Neil Flash joins Tonic

Healthcare specialist Tonic Life Communications has boosted its UK business with the appointment of a new managing director.

Neil Flash, formerly at rival agency Virgo Health PR has taken over the new role at Tonic's UK healthcare business division.

The division has been created in a recent reorganisation of Tonic's corporate set-up.

UK business accounts for around a quarter of the companys business, and Flash's appointment brings a new focus to this work.

Flash's remit is to win new clients and augment the accounts which are already there. He is also expected to handle professional relations activity, including market access work.

He will oversee Tonic's existing UK client list which includes AstraZeneca, GSK and Johnson & Johnson.

Flash is a pharma communications veteran, with 13 years' experience in PR and medical education programmes for prescription brands in the UK.

He joined Virgo shortly after its launch five years ago, and worked at Cohn & Wolfe before that. Flash was most recently business unit director of Virgo's health education division.

He led client accounts for Roche and GSK, UCB and Flynn Pharma, as well as an account promoting Boehringer Ingelheim and Lilly's depression brand Cymbalta to healthcare professionals in the UK.

Tonic chief executive Oliver Parsons said Flash would be a great addition to the agency's work.

"His range of experience and knowledge of the UK market, together with his business planning skills and insight, will be a great asset as we look to further strengthen the Tonic offering in 2009," said Parsons.

Parsons and fellow co-founder Scott Clark set up the London-based Tonic in 2004. The agency expanded into the US by 2006, and now has additional offices in New York and Dallas.

Its international work has included the promotion of World Psoriasis Day with Merck Sorono and an awareness campaign with the European Parkinson's Disease Association.

Last year it won a global brief to promote Novo Nordisk's hormone replacement therapy brands.