Biomedical research

The pace of scientific discovery continues to quicken, and the promise of new treatments and cures provides hope at both the personal and global level. But the costs of research continue to climb and the funding model is changing.

In the last decade, science and medicine have crossed a remarkable threshold into the world of molecular and genetic medicine. The promise of a personalized approach to disease and treatment is on the horizon. Research is migrating from reductive scrutiny of isolated phenomena to holistic investigations of entire systems. New imaging technologies make it possible to see to new depths, often in real time.

But these technologies are expensive—as is the increased computer power needed to make sense of the data—and a systems approach to research requires the integrated participation of many disciplines and people.

The search for knowledge—and answers—has become a more complex and expensive proposition than ever before. However, traditional public dollar grant funding is flat, at best; the age of investigators when they receive their first large grant continues to rise; and innovative, “risky” ideas, which often hold tremendous promise, are not easily supported.

Research organizations must diversify their income sources—and increase support from individuals, from aligned foundations, from partners, and from commercial licensing of their ideas and technologies.

We work with biomedical research organizations—the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Joslin Diabetes Center, the Los Angeles Institute for Biomedical Research (LA BioMed), and Harvard Medical School—to develop the strategic messages, communications, and brand meaning needed to engage the wide range of constituents whose interest and commitment is necessary for their continuing success.

We collaborate with these organizations to evolve more focused, comprehensible, and outward-looking approaches to communications—to connect their work with causes people care about, to develop language that is meaningful to non-scientists, to evolve “ways in” that will resonate with donors and partners, and to present their research as relevant, urgent, and worthy of investment.