Irish Enterprise Awards 2021

12 EU BUSINESS NEWS / 2021 Irish Enterprise Awards , Best International Healthcare Marketing Consultancy 2021 Hyderus offers personal service fromsenior consultants with a background in policy, public relations, stakeholdermanagement andmarket research. Christopher Nial tells usmore about how the firmfared during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jan21396 Hyderus is a consultancy specialising in communications and policy which works on some of the most exciting and important issues of the 21st century. As a global leader in healthcare marketing, the firm strives to connect more patients with medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics. Its mission is to help ensure that its clients’ life-prolonging products are available to all who need them At the core of Hyderus is a group of senior marketing consultants with hundreds of years of healthcare experience between them, plus a global network of staff and implementation specialists with expertise in their own country or region. “We have been an established company since 2003, but we have really taken our time to grow the company slowly,” explains Project Director, Christopher Nial, talking of the internal culture of the firm. “We are 50% owners of an international consulting group called Baird's CMC, also located in Ireland. We can pull in from 800 or so members of staff from this larger organisation while keeping Hyderus more of a family.” In 2017, the business relocated to Ireland, mainly due to the Brexit referendum. The European Commission and various EU agencies have been repeat clients, and Hyderus needed a company located in the EU to continue to support them. “We didn't realise at the time that Ireland offers a lot of other benefits over the UK and other EU countries,” said Christopher. “There is tremendous support for SMEs.”. There is a highly educated workforce and many EU immigrants, many of whom speak the languages Hyderus works in. The area of Wexford was chosen as it has a nearby ferry link to Wales where the firm still retains staff. Despite a tumultuous 12 months, with the Covid-19 pandemic wreaking havoc the world over, Hyderus was already prepareds due to a past experience. A previous client, Sanofi Pasteur, the second-largest manufacturer of vaccines in the world, raised concern more than a decade ago and requested that Hyderus modify its working practices so that it could continue to support the company, should countries and borders effectively close. “At the time, that seemed a bit far-fetched,” explains Christopher. “But we modified our IT systems and trained everyone to be able to work from home and, in fact, anywhere with an internet connection. By 2019, we only had three office-based staff out of 25. So, when the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic became a pandemic, we saw absolutely no change in how we worked!” Christopher recalls how during the first lockdown in March 2020, clients were surprised that Hyderus was still answering emails, able to join video calls and able to implement projects around the world; , its competitors were struggling with the technology and new way of working. Today, the company is still ahead of the curve with all of its systems being based in the cloud. In late 2019, with news from China of an epidemic, the company equipped everyone with brand new iPhones, and Apple MacBooks to ensure they were ready to work with minimum support. “We have seen a 25% increase in work and turnover since the beginning of the pandemic as we have our regular clients. New clients have come to us as they see that we are working as usual. Some have a Covid vaccine, diagnostic or a medicine that can mitigate the severity of the virus in hospitalised patients but others are working in unrelated health fields that have been disrupted...” Regarding the future, Christopher tells us that Hyderus will be expanding as fast as it possibly can in Ireland. There are both pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the country, that Hyderus wishes to reach out to when it has additional staff capacity. “We are developing a highly sophisticated tool for our clients to inform them who influences which thought-leaders/healthcare professionals/public health specialists or key opinion leaders (KOLs) by using complex artificial intelligence (AI) technology and social media. We already have a prototype, and we'll be developing it further as soon as possible.” Company: Hyderus Teoranta Contact: Christopher Nial Website: http://www.hyderus.eu/ Hyderus is working with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance to collect community stories about vaccines across Africa and Asia. Here, Maimouna Fall talks about community mobilisation in Senegal.