LONDON — Former Evoke Kyne director Willoughby Badger has set up a new agency to provide an alternative to freelancers and contractors for healthcare PR agencies and communications teams within pharmaceutical and biotech firms.

InnerCircle’s core service is embedding healthcare communications professionals – all of whom will be employed by the agency – into consultancy and in-house teams to help scale teams, accommodate surges in workload and support understaffed projects, in a sector where the talent crisis is known to be particularly acute.

After working at healthcare comms specialist 90Ten, Badger joined Evoke Kyne in 2019; the latter firm has come on board as InnerCircle’s first agency client, and the new firm is also about to sign two major pharma companies.

Badger said he came up with the InnerCircle proposition after seeing an increase in requests from pharma and biotech firms for secondments from agencies.

He told PRovoke Media: “We are hoping to disrupt traditional staffing models by offering an alternative to freelancers and contractors: quality-controlled, employed healthcare specialists at all levels, who can be embedded within companies on long-term assignments, with the benefit of additional support from an agency that also has a bank of medical writers, designers, coders, analysts and creatives behind the scenes. I’m excited and confident – it’s staffing 2.0.”

The agency is working with a network of partners including digital health specialist Pivot, digital marketing firm Fountain and medical writing specialist Word Monster.

InnerCircle is currently hiring at all levels from account executive to director and will offer all employees share options.