Integrating medical content expertise with technical excellence: Q&A with Stephanie Mackay-Stokes

1. Welcome to the team, Steph, we’re so delighted to have you at Varn Health and you’ve joined at a transformative time for our agency, and for the search industry as a whole. How are you feeling about joining and heading up Varn Health’s London office and medical content team?

I’m really excited to be joining at such a pivotal moment for both the business and the search landscape. I’m looking forward to strengthening Varn Health’s search capability with a fully fledged medical content team, and building on the brilliant work already happening here to help ambitious health and pharma brands grow their visibility online – in all the forms that visibility now takes.

For the wider industry, there’s understandably a lot of hype around AI search – which we see being referred to quite frequently as GEO or generative engine optimisation. Evolving behaviours and technologies have prompted organisations to re-evaluate more conventional approaches to creating and sharing content to reach audiences. I’m excited to work with our clients to navigate this change with fresh approaches, technical innovation and tailored strategies.

More personally, it also means a lot to be joining a team whose values feel closely aligned with my own. The emphasis on being a business for good – from environmental commitments to charitable work and building a healthy, happy team culture – not only makes worklife more rewarding, but genuinely shapes the quality and impact of the work we do.

2. The London launch brings together the content heritage of the former Wallace Health team with Varn Health’s technical SEO and AI search/GEO expertise. Why is this specific combination so critical for pharma brands right now?

For pharma brands, this combination is critical because the rules of visibility are changing at the same time as audience expectations. Patients and HCPs still value credible, well-written medical content, but they now discover and consume that content through a much broader mix of channels and search experiences – from traditional search to AI-driven answers and emerging GEO platforms.

Bringing together deep medical content expertise and a strong understanding of patient and HCP needs with Varn Health’s data-driven, technical SEO and AI search capability allows us to bridge that gap. It means content isn’t just accurate and compliant, but discoverable, measurable and commercially meaningful.

Across the industry, I know from recent conversations and events, that some teams feel stuck in the ‘trough of disillusionment’ with AI and search change. Thanks to the innovative work already underway at Varn Health, I believe we’re firmly climbing the ‘slope of enlightenment’ – and that puts us in a strong position to help pharma brands grow across the entire search landscape, not just traditional SEO.

3. Based on your experiences, particularly with your past work across private health, medical devices and pharmaceuticals, what do you think is the biggest mistake brands make when trying to balance “medical accuracy” with “digital performance”?

The biggest mistake I see is treating medical accuracy and digital performance as a trade-off. In reality, they should reinforce each other. In high-trust areas like the sectors our clients operate in, accuracy, expert input and robust medical review directly support discoverability, credibility and engagement – particularly in YMYL contexts where E-E-A-T really matters. When clinical expertise is visible through health-literate copy, named reviewers, expert quotes and transparent sources, content performs better because it’s more trustworthy, more useful, and ultimately more aligned with how both search engines and real people evaluate quality.

4. We often talk about the “silo” between content creation and SEO. How do you see the Varn Health model specifically breaking down these silos to deliver better results for our clients?

I find it helpful to view SEO as the more data-driven arm and then content as the qualitative arm of the same discipline – where the overarching goal is to achieve website visibility, engagement and ultimately, commercial performance. 

The best results come when they’re designed together from the outset. At Varn Health, strategy, technical SEO, AI search and medical content work as one integrated team, not in a handover model. That means insight from data and search behaviour directly informs our content strategy and what we create, while our clinical and audience understanding shapes how we prioritise, structure and optimise it. 

The result is work that’s not just technically sound, but genuinely useful, compliant and aligned with real user needs throughout their journey through the customer pipeline.

5. With AI-driven search (GEO) and platforms like ChatGPT, the “bar” for quality and trusted content has been raised, particularly in healthcare, probably more so than any other sector. How do you see Varn Health’s approach to content strategy, ensuring that healthcare brands don’t just “rank” on Google, but are actually cited by AI assistants?

Before AI search really took off, I remember Google’s Helpful Content Updates from 2022 onwards. Many of our clients saw big boosts to their organic search performance after each roll out. It was definitely a moment of pride for me, because it was rewarding us for what we’d already been doing anyway – consistent, authentic, high-quality, in-depth content that serves user needs. Those that hadn’t made the same level of investment or attention, didn’t see the same results.

It’s refreshing to see that I think AI search rewards brands in the same way. If you’re investing in long-term, high-quality content strategies designed to genuinely help patients and HCPs, then you’re onto a winner – especially if you’re smart with how you use content across channels and teams to maximise both your reach and ROI. 

6. “Trust” is a non-negotiable in healthcare. How do you ensure that “search-led” content remains human, empathetic, and patient-centric, rather than just being written for an algorithm?

In healthcare, trust operates on a number of levels. 

With content, firstly, there’s trust in intent: is this content genuinely here to help me, or is it primarily serving the brand? We always start by being clear on who the content is for, what they’re trying to achieve, and whether that aligns with the brand’s objectives. If those goals don’t meaningfully align, you risk producing content that performs on paper but doesn’t deliver real value – and that erodes trust over time.

The second layer is trust in the information itself. That comes from rigorous regulatory knowledge, credible sources, thorough fact-checking and close collaboration with client stakeholders and subject matter experts. There’s no guesswork – if we can’t stand behind something with confidence, it doesn’t go in. This is something we’ve explored further in a recent webinar with PAGB and at NEXT Pharma Summit, because trust isn’t just a principle, it’s a practical discipline in how content is planned, created and governed.

7. If you could give one piece of advice to a marketer or digital lead at a global pharma firm or healthcare business, who is struggling to get their content noticed in an increasingly crowded online digital world, what would it be?

Take a step back and get really clear on what it actually takes for someone to become a “customer”, whether that’s a patient, prescriber, referrer or buyer. Too often, content strategies jump straight to outputs without mapping the real decision journey behind them.

High-intent touchpoints can be hard to reach, particularly in regulated healthcare, but they’re rarely the only route to impact. There are often earlier moments of need, uncertainty or education where brands can add genuine value and build trust over time. Break the journey into manageable goals, be deliberate about where you can realistically show up, and don’t be afraid to find a niche or creative angle. In a crowded digital world, clarity of purpose and smart prioritisation are what cut through the noise.