Highland Marketing has appointed David Hancock as an associate to support clients seeking advice on market entry or positioning.

London-based Highland Marketing is a marketing, PR and communications agency focused on health, social care, medtech, life sciences and clinical research.

David Hancock has worked in enterprise IT for almost 40 years and has spent most of his career in life sciences and healthtech. He worked at Orion Health, where he supported the early development of shared care records, and at InterSystems, where he helped to build an electronic patient record and health information exchange business.

Hancock has also been a member of the techUK health and social care council since 2018 and is vendor co-chair of INTEROPen, which was set up to advocate for the use of open standards in healthcare IT systems. Since October last year, he has led New Found Consulting Services, which he set up to help software suppliers with go-to-market and product strategies, and to advise them on how to adopt interoperability standards to support transformation initiatives.

Hancock said: “Becoming an associate of Highland Marketing is about being able to bring my set of skills to the work of an expanding team and applying them in a different way. Companies that want to succeed in digital health need excellent intelligence and a good understanding of where their ideas, services and products sit in the market. Then they need effective marketing and PR to get their messages across. I am looking forward to working on that marketing piece, to help build successful companies that can support the NHS, social care and life sciences with the challenges they face.”

Mark Venables, co-founder and chief executive of Highland Marketing, said: “We want to be able to offer the very best possible service to our clients and are confident that David’s expertise will be a valuable addition to that of our existing team. This is all about combining David’s knowledge, skills and experience with our knowledge, skills and experience, in order to give companies that want to work in this exciting but challenging market the very best chance of success.”