the creative industry no matter what life throws at her or anybody else in the company.

Katie Langdon is the founder and creative director. Katie is an innovator with huge passion for omnichannel content. She leads with purpose and will always speak her mind, with kindness of course. Katie is a master of making complex information and marketing meaningful, accessible and useful for everyone. Her creative work is amazing! She has won many national and international health and wellness awards along the way, and she's always looking one step ahead to inspire her team and client partners to consider the potential to use AI for good in healthcare.

Both sisters, Fi and Katie, are on a mission to put the care back into healthcare communications.

 

 

 

 

Mehrnaz: Can you both share your story of how each of you found your path in the industry and tell us a little bit about your journey of what got you to set up the company?

Fi: To be honest, I think we were born into pharma. I wasn’t very impressed when I first met Katie - I was thirteen months old in hospital and she was making a lot of noise. She, to be quite frank, bombarded herself into my world.

But growing up, I realised that there’s nobody who can push and inspire me like Katie can, on this whole planet. I’m very proud that you turned my world upside down, Katie.

Our parents were family doctors. And, we were in the doctor’s surgery probably more than our own home growing up. We’d always worked there at weekends and in the school holidays. I loved working at reception and really getting to know the patients. Katie was always in the dispensary surrounded by all the medicines.

And we very quickly realised that Katie had this real passion for the science, the drugs, the medicines and I loved the communication side. And we realised that when you combine the two, you can have a positive impact on somebody’s condition and their management of their own self-care, and hopefully lead to a much better life with whatever is going on.

I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn’t get the grades. But I had this real passion for science, so I ended up doing a degree in Human Genetics. I really loved science, but didn’t love being in a science lab. I’ve always been creative. I’ve loved to write. I’m a very empathetic person, and I love people’s stories.

I left my science degree thinking, “Well, what do I do next?” And actually, a nurse at my mum and dad’s surgery had a daughter in healthcare PR, and they had a job going. So, I went and got a job there. PR was not for me. But through them, I met a company up the road - a healthcare advertising agency. I went for an interview, started work there, and it was just the dream job that I didn’t know existed. I absolutely loved it because it was a combination of both creativity and science.

I worked there for many years, then got married and started having children. I went freelance, trying to find the best place to work. I loved getting to meet lots of different people and seeing how different agencies worked.

I had my first child, who’s now fifteen and much taller than me. But with my second pregnancy, it didn’t go according to plan. I went into my 20-week scan expecting just to say to them, “Please don’t tell us the gender of the baby. We don’t want to find out. We want a surprise.” And suddenly, the sonographer was asking me questions about whether my eldest child had grown properly, if there were any problems with that pregnancy, etc. A consultant was brought in and our world basically changed. We were told that our baby wasn’t developing properly and could potentially have a very extremely rare condition.

Over the next ten weeks, I went up and down to King’s College University Hospital in London. At each appointment, I really pushed - because of my background, I was used to engaging with healthcare professionals. I asked the right questions. If I didn’t understand something because of the stress of the moment, I’d go home and see my parents, and they would explain things to me. I could really understand what was going on.

Sadly, when I was thirty-one weeks pregnant, I had my little baby boy, Lincoln. He was stillborn. And he was very severely disabled. I think although that was the hardest point in my life, I reflected on it. I realised I was in a very privileged position - because of my background and my understanding.

And I didn’t want anyone else to feel lost in healthcare like I had at that time in my life. Katie really helped me through that. She rebuilt my confidence. We worked together at an agency, and we loved working together.

Then I went on to have a ‘rainbow baby’, Jensen. He was born a year later. Then I had my youngest, who’s just turned ten. After that, Katie was like, “Right, families done. Let’s have one last baby.” And that’s when Skin + Blister was born.

And I think that’s why I’m so passionate about the patient side of things, and about really supporting healthcare professionals to be able to have those really challenging conversations, when it can be such a turning point in somebody’s life, and just try to leave the world a better place.

Katie: Fi is the most inspiring person I know. My journey has a similar element but a slightly different timing. As Fi mentioned, we worked in the surgery growing up. It sounds on paper like we were destined to set up a healthcare comms agency. But for me, I didn’t want to go anywhere near medicine. I was the rebel of the family and I didn’t want to do anything that my parents wanted us to do.

My real passion was sport. I was always out playing on the field. I played every sport imaginable to quite a high level. When I was about fifteen, I had my whole life mapped out. I wanted to be a sports scientist. I knew which university I was going to. It was all there for me.

And then one day in training, I went over on my ankle. I felt a pain that just wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t train anymore. I ended up on crutches for a long time. My parents started connecting me with different consultants within the healthcare system to try and figure out what was wrong. I had lots of scans, lots of tests - and no one knew what was wrong.

I was lost in the healthcare system from about age fifteen to twenty-one. During that time, I saw about seventeen different consultants. I eventually got a diagnosis: a rare bone condition in my ankles and knees. It meant I couldn’t pursue sport. I watched all my friends go off and live my dream, and I felt incredibly lost.

Thankfully, I had Fi as my big sister, who really supported me and helped me through.

Eventually, I went to Bristol University, after failing one of my A-levels. That’s how much this whole journey affected my life. I met a surgeon there who decided to take a big risk and do his own act of rebellion. He sawed my heel bones in half and repositioned my feet - in two major surgeries over about a year and a half, plus lots of rehabilitation.

I’ll never forget the day he said to me, “You’re discharged. You’re free to go out into the world.” It had been such a horrible journey. At certain points, they didn’t know what to do with me. I was a teenager but being treated in a geriatric ward - because that’s where all the orthopaedic patients went.

I buried this experience for a very long time. But a few years ago, during the Marketing Academy Scholarship, it all resurfaced. That’s when I realised that this is a huge part of my purpose. I was completely lost in the healthcare system as a teenager, and I never want anyone to feel like I did.

Our big vision - that nobody feels lost in healthcare - includes that fifteen-year-old girl within me. I get out of bed every morning for her. I make sure she is represented, guided and given choices that didn’t exist for me back then. It was a world where the internet wasn’t connected, and I didn’t know anyone else with my condition.

Like Fi, I went into medical writing first, which I didn’t really enjoy. One day, Fi said, “Try advertising,” and she helped me prep to get a job at a big healthcare ad agency in London.

I never looked back. I love the promotional side of healthcare communications. I feel like I have my dream job now. So, coming together and creating an agency with Fi was a natural progression - but it did take many years. It didn’t happen overnight.

Mehrnaz: Katie, tell us more about the name of your agency, Skin + Blister. I didn’t realise until recently that it’s drawn from Cockney rhyming slang for “sister.” So why was it so important for you to choose a name with that personal meaning?

Katie: I think just having heard both of our personal stories, you can tell our purpose really comes into our business and that’s why we set it up. So, we wanted a name that represented that.

It took us ages to find our name - I’m not going to lie. But Skin + Blister has a lovely healthcare link (it makes people think of skin conditions or wounds), and it also has a strong connection to us personally, as sisters.

It sounds different from other agencies. A lot of them are acronyms or more corporate sounding. We wanted something that sounded creative, something with personality. And then, when you find out it also means “sister” in Cockney rhyming slang, it just felt like the perfect fit.

Fi: We wanted our agency to really start from us. And that began with our name.

Mehrnaz: You adopted a remote-first model from the very beginning. I’m curious to know what motivated you to go down that path, and how it has shaped your culture and the success of Skin + Blister?

Katie: It began from a place of necessity. Fi had three kids and lives outside of London. I live in London and I’m child-free by choice. That’s really where it started.

But it’s evolved into so much more. We realised, before the pandemic, that all the tech exists. So, in a digital world, you can be remote and still do everything you need to run a business if you’ve got the right tools in place.

Things like Slack are our office. The whole team has worked so hard to use it to its highest potential. I’ve never seen anyone else’s Slack like ours! We couldn’t function without the emojis and GIFs we send each other every day.

You need to have the tech in place. We also prioritised culture and built everything to be remote-first in every setting, in every process. Then we evolved our ways of working. We looked at how other agencies operated and came up with our own ways.

For example, we have what we call deadline-driven working. That means we always hit deadlines, but you can work when, where, and how you want. It prioritises mental health and checks in with how everyone is feeling. The benefits of this for everyone involved are just phenomenal.

I’ve never felt closer to our team, and we have members all over the country - from Scotland down to Devon. We even have people in Spain and New Zealand. That says a lot about our culture.

It shows that you can be creative in a remote-first environment. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it and work hard at it.

Fi: The other side of this - and this is something we’re really passionate about - is that there’s an incredible pool of talent in our industry that leaves because of life and what it throws at you.

When you become a parent, for example, commuting into London and doing long hours is really hard. Agency life is not 9 to 5 - it’s often 9 to 9, and then some. People want to be able to go to their kids’ assemblies, do the school run or go to sports day. And that’s important. Work shouldn’t get in the way of that.

There are also people who are carers for their loved ones. We have people on the team who have health conditions and need to go to regular appointments. We’ve had marathon runners on our team, and especially for women, doing long training runs in the dark winter evenings isn’t safe. We encourage them to do that during daylight.

So, we flex around life. We design work to fit around people, not the other way around.

Some people are incredibly creative at night. Katie and I are both night owls. Others are up at 5am and have their best ideas in the early morning. Often, your best ideas happen in the shower or when you’re walking the dog. You don’t need to be at your desk to be creative or to be working.

We want to offer that to everyone. And we’ve got so many people on our team who work for us who probably wouldn’t be able to stay in the industry if it weren’t for this deadline-driven, flexible model. That’s just such a loss otherwise.

So why not embrace it?

Mehrnaz: Let’s talk about omnichannel. In your view, what does omnichannel healthcare communication truly mean? And why is it so important in today’s pharma landscape for people to really get their arms around it?

Fi: It’d be interesting to understand other people’s perspectives because so many people say “omnichannel” and it means something completely different to each of them.

To me, the key word is seamless. It’s about making life easier for everyone - healthcare professionals, patients, pharma teams. Seamless so that everybody can get better, succeed and shine.

It shouldn’t even feel like it’s about the channel. It should be about: What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? What are the pain points? What’s keeping people awake at night?

Then, how do we go about solving those problems? What’s the important information that needs to be understood? And finally, where are those people? Where do they hang out? Where would they like to get that information in a way that’s going to help them? And it should be available at any time to suit them.

For me, omnichannel is about that seamless experience. But also, it's about collaboration. True omnichannel only works if you do it together. You can’t have one siloed group trying to execute something on their own without bringing others along on the journey.

We’re big believers in getting the whole group together: commercial, medical, sales, digital and brand. Sometimes it’s a small group, sometimes we’re talking thirty-plus people in the room. But we always start by asking: Where are we now? Why is there a problem in the first place? Then we work through: How do we solve it? And finally: What are we going to do?

One of the big challenges in our industry is that people often start with the “what.” They come to us saying, “We’ve got a great idea for a tactic.” And we’re like, “Hang on. Let’s take a step back - why?”

You’ve probably seen it by now - we’re very purpose-led. It has to start with why. And we have to do something that makes a genuine, positive impact for healthcare professionals and for patients - not just something that ticks a box or helps someone hit a personal target. If we don’t do that, it’s never going to work.

Mehrnaz: Do you feel the pharma industry is achieving omnichannel, or is it still stuck in multichannel?

Katie: I think it’s still more multichannel. And sometimes - even that is a stretch!

It’s interesting. One of the biggest challenges in pharma is that teams don’t repurpose the content they’ve already created. You could be so much more efficient, economical even, by simply repurposing content across channels. But I rarely see it done.

Take brand websites, for example. That’s one area where we just fall over completely. Or social media. It doesn’t really get used. When you compare that to what omnichannel should be - which is really about being in the right place at the right time - it shows how far off we still are. There’s also the whole idea of on-demand. In our personal lives, everything is on demand. Uber, Deliveroo, Netflix. But in pharma, on-demand doesn’t exist.

That blows my mind. We’ve got AI and technology that could change everything, and we’re still stuck doing things the old way. That’s something we’re really looking at now - how to bring pharma into that on-demand world. Because for me, that’s the ultimate evolution of multichannel into true omnichannel.

Mehrnaz: To deliver real omnichannel engagement and measurable results, you need deep, authentic insights. You can’t just throw out content and hope it sticks. So, how do you gather insights? How do you make sure you’re really listening to what healthcare professionals and patients need?

Fi: Insight is so vital. And unfortunately, some people try to skip it. Or they rely on old market research from three years ago. That’s not enough.

You need to know what’s happening right now. So, the best way? Talk to people. Interview your audience. Speak to healthcare professionals. Speak to patients - if you can. Sometimes that’s one-on-one, sometimes over the phone. Sometimes we use surveys.

There’s also a lot of value in social listening. Social media is a goldmine for insights - especially with patient communities and healthcare professional influencers. But honestly, so many clients won’t even look at it. They’re worried about adverse event reporting. And yes, we always manage that responsibly. But if you ignore those conversations, you’re missing real-time truths. You can learn so much by just reading comment sections - especially in rare disease communities where people feel isolated. They’re sharing their journeys, their pain points, their hopes. It’s powerful stuff.

Katie: And AI can help too! It can really speed up how we analyse qualitative data and trends. But you still need that human layer to interpret and apply those insights in meaningful, empathetic ways. A lot of pharma companies invest in market research, which is great. But it’s got to be part of an ongoing process. Not just a one-off box tick.

Mehrnaz: Let’s talk about human connection. What’s your take? What are pharma companies doing well, and where do you think we can do better?

Fi: Human connection is so essential. But often, in pharma especially, people show up with a kind of “work mask” on. You have all these partnerships, all these meetings - but people aren’t actually sharing why they’re in this industry. What’s driving them?

One of the things we love to do with our pharma partners is proper introductions. Like we did here today - sharing the stories behind why we do what we do. And when we do that, something amazing happens. People start opening up and sharing their stories.

We've done this with big teams and many of them walk away saying, “Wow, I’ve worked with that person for years and never really knew them.” But after that, they’ve got a shared purpose. They feel connected. And that kind of connection makes everyone want to do better - for themselves, for each other and for patients. So yes, human connection starts inside our teams and partnerships. But it also shows up in how we design our communications, especially in how we talk to doctors and patients.

Katie: We’ve got to remember that doctors are humans too. I think this is a big challenge with generative AI. There’s a lot of content being created - and yes, it’s efficient. But just because you can create content doesn’t mean you should.

One thing I’m passionate about is making sure we don’t lose the emotional element when we’re creating content for healthcare professionals. It’s easy to say, “Oh, doctors just want clinical data,” and forget the rest. But time and again, we’ve seen how powerful emotional storytelling can be - especially patient stories, or real-life videos.

We’ve created campaigns where we interviewed real patients, shot films with them, and told their story in a meaningful way. When doctors see those, they feel something. They remember why they went into medicine. And when you combine the emotional with the clinical, that’s where the magic happens. So yes, let’s use AI and digital tools - but let’s never lose the human touch.

Mehrnaz: You recently gave a talk on how agencies can use AI. Can you share a few top tips or examples of how you’ve embedded AI into your work at Skin + Blister?

Katie: Of course! It’s been a real journey for us. First, we knew early on that a lot of the conversations about the future of work and AI were being led by men. We didn’t want to get left behind. So more than a year ago, we empowered one of our team members, Jo, to go out and stay on top of everything. That’s no small task - it’s changing almost daily!

We also made it a priority to embed AI into the foundation of our agency, across processes, brainstorming, and project work. Next, we developed generative AI workshops. We help our pharma clients look at their own processes and identify ways AI can save time, money, and cognitive effort. And finally, policies. You must have strong policies. Ours are rock solid, and we’re transparent with our clients about where and how we use AI. We even share our internal policies with them so they know exactly what we’re doing.

It’s all about being responsible, especially in such a confidential, regulated industry. Once your guardrails are in place, the next step is simple: go and play. Experiment and learn. AI is here to stay, and it’s a hugely exciting space.

Mehrnaz: Looking ahead: what legacy do you hope Skin + Blister leaves on the pharma and healthcare communications industry?

Fi: Our purpose has always been to ensure that nobody feels lost in healthcare. And that’s a huge ambition - but we mean it. It applies to patients, healthcare professionals, pharma partners - everyone. Because we’ve seen what happens when communication fails. Bad communication can be fatal. We saw that in the pandemic. And we still see it far too often.

Katie: And for me, it’s about using our voice to change the industry - especially for women.

I want to see more women leading agencies, judging awards, shaping what healthcare marketing looks like. It’s also about creating safe spaces and giving our juniors the kind of industry we wish we’d entered. I think both of us want to leave behind something better. Something more thoughtful. Something more human.

And yes, if we can sprinkle that with a bit of love along the way - we’ll be happy.

Conclusion:

In a world where healthcare can often feel clinical, complex and disconnected, Fi and Katie remind us that humanity belongs at the heart of everything we do. Whether it's leading teams, launching campaigns, or crafting omnichannel strategies, the most meaningful work begins with empathy, insight and a genuine desire to make a difference.

At Cheemia, we believe in unlocking the potential within every professional in our industry - so they, in turn, can unlock better outcomes for patients. This conversation with Skin + Blister wasn’t just inspiring - it was a masterclass in leading with authenticity, building with intention and always putting care into healthcare.

If you’ve been moved by their story, ask yourself: What’s my purpose? What’s one bold, but imperfect action I can take to move toward lasting change?

The future of pharma isn’t just digital. It’s human. Let’s build it, together.

If you would like to purchase a copy of The Omni Advantage, it is available as a paperback or audiobook.