Client Overview
| Client | ConnectHEOR |
| Industry | Health Economics & Outcomes Research (HEOR) Consultancy |
| Headquarters | London, UK — with offices in Alberta (Canada) and Delhi (India) |
| Website | connectheor.com |
| Services | Health Economic Modelling, RWE & Analytics, Patient Centric Research, Evidence Synthesis, Market Access, HEOR Training, Responsible AI |
| Stack | WordPress + Elementor Pro + Custom Features + Custom CSS |
| Project Type | Website Improvement, Redesign & Custom Feature Development |
| Key Features | Publications System, Webinar Section, People Profiles (Popup), Research Gallery, ISPOR Event Page, Animated Counters |
| Global Presence | ISPOR, EPA (Evidence 360), NHTA — active conference presence |
| Timeline | 2–3 Weeks |
The Client
ConnectHEOR is an international Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) consultancy with its headquarters in London, offices in Alberta, Canada and Delhi, India. The organization is positioned at the cross-section between two capabilities that are rarely combined at this level deep domain expertise in HEOR, RWE, and market access, and the disciplined integration of responsible AI into evidence generation. Their tagline, Deep Domain Expertise + Responsible AI, is not a marketing statement but a true description of what makes them unique in the global market of HEOR consultancies.
The team is developed based on the list of the globally acknowledged specialists. The co-founder and Director, Tushar Srivastava, is a Global Talent endorsed by the Royal Society UK. Shilpi Swami, VP of Consulting and Strategy, was selected as one of the World’s Top 25 Women Leaders in Consulting 2025 and as a Chair-Elect of the ISPOR Oncology Special Interest Group. In addition to her position at ConnectHEOR, Kate Ren, Director of Statistics, has a PhD in Probability and Statistics and serves on the NICE Committee. Hugo Pedder, Senior Consultant, has a PhD in the University of Bristol and is also a member of the NICE Committee. It has created 9+ AI accelerators and agents, completed 100+ proof-of-concept projects, and has academic links with the University of Sheffield and the University of Bristol.
ConnectHEOR is a service to pharmaceutical companies, MedTech manufacturers, diagnostics companies, and digital health organizations across the UK, Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. They have published in oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular, respiratory, neurology, and other areas of therapy – and they are regular presenters at ISPOR, the Evidence 360 summit in Frankfurt, and the NHTA conference in Malaysia.
The Project — Improvement, Redesign & Custom Development
It was not a ground-up build. ConnectHEOR was using a functional WordPress site that was not reflective of how the organization had grown, the level of expertise of their team, and the complexity of their service package. It was an in-depth upgrade and redesign – keeping the same WordPress and Elementor framework but upgrading the design significantly, restructuring content blocks, and creating custom functionality that the existing site did not have.
The core objectives were:
– Redesign key sections to reflect the organization’s premium global positioning
– Build a managed Publications system — presenting peer-reviewed research with correct attribution and external links
– Develop a Webinar section — upcoming and past webinars with registration and watch links
– Implement animated impact counters — Scientific Publications, Countries, Therapeutic Areas, Successful Projects
– Build detailed People profiles with popup overlays — each team member’s full biography, speciality, role, and degree accessible without a page redirect
– Create a Resource Gallery for organized research and educational content
– Add White Papers as a distinct resource category
– Build a dedicated ISPOR Annual 2026 event page for conference marketing
– Improve the Careers section for talent acquisition
– Refine the homepage hero, service cards, testimonials, and conference presence sections
– Custom CSS refinements throughout for premium presentation
The Challenges
Communicating Scientific Authority Without Alienating
The audience of the ConnectHEOR program consists of Senior Directors, Vice Presidents, and Executive Directors of Top 10 Pharma companies professionals who can evaluate the scientific credibility within seconds of landing on a page. The site needed to convey a high level of expertise: NICE committee membership, Royal Society endorsement, PhD-level qualification, and active publication record. Simultaneously, it could not be so technical that it could not give a first-time visitor the idea of what the organization does and why he/she should be interested. The redesign needed to satisfy both audiences at the same time; the expert evaluator and the curious newcomer.
The Publications System
The team of the peer-reviewed research published in the international journals is regular at the team of the ConnectHEOR. These are some of the most effective credibility signals that the organization has – it shows that the consultants are not merely practitioners but active contributors to the global evidence base in HEOR. There was no systematic way of displaying these in the original site. Publications had to be made available as a managed, organized library with title, author list, journal and a direct link to the external publication – organized in a consistent manner that is scannable and easily updated by the team as new work is published.
People Profiles at Scale
One of the most unique resources of ConnectHEOR is its team. Information that pharmaceutical clients actively seek when considering a HEOR partner include the professional profiles of its consultants (their academic credentials, their memberships in NICE committees, their publication histories, their experience in their respective areas of therapy). The difficulty was to provide this level of information to a team of 15+ professionals without making it a page that had to be scrolled through thousands of words of biographical information. This was solved by adding an overlay to profile cards in the form of an overlay (a modal overlay): the team grid can still be scanned, and a click/tap on any profile card will reveal the entire profile in a modal overlay – no page redirect, no broken browsing experience.
Managing Multiple Resource Types
ConnectHEOR creates content in a variety of different formats: blog articles, peer-reviewed publications, webinars, white papers, training resources, and a resource gallery. The audience of each format is different as well as the structure of the content of each format. Prior to the improvement project, these either did not exist on the site or were not clearly categorised. The creation of a coherent Resources section, with clearly labeled sub-sections to each content type and consistent card layouts within each, required conscious information architecture choices about how to organize and surface content that was growing across multiple formats at the same time.
Conference and Event Marketing
ConnectHEOR speaks and displays at major international conferences on HEOR – most notably, ISPOR Annual, which draws the key decision-makers in their target market. The ISPOR Annual 2026 conference (Philadelphia, PA, Booth #705) required its own dedicated landing page to be used in pre-conference marketing – a page that could be promoted using LinkedIn and email campaigns to create scheduled meetings at the booth. This page needed to be constructed with a sense of urgency and clarity, unlike the rest of the site in tone, yet remain aesthetically consistent with the ConnectHEOR brand.
Design Approach
ConnectHEOR is a business in an industry where content is often more important than form – academic institutions and HEOR consultancies have traditionally been more concerned with content than with form. The improvement project was a chance to bridge that gap: to create a site that was as well-designed as the science behind it, and not to lose the density of information that expert audiences need.
The color system was perfected in a deep navy and teal palette – colors that convey precision, trust and science without the sterility of pure white and grey. Teal as the main accent is unique to the healthcare consulting industry, where blue is likely to prevail, and it is a sign of a modern progressive organization rather than an old fashioned institutional organization. The team photography, publication images, and conference images are provided with breathing space against this palette.
The typography was maintained clean and clear. The headings of the sections are written using a serif display font to show authority and a readable sans-serif font to show accessibility at any screen size. The testimonial section, which contains some of the most credible material on the site, since it features verbatim quotes of Senior Directors and Vice Presidents of Top 10 Pharma companies, was assigned a carousel format that highlights each quote separately, as opposed to displaying them as a compressed grid.
The homepage was redesigned to navigate through a logical credibility arc: mission and positioning in the hero, then AI and service capabilities, then client testimonials, then team culture, then publications, then blog and webinars, then global conference presence. Each of the sections introduces the visitor to the next in a natural manner which creates a complete picture of the organization before requesting the visitor to make contact.
| Design Decision | Rationale |
| Navy + Teal palette | Distinctive in healthcare consulting — scientific precision without institutional coldness |
| Serif display headings | Authority and credibility appropriate for a PhD-dense, NICE-affiliated team |
| Testimonial carousel format | Each Senior Director / VP quote given its own visual moment — maximum credibility impact |
| Profile card grid + popup overlay | Scannable team overview without sacrificing biographical depth for key decision-makers |
| Animated impact counters | Scientific Publications, Countries, Therapeutic Areas — numbers feel earned, not stated |
| ISPOR event page — distinct tone | Conference urgency and meeting CTA — differentiated from consultancy service pages |
| Resource section card layouts | Consistent presentation across Blog, Publications, Webinars, White Papers — scannable library feel |
Technology Stack
The current WordPress and Elementor Pro infrastructure was not abandoned and was developed further – the correct choice when it comes to an improvement project where the content base was already established and the team was used to working with the admin interface. All redesigned and new section layouts were done with Elementor Pro. The custom features, especially the popup profile overlays, the publications post type and the animated counters were created to be added to the existing Elementor structure rather than to replace it. Custom CSS was used all over to take the visual output to the desired level of sophistication.
| Technology | Role in This Project |
| WordPress | Existing CMS — retained and extended with new post types and taxonomies |
| Elementor Pro | Redesigned page layouts, new sections, popup overlays for team profiles |
| Custom Post Types | Publications, Webinars, White Papers — structured content types for growing libraries |
| Custom CSS | Premium styling refinements across all redesigned sections |
| Elementor Popups | Team profile overlays — full biography accessible without page redirect |
| Counter Animation | Scroll-triggered number animation for impact statistics |
| Careers Integration | Structured job listing section with application pathway |
| ISPOR Landing Page | Dedicated conference marketing page — distinct layout and CTA focus |
The Publications System
The most direct evidence of the scientific contribution of the ConnectHEOR to the global field of HEOR is research publications. The publication record of the team includes major journals, and work on advanced indirect treatment comparisons, cost-effectiveness modelling in oncology and rare diseases, expert elicitation of long-term survival outcomes (NICE Technical Support Document 26), and patient-centered outcomes research. To pharmaceutical clients considering HEOR partners, this publication record is due diligence material – not marketing material.
The publications system was designed as a custom post type in WordPress, with structured fields of the title, author list, journal or conference reference, publication year and the external URL to the full paper. Individual publications are shown as cards in the Publications archive – with a cover image or a contextual photograph, the complete title, the author attribution, and a link to the external source. The archive can be browsed and sorted by most recent first, with the option of surfacing featured or high-impact publications on the homepage.
The system can be easily managed by the ConnectHEOR team – adding a new publication is a typical WordPress content entry that can be completed in minutes and automatically appears in the archive and on the homepage. Operationally, this is important to a team that publishes regularly: the site is kept up-to-date without needing a developer to work on each new paper.
| Publications Feature | Implementation |
| Individual publication cards | Cover image, full title, author list, external link — consistent across all entries |
| Homepage featured strip | Latest publications surfaced on homepage — always current without manual curation |
| Full publications archive page | Complete browsable library — organized by most recent publication |
| External link handling | Each publication links directly to journal page (Wiley, PubMed, Springer, etc.) |
| Staff-managed post type | New publications added through WordPress admin — no developer needed |
| Author attribution | Full author list displayed — including non-ConnectHEOR co-authors for multi-institution papers |
Team Profiles — Depth Without Disruption
The team of 15+ consultants and directors is one of the most qualified in the world of the HEOR consulting market. Royal Society approval, NICE committee membership, various PhDs at Sheffield, Bristol, Cambridge, and York, more than 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and direct experience with major HTA organizations – this is the information that is relevant to a pharmaceutical VP considering a partner to a complex HTA submission. It was to be on the site and it was to be available without a visitor having to go through to another page and find each team member.
This was fixed with a popup overlay system created with the popup element of Elementor and custom CSS. The team section displays a scannable grid of profile cards of the team members, each having the photograph, name, role and specialty of the team member. By clicking or tapping any card, a full-screen overlay is displayed with the complete profile: degree credentials, area of specialty, role, and a detailed biography including their career history, expertise in methodology, experience in the area of specialty, publications, and conference activity. The overlay is also closed with just a single click and the visitor is back to where he was in the page.
This is a strategy that will appeal to two audiences at the same time. A pharmaceutical director who knows the name Shilpi Swami or Tushar Srivastava will confirm that they have participated in one of the clicks. The complete picture of what each consultant is an expert in – PhD at the University of York, 20 years in HEOR, NICE committee member – is given to a new visitor who does not yet know the team, without the disturbing effect of having to navigate away to see the team overview.
| Before | After |
| Team listed with name and role only — no credentials or biographical depth visible | Profile cards with popup overlays — full biography, credentials, and expertise one click away |
| Visitor had to navigate to a separate page to learn about each consultant | Overlay opens inline — visitor stays on team page, returns to same position on close |
| Key credibility signals (NICE membership, Royal Society endorsement) buried or absent | Credentials surfaced prominently in each popup — the information that matters to pharma clients is findable |
| No differentiation between in-residence consultants and advisory profiles | Structured profile grid with clear role labels — Senior Consultant, Director, VP — organizational clarity at a glance |
Webinar Section — Research in Motion
The webinars offered by the ConnectHEOR cover the methodological frontiers of HEOR: HTA challenges in autoimmune diseases, best practices in ITCs, long-term modelling, treatment sequencing, and incorporating RWE into HTA submissions. They are not general interest sessions, but specialist content to an audience of HEOR professionals and market access teams at pharmaceutical companies. A webinar organized by ConnectHEOR, on an issue that a pharma team is actively struggling with, is a direct demonstration of how well the consultancy is knowledgeable in that field.
The Webinar section was created to display the upcoming webinars with registration links and the past webinars with watch links – making the content library available long after the live session. Each entry of the webinars will have a descriptive cover image, a clear title, a summary of the covered topics and the action link. This section is both a dedicated archive page and a featured strip on the homepage and is surfaced to visitors to the homepage at the point of maximum relevance.
Webinars are a direct business development tool in the case of a consultancy whose main business development channel is thought leadership, which is publishing, presentations at ISPOR, and contributing to NICE guidance. A pharmaceutical director that attends a ConnectHEOR webinar on autoimmune HTA challenges is already convinced of the expertise of the team before a proposal conversation is initiated.
Conference Presence & The ISPOR Annual 2026 Page
ConnectHEOR actively and continuously participates in the major HEOR conferences. They display, present posters, conduct theater performances, and contribute to symposia at the most significant event in global HEOR, ISPOR Annual. VP Shilpi Swami was a featured speaker and panel moderator at Evidence 360 (EPA) in Frankfurt. The South Asia team was also attending the policy discussions on health technology assessment in Malaysia at the NHTA Conference.
The activity of this conference is one of the primary business development channels pharmaceutical companies meeting with ConnectHEOR at ISPOR booths, listening to their presentations, and seeing their poster work are the same companies that commission HEOR projects. The site was required to convey this global conference presence, not only as a signal of credibility but also as an active marketing channel to other upcoming conferences.
A special ISPOR Annual 2026 page was created in the Philadelphia conference — Booth #705 — and a banner surfaced high on the homepage navigation and hero area. The page will be a pre-conference marketing destination: attendees of the conference can learn that ConnectHEOR will be present at the event, understand what they do, and schedule a meeting before the conference begins. This is a common practice among consultancies at large conferences, and having a purpose-built landing page to it, instead of a generic one with a ‘contact us’ button, makes the conversion of the scheduling much more likely.
The global conference section on the home page uses popup overlays (in line with the team profile system) to elaborate each appearance at the conference – ISPOR, EPA, and NHTA – providing the full context of what ConnectHEOR presented and contributed without necessarily having a dedicated page to each event.
Pages & Features Delivered
| Page / Feature | Content & Purpose |
| Homepage — Redesigned | Hero (AI + expertise positioning), Services grid, Client testimonials (carousel), People culture, Publications strip, Blog/Webinar, Conference presence, Impact counters |
| Services Overview | 6 service categories with individual service pages |
| Health Economic Modelling | Service page — cutting-edge statistical methods for HTA models |
| Patient Centric Research | Service page — patient involvement in research and HTA |
| RWE & Healthcare Analytics | Service page — real-world data analysis across product lifecycle |
| Review & Evidence Synthesis | Service page — ITCs, single-arm studies, literature reviews |
| Market Access & Value Comm. | Service page — communicating clinical and economic value to payers |
| HEOR Training | Service + resource page — training programs for HEOR professionals |
| Responsible AI | Dedicated AI solutions page — 9+ accelerators, 100+ POCs |
| People & Culture / About Us | Leadership and team overview with full profile popup system |
| Publications Archive | Managed library — peer-reviewed papers with author attribution and journal links |
| Blog | Research articles and thought leadership content |
| Webinar Section | Upcoming and past webinars with registration and watch links |
| White Papers | Distinct white paper resource category |
| Resource Gallery | Organized research and educational content library |
| Careers | Job listings and talent acquisition section |
| ISPOR Annual 2026 | Dedicated conference marketing landing page — Booth #705, Philadelphia |
| Contact Us | Professional enquiry form with office location details |
Outcome
ConnectHEOR now possesses a site that is just as detailed and as good as the organization it serves. The publications system presents the peer-reviewed research conducted by the team in the form of a structured, browsable library – providing pharmaceutical clients with the evidence of scientific contribution that they seek when assessing a HEOR partner. Team profile popup system allows the complete credentials of 15+ internationally recognized consultants to be visible without interfering with the browsing process. The webinar section provides permanent content of thought leadership of the consultancy on its own domain, not dependent on LinkedIn or YouTube.
The redesign of the homepage follows a credibility arc which is suitable to the audience: mission, AI capability, service depth, client endorsements by Top 10 Pharma, team culture, research output, and presence at conferences. A VP of Market Access at a pharmaceutical company landing on the page gets everything they need to evaluate ConnectHEOR as a potential partner – without making a single phone call or sending a single email first.
The ISPOR Annual 2026 page provides the business development team with a direct marketing asset in the most important conference in their calendar. The page can be found by the attendees of the conference, they will be able to understand the positioning of the connectHEOR, and they can schedule a meeting in advance which is the exact workflow that makes the participation in the conference commercially productive.
| Before | After |
| No structured publications library — research output not visible on the site | Managed publications archive — peer-reviewed papers with full attribution and journal links, homepage-featured |
| Team profiles showed name and role only — credentials not surfaced | Popup profile system — full biography, PhD credentials, NICE membership, and expertise one click away |
| Webinars announced through social media only — no site-based archive | Dedicated webinar section — upcoming with registration, past with watch links, featured on homepage |
| Conference presence not communicated on the website | Conference section with popup detail — ISPOR, EPA, NHTA — and dedicated ISPOR 2026 marketing page |
| No distinction between resource types — blog, papers, and guides mixed | Structured Resources section — Blog, Publications, Webinars, White Papers, Resource Gallery — each clearly labeled |
| 6 Service Pages | 15+ Team Profiles (Popup) | 5 Resource Categories | 3 Global Office Locations |
| A consultancy’s website is its first scientific submission. If it does not communicate expertise clearly and credibly, no amount of actual expertise will compensate for what a client could not find. |
Reflection
The particular kind of challenge that ground-up buildings do not have is the constraint of building something that is meaningfully better, inside of an existing building. Any choice must be weighed against what is already there, what the team already knows how to handle, and what can be improved without disrupting a site that was already functional. The solution here, which was to keep the WordPress and Elementor framework, and then to add to it the custom post types and popup features, and apply design enhancements using custom CSS and Elementor sections redesigned, was the correct balance in this project.
The features that are most likely to bring about compounding value over time are the publications and the webinar systems. ConnectHEOR has regular publications and participates in conferences regularly. Each new paper added to the publications archive, each new webinar added to the webinar library makes the site a more complete and credible presentation of the scientific output of the organization. A well-constructed content system is more valuable, though, with each piece of content that is added to it.
The popup profile system of team biographies is worth mentioning as a UX pattern that is quite suitable to the professional services firms in specialized fields. The scannable grid overview plus the full-depth popup on demand both serve the fast scanner and the thorough evaluator without making the site have to choose between them. On a consultancy with team credentials as a key differentiator, this is not a cosmetic feature, but a business development tool that is embedded within the page structure.
Interested in a similar project?
We design and develop professional websites for schools, institutions, and service businesses.
