Transforming Healthcare from Atom to Access: Q&A with NPG Health and Bliss Bio Health CEO Gloria Vanderham


The Next Practices Group and The Bliss Group are introducing a new healthcare platform, NPG Health and our first firm, Bliss Bio Health, that will take us on the journey from “atom to access” to improve how we utilize marketing communications, analytics and a range of media techniques to improve health outcomes. 

Transforming healthcare is a mission – one we share with our clients and one we are committed to doing in our own unique way. 

We recently sat down with Gloria Vanderham, Chief Executive Officer of NPG Health and Bliss Bio Health, to discuss what is ahead.  Gloria begins her journey with us on February 1 and brings more than twenty years of experience in life sciences and healthcare communications and digital and social media marketing.  She joins us from Novartis where, most recently, she served as Regional Head of Communications for Europe.

Tell us about NPG Health and Bliss Bio Health. What does each offer?

NPG Health is our platform that will feature firms across communications, marketing, public affairs and feature unique skill sets in data science and analytics, PESO media, software solutions and much more.  Our collective will build the most effective and agile teams for our clients so that our ideas and our actions match up with the needs of the audience. Our team features leaders who have worked as clients and have helped build some of the largest healthcare agencies in the world. We are taking all of our collective learning to focus on building what’s next in healthcare. 

Bliss Bio Health (BBH) is the first NPG health company and is a new life sciences marketing and communications firm with an unrelenting focus on the whole person and their health journey, which will partner with clients to disrupt the healthcare ecosystem and remove barriers to optimal care.

As you can tell, I am passionate about our mission. We feel the urgency to provide our best thinking each and every time for our clients and the healthcare providers, patients and communities they serve.

What are you referring to when you say from “atom to access”?

Technology is reshaping how we can deliver and manage health. It is providing new ways to analyze data. We are focused on developing the next applications of technology that will disrupt the status quo. 

Access is very straightforward.  What’s the point of all the great work if a patient can’t receive their treatment, device or diagnostic? 

It is our belief that technology, software and data science are going to transform every square inch of how we deliver healthcare for an offering like ours. It changes how we build creative concepts or how we build a media mix. The list is long. This is why our team already has data scientists, analysts, software engineers, technology experts and a new partnership with a health-focused AI firm that we will announce in the near future. 

Our goal is to reshape everything from how we conduct clinical trial recruitment to how we develop medical communications to how we create the audience architecture necessary to build relevant campaigns.   

How do you think communicators can help restore trust in science and healthcare?

We are focused on how to build powerful narratives, ensure our insights are actionable and measurable, further improve audience mapping and make clinical trial recruitment more equitable by improving how we build the media mix. We can help build trust one project at a time. That is our goal and our commitment. 

How is artificial intelligence (AI) shaping the future of healthcare?

Our team is known for its pioneering work in building algorithms, machine learning training sets, new ways to query data, and more. Data science and analytics is already a core skill for our team and will continue to become a major strength. 

We also work with AI-related technology and are on a path to help reshape how we may look at a disease over ten years, for example, or how we can analyze all of the clinical trials for a given disease, so we understand which investigators are most likely to be successful. We will be developing new applications for our clients to use for ChatGPT, Shorthand, Jasper or other new approaches. The technology is always cool, but it is the application of it that matters to our clients and that’s where we excel. 

What’s next for NPG Health?

It is the Atom to Access journey. You will see new firms join in the near future. You will see new products and services be created. You will see how we are harnessing technology in new ways. We have a lot ahead. Our team is incredible, and we have a culture and values to match our aspirations. Stay tuned.