What We Do
FIXING US is a global specialist in authentic health content – unscripted content created from lived experiences of patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals and other stakeholders – and in the engagement, recruitment, insight and value that this content unlocks for pharm, biotech, medtech and other health-related organisations.
Authentic content is our primary output and the foundation of everything else we offer. It helps internal and external teams to inspire the audiences, stakeholders and communities who matter most, supporting better communication, engagement, collaboration, education, adoption, innovation, diffusion and return-on-investment across global and local markets.
The way we create content generates considerable value beyond the finished films: recruiting patients and ambassadors, engaging partnerships and capturing footage using techniques that lead to stakeholder-engagement mechanisms, providing access to people and communities that others find difficult to reach, and building authentic and evergreen deliverables as a turnkey service or shaped around any teams, agencies, processes and compliance requirements.
Authentic Content
Authentic content is unscripted, unstaged content created from the real lived experiences of patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals and other stakeholders (with no actors, scripts, storyboards or recreations) that consistently outperforms curated or scripted material on trust, engagement and measurable outcomes without compromising its ability to support brand goals.
We create patient journeys and stakeholder content for deployment wherever clients needs to be understood: for internal communications and global-to-local alignment; HCP engagement and medical education; disease awareness, policy and advocacy; congresses and events; branded and unbranded campaigns; national media; earned/free PR; sponsorships, broadcast TV; and social channels.
FIXING US is in over 20 countries and can produce content anywhere in the world and in any language across every therapeutic area, using a distinctive combination of crew-based filming, remote filming, self-filmed footage and other capture techniques that deliver greater authenticity and unprecedented levels of intimacy, speed and efficiency.
A common misconception is that authenticity cannot survive brand governance but our proven approach ensures that it can, should and does. We call this authentic+, delivering content built entirely from real, unscripted footage in full alignment with corporate branding, product messaging, style guides and the compliance, legal and cultural requirements of each market – without sanitising the patient experience.
Stakeholder-Engagement
The process of creating authentic content functions as a stakeholder-engagement mechanism in its own right: a transparent framework through which brands, patient advocacy groups, charities, professional bodies, clinicians and policymakers can collaborate around a client’s vision and shared, patient-centric purpose.
Once it is established that content will be genuinely authentic, organisations that were initially identified as target audiences frequently become something more valuable – participants, recruitment partners, sponsors, co-creators and diffusion partners for the content and its messaging. Relationships of this kind are difficult to establish through conventional routes and, in some jurisdictions, difficult for stakeholders to establish directly and so this can be a powerful asset.
These mechanisms, which have been set out in peer-reviewed research, often begin to deliver value well before filming commences, driven by recruitment and by engagement of partners who support recruitment and diffusion. And they continue to deliver long after the content is delivered, through endorsement, advocacy and sharing by the people who took part, and have helped achieve outcomes from global disease awareness to policy change and NHS care pathway redesign.
Recruitment
FIXING US recruits patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, key opinion leaders, patient advocacy groups and policymakers for content, forums, research and engagement programmes – delivered turnkey or alongside clients’ own teams, panels and agencies – across all therapeutic areas, markets and compliance environments.
Recruitment is frequently the point at which valuable patient-centred initiatives are ruled out by organisations. Timelines, compliance and legal constraints, concerns relating to reaching into specific communities as well as fear and uncertainty about duty of care can make a brief appear unattainable before it has been properly tested. It is also the capability in which we have the longest history or effective problem-solving.
FIXING US began as an authentic patient journey, Fixing Dad, and we have been developing this expertise ever since – building deep trust and proven frameworks, longstanding networks of patients, patient organisations, clinical networks, professional societies, KOLs and policymakers in health systems around the world. We can manage the entire process – sourcing, screening, informed consent, scheduling, logistics, fair-market-value compensation and compliance – or we can work alongside existing panels, medical affairs networks and specialist partners in a way that complements rather than duplicates internal capability.
Participant wellbeing and dignity are treated as inseparable from authenticity, and we act as trusted custodians for our clients throughout. The practical result is that briefs previously considered impossible – even for rare disease – are often achievable by us, faster and at lower cost, and in full compliance. Clients who approach us about a recruitment challenge also commonly find that resolving it emboldens collaborations and unlocks opportunities elsewhere in their organisation.
Virtual Forums
Virtual Forums are small, structured online discussions – recruited, designed and hosted by FIXING US – that bring patients, caregivers and HCPs together within intimate and equitable environments to surface themes, priorities and red threads that conventional research formats tend to flatten.
Forums can operate as standalone engagement and insight programmes, inform content and campaign strategy before production begins, extend the value of initiatives already underway or drive awareness and action amongst policymakers, workforces, stakeholders and patient populations.
Every forum also produces footage and transcripts, which can be used to support research and analysed through Authentic Intelligence™ to generate further value.
Authentic Intelligence™
Authentic Intelligence™ is an AI-powered tool developed specifically for healthcare, enabling clients to interrogate an extensive repository of authentic patients, caregivers, HCPs and stakeholders footage and generate qualitative intelligence and insight on demand.
A finished film answers the question it was created to answer but the footage behind it holds a great deal more: patterns of behaviour, stigma, hesitation, barriers, motivators and influences drawn from real lived experiences. Authentic Intelligence™ works from transcripts of raw footage captured using methods designed to enhance authenticity and minimise bias relative to conventional research and focus groups.
This is a breakthrough innovation with a developing capability and we continue to learn from it alongside our clients, guided by human oversight and clear governance around representativeness and explainability. Increasingly, we are also applying it to content and research that organisations have generated independently, also enabling new insights and new diffusions to be drawn from material that clients already own.
Authentic Intelligence™ is available to FIXING US clients as part of their deliverables, licensed as a SaaS tool accessible 24/7 via any browser for unlimited use by planning, communications, strategists, medical affairs, researchers and Excellence teams.
