ARK and Syneos Health Communications each took home two golds at this year’s PM Society Digital Awards, capping an even spread of winners across the categories.

As well as being hosted online for the first time in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 competition also saw the addition of three new categories: ‘Lockdown engagement’, for companies that had used digital innovation to keep their teams motivated during lockdown; ‘Still working!’, designed to highlight the best digital programmes delivering consistent results after three years; and ‘Global to local’, which looked at programmes where adaptation or localisation was a key feature.

ARK took home Golds for the ‘Healthcare Charities’ and ‘Agency Digital Team’ awards, as well as a Silver and a Bronze, while Syneos Health won two Golds for ‘Innovation – new technology’, for work with Edwards Lifesciences, and ‘Still Working!’, for AbbVie.

This year’s ‘Pharma Digital Partner’ gold went to Donna Roberts from Takeda, with a Highly Commended award for Paul Dixey from Novartis. ‘Digital Project or Account Manager’ was won by Radical Departures’ Genevieve Morgan and ‘Agency Digital Team’ was won by ARK for the second year running, with Mole Digital awarded Highly Commended.

Other agency Gold winners were Boxbear, Cognitant, Engage in-Health, Mole Digital, Page & Page, PharmaDoctor, Radical Departures, Salt, W20 Group and woolley pau.

Among pharma companies and healthcare organisations there were several companies taking home multiple awards. Top of the pharma leader board were AstraZeneca and Napp, both taking a Gold and two Silvers, while other Gold winners were Abbvie, Align Technology, Bayer, Chiesi, Edwards Lifesciences, Essity, Ipsen, Novartis, Takeda and UCB.

There were also wins for two charity organisations – Monkey Sox and Niemann-Pick UK with Niemann-Pick taking a Silver as well.

Onyx Health has formed a new PR partnership with US agency Jeff Winton Associates (JWA) in a move that will help its clients expand into the US market, while supporting US clients moving into Europe.

The partnership will combine Onyx Health’s expertise in the UK, European and Middle East healthcare industry with JWA’s in-depth knowledge of the markets in the US, Canada, Latin America, Asia and Japan.

Both agencies aim to help their clients expand into new territories by pooling resources and sharing expertise, and are already working together on several PR and communication projects for SME pharma and med-tech companies whose sights are set on international expansion