About the Top 40 Creative Healthcare Agencies

A short list was created from a number of places including:
Publicly available awards results; PMLiVE’s PMHub categories; PMGroup’s in-house databases; Other data sources within the public domain; agencies who requested to be included

To be listed all agencies must have offices or a registered address within the United Kingdom, permanent staff operating in the UK – and have billed over £100,000 on advertising, branding, creative and design work in the UK healthcare sector in 2024.

You can apply to be included in the 2026 shortlist by emailing t40@pmlive.com or contacting your PMLiVE account manager

You can nominate an agency to be included in the 2026 shortlist by emailing t40@pmlive.com

There are a number of different ranking factors taken into consideration – and each factor is weighted when generating the overall score which is made up of:

• 2024 Awards*: 40%
• Billings from from advertising, branding, creative and design within the UK healthcare sector in 2024**: 20%
• Total agency billings in 2024**: 10%
• Number of staff working on healthcare**: 10%
• Social media presence***: 10%
• Number of staff**: 5%
• Agency age**: 5%

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* For the 2025 T40, agencies were encouraged to submit as many awards in as many different schemes during 2024 as they wished. Points were allocated by PMLiVe based on the level of success (EG: Gold, silver etc), the type of awards scheme, the award category and the type of work / nature of the award – and a total score calculated for each agency. Each awards scheme, category, type of work were scored equally for each agency.
** Data was supplied by the agencies based on set ranges with varying levels of depth to ensure comparison across a wide range and size of agencies was possible. The bar charts in this publication give an indication of the data supplied, but are scored from wide and varying banding levels and as such the length of the bar charts should not be used to infer direct comparisons between each agencies’ actual data (which was not supplied).
For example, if one bar chart is twice the length of another, it should not be inferred that the agency has exactly twice the level of that specific measure.
There is some weighting towards smaller agencies which have a greater amount of their overall work taking place in the UK, to reflect the jump between 1 million and 2 million in billings as having a greater impact than between 45 million and 46 million for example, and to reflect the aim of the publication in highlighting those agencies that have had an impact on the UK marketplace.
*** Social Media presence score calculated by looking at the number of followers on the corporate social media accounts supplier by the agencies. Each agency supplied up to 4 accounts (1 per social media system) including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo and LinkedIN (account data supplied by the agencies – all counts made and verified by PMLiVE during November 2025)

There will be a print publication containing:

• Industry analyses & opinion articles;
• Thought leaders by agency personnel;
• A ranking section which will include profiles of listed agencies;
• Additional top ten ranking lists on specific factors such as:
  Agency billings
  Awards
  Social media presence
  Smaller agencies
  Independent agencies
  UK focused agencies
  Young agencies; and
• A page explaining the methodology, any caveats and inclusion rules

The print version will be posted approximately six weeks after the online version is launched.
You can register to receive a copy here.

If you think your agency ranking is wrong, please contact t40@pmlive.com and we will be in touch to explain your ranking and let you know who signed off the content on your behalf.