Winners

Cambridge Healthcare Research (CHR) is a leading strategic consultancy in healthcare and life sciences. Founded in 2013, we are committed to being the go-to strategic partner for every healthcare decision maker. CHR is the umbrella brand for both Solici and Vox.Bio and we have ambitions to grow our consultancy services to support a wider range of stakeholders and strategic areas across the healthcare landscape.

We provide strategic decision support to the pharmaceutical, medical device and consumer health industries. In just nine years, CHR has grown to a team of 120 employees and, in addition to our headquarters at St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge, we have opened a London office at Zetland House in Shoreditch.

“We are truly delighted that the hard work of everybody at CHR has been acknowledged with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade,” said Edward Cartwright, one of the company’s three founding partners.

He added: “It is recognition of the high quality of our services that are in demand worldwide and how we have risen to the challenge of building and scaling a successful international business. We have a brilliant team, and this is a testament to their passion and commitment. Their dedication to quality and their strong customer focus has allowed us to compete successfully in this global market.”

Working closely with clients on asset commercialisation, product strategy and opportunity assessments, CHR enables clients to navigate difficult commercial decisions by mapping their position in complex marketplaces and outlining competitor activity, intent and capabilities. The team’s evaluation of market dynamics – combined with a targeted understanding of key trends in the prescriber, regulator and payer environments – gives clients the information they most need to make the best possible decisions.

Key to the company’s success is our team of experts with PhDs and MBAs from top universities. All told, we speak more than 30 different languages and support clients across the world, ranging from the UK and the rest of Europe to the US and Japan.

This is valuable because, by its very nature, pharmaceuticals is a global industry, with drugs developed in one country benefiting patients worldwide. A client in the US, for example, can commission a project assessing the treatment of a particular disease in the Middle East and Africa, or analysing the commercialisation of a certain drug in Australia. One of CHR’s key areas of expertise is understanding this international market, which generates more than 90% of our revenue, thanks to our close relationships with global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies based overseas.

CHR’s mission is to develop specialist intelligence and research services that that support the business-critical decisions that our clients must make as they bring new ideas to market. In short, we advance healthcare through unrivalled understanding.

We have ambitious plans to become one of the leading providers of insight, analysis and data to the life sciences sector. Our first goal was to establish leadership in the competitive analysis and business intelligence field, and we are now one of the larger players in this space. In order to enter the much larger pharmaceutical market research segment, in 2017 we established a separate qualitative and quantitative market research division under the name of Vox.Bio. Using methodologies that break the mould, Vox.Bio gains an unrivalled understanding of the healthcare landscape and unlocks unexpected insights so that when the time comes, our clients’ strategies stand out – giving them the power of knowing that their strategy will succeed, their communications will connect, and their launch will land.

In 2023, CHR unveiled an extensive rebrand across all divisions. The rebrand included a move to a ‘house of brands’ model and saw the competitive intelligence arm of our business renamed and reimagined as Solici (pronounced sol-e-sigh).

Solici provides strategic decision support across the pharmaceutical, medical device, and consumer healthcare industries, working closely with clients on asset commercialisation, product strategy, and future opportunities. Solici helps find the hard-to-reach insights and gives clients the power of knowing that their next strategic move is the right one by helping them navigate difficult commercial decisions, mapping their position in complex markets, and understanding the impact of their activities.

People are at the heart of CHR’s success, and we are proud of our inclusive work environment, with a 50:50 gender split and 30 countries represented in our workforce. In addition, we believe that physical and mental wellbeing are core to a healthy working environment. Each employee has a monthly health budget that can be spent on gym/fitness/wellness activities, and we offer a Cycle to Work scheme and private health insurance. “To ensure that work does not get in the way of family life, we also offer flexible working to all employees,” said founding partner Max Rubin.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) plays an important role in the life of CHR consultants. “We believe that business is not just about revenues and profits – companies also need to leverage their resources and experience to have a real and positive impact on society and the environment,” said founding partner and CEO Matteo Perucchini. He added: “We want all our
employees to build amazing careers whilst having a real and tangible impact on society and the environment, not just through the work we deliver to our clients but also through our investment in a wide range of CSR activities, which reflect both our corporate and their personal values.”

 To this end, we are committed to minimising our environmental impact; over the years, we have launched several schemes to reduce emissions, minimise waste, and increase recycling. We are delighted to have been a carbon neutral company since 2019-2020.

In addition, CHR has supported more than 60 different charities over the past two years. These include many within our local community, such as Age UK Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, Findacure, Cambridge City Food Bank and Addenbrooke’s ACT (a recent addition to help tackle the COVID crisis).

Find out more about what we do and how we work by visiting our websites:

Camhcr.com

Solici.com

Vox.Bio

CHR Brand Video from CHR on Vimeo.