Marketing Communications
and Public Relations for
the convergence of information
technology and the life sciences

Experience That

West Coast

Ned Barnett
Ned Barnett brings the Biotech Marcom team more than two decades of experience in healthcare public relations, marketing and strategic planning. Barnett has worked with more than 100 hospitals, insurance and managed care organizations (including HMOs/PPOs/PHOs and IPAs), hospital corporations, hospital and medical associations and private-practice physicians (and groups), helping them to meet their bottom-line goals through effective public relations and on-target marketing communications. Barnett wrote his first two (of eight) books on healthcare marketing and public relations - the HCA Corporate Communications Guide and the AHA's Guide to Hospital Public Relations. He also authored a major feature in the respected SPECTRUM, the marketing journal of the American Hospital Association.

Barnett was the first Marketing Director for Republic Health Corporation, a for-profit hospital corporation. During Barnett's tenure as the Eastern Division Marketing Director, the company grew from 18 to 90 hospitals. Barnett also developed a software system that permitted hospitals to develop on-target strategic marketing plans using available data and non-marketing personnel - and he created a physician-practice marketing program that was adopted by all 80 Republic hospitals.
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Building on his extensive lobbying-related experience gained while working with the hospital associations, Barnett also worked with N/B clients in the political arena. Within the past two years, he has represented clients on Capitol Hill and (on behalf of the National Drug Prevention League) participated in meetings at the White House with the administration's Drug Czar and other top administration officials.

Nicole Litchfield
Nicole Litchfield's health, medical and biotech marketing communications experience includes planning and directing marcom and PR programs, conducting media relations, and writing published educational, marketing and PR materials for consumer, business, and medical audiences.

She served as director of communications for DoubleTwist, Inc., an Oakland, CA-based bioinformatics company. She directed the company's marketing and corporate communications, including branding, advertising, sales collateral and media relations. This included promoting the highly publicized first Web portal for genomic research, and the first annotated human genome database.

Litchfield has also developed brochures, press kits, and other marketing collateral, and conducted media relations for biotechnology and healthcare organizations including Genentech, Chiron Corporation, Medtronic, Varian Medical Systems, Connetics Corporation, and the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry and the American Gastroenterological Association.

She has also worked in the healthcare divisions for two of the nation's largest PR agencies, Ketchum Public Relations and Fleishman-Hillard International Communications. Litchfield received a Bachelor's of Arts from the University of Michigan, with a double major in English and Communications. She has also completed graduate course work in writing at Johns Hopkins University.

James Malone
James Malone is a media relations specialist with over seven years of marketing and public relations experience working with companies in medical, health care, biotechnology, high-tech, telecommunications, and more. Malone has developed his career in public relations by managing accounts in the medical, healthcare, biotechnology, telecom and wireless tech markets. His strong background in media relations for medical, biotech and high-tech clients have resulted in many local and national television and radio news placements.

His background includes developing strategic marketing programs and conducting media relations campaigns for clients in the medical and biotech industries including Parent's Alert Home Drug Test, ACI Medical, and others. His past clients include Motorola, Wynd Communications, Sierra Atlantic, Cavio Corporation, Animation Science, A Perfect Mix Website Design and Development, PeopleSupport.com, PureEdge (formerly UWI.com), and many others.

His agency experience includes managing medical and high-tech accounts at Edelman Public Relations/PR 21 and Neale-May & Partners. During his time with these firms, he managed public relations campaigns and media relations for companies including Aplio Internet Telephone, Phone.com, Motorola, Attachmate, Match.com, and others. Earlier in his career, Malone began his public relations career as the Marketing Communications Manager for the LA-based computer wholesaler, Advanced Products Technology, where he managed marketing and public relations, and helped to raise awareness and increase business and revenue for the start-up company. Malone holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California.

Produces Results

Tim Patterson
Over a 20-year career, Tim Patterson has provided public relations and financial communications services to many of the world's largest high-tech, biotech and pharmaceutical corporations, including annual reports and other financial communications for AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Avaya, Johnson & Johnson, Warner-Lambert and HNC Software. Most recently, he provided consulting services to a San Diego-based media and marketing company for pre-IPO positioning and business plan development.

At the Celanese Corporation, he served as Director of Corporate Communications, prior to its merger with Hoescht Corporation. He produced all public materials announcing the merger, as well as the first annual report produced by the combined entity.

Patterson began has PR career with Fluor Corporation in California, where he served as Director of Corporate Communications. Afterward, he assumed the position of Director of Corporate Communications for Allied Corporation, where he oversaw all editorial and production work on the annual report, quarterlies and investor relations materials. During his tenure with Allied, the company embarked on and completed its merger with Signal Corporation, forming Allied-Signal.

Patterson holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from California State University at Long Beach, and a master's degree in organizational communications from Brigham Young University.

Rocky Mtn. States and the Midwest

Joe Alper
As a 22-year veteran of writing about, and working in biotech, bioinformatics and healthcare, Joe Alper brings his biochemistry and chemistry degrees, award-winning writing ability and in-depth industry knowledge to our team. Alper has a proven track record in corporate positioning, product marketing, strategic communications planning and implementation, and media and analyst relations.

Joe was the first director of corporate communications and strategic planning for NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, a mid-sized biotechnology company. During his tenure there, Alper created the communications strategy that helped triple sales of the company's AmBisome antifungal agent despite the introduction of two competing products during that time. As part of this effort, he developed the then-novel strategy of using the company's technological prowess as a marketing tool to appeal to medical opinion leaders, which both increased product sales and created brand loyalty that enabled AmBisome to triumph over bigger competitors. At the same time, he crafted an investor relations campaign that increased analyst coverage from two to six and helped quadruple the company's share price.

At DoubleTwist, a northern California bioinformatics company, Alper led the company's online marketing communications effort, creating the online magazine DailyTwist that helped draw potential clients to the company's Web site.

Alper has written breaking news, in-depth features, and opinion pieces for such publications as Science, Nature Biotechnology, the New York Times, and The Atlantic. He has also produced award-winning annual reports on a small-company budget that proved to be useful tools for corporate development and medical marketing efforts. Alper has also developed strategic marketing plans for both technology and product development, leading to the formation of several on-going companies, including SomaLogic, a proteomics company, and Pharmion, a medical marketing organization. He even managed to turn a routine government report to Congress into the Decade of the Brain, an NIH-directed initiative that increased basic neuroscience funding more than 50-fold.

A 1975 honors graduate in chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana, Alper also master's degrees in biochemistry and agricultural journalism from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Among his many national awards, Alper is a four-time honoree of the Society of Technical Communications.

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