Ashley Blacker

About me

I am an experienced medical marketing and business development professional with significant experience in AHPRA compliant medical advertising and communications, digital patient marketing (strategy and technical implementation), medical website development (vocation-appropriate, professional, SEO compliant and AI visible) and patient-centric content writing.

I founded Medsolve in 2018 after a 10+ year career in the medical sector, and since then, my team and I have built over 100+ websites for Australian doctors. We also securely host and manage over 120+ medical websites and perform digital marketing for over 80+ clients (predominantly doctors) around Australia, evidencing the trust doctors place in us to manage their online reputation and deliver results.

As a background, from 2008-2018, I worked full-time within the Australian health and medical sector in marketing and business development roles, spanning both the private and public sectors, including general practice, medical research, private and public hospitals and the aged care sectors. This provided a level of industry experience and understanding that is essential to do this job well given medical marketing is so technocratic, targeted, and heavily regulated by AHPRA.

Previously employers include:

• Group Homes Australia (dementia / high-care / palliative care corporate)
• Healthe Care Australia (3rd largest private hospital corporate in Australia: surgical / medical / rehab / mental health hospitals, Australia-wide)
• Evolution Healthcare (private hospital corporate: surgical / radiology / medical / rehab, Australia-wide)
• The Woolcock Institute of Medical Research (sleep and respiratory medicine research and multidisciplinary specialist clinic)
• St Vincent Public Hospital Sydney (Manager of Senior Medical Officers)
• Eastbrooke Medical Centres (general practice corporate: Australia-wide)
• Ochre Health Medical Centre (rural general practice / rural ED hospital manager / medical recruitment corporate: Australia-wide)
• Software AG / WebMethods (global software company)

Working across both the primary and tertiary healthcare sectors was an excellent foundation for understanding how the healthcare system is interconnected, the underlying referral networks, and the relevant patient trends in elective surgery and ancillary medical services marketing.

My responsibilities when working within the medical sector largely involved:

• New patient marketing and GP referral development for specialists / private hospitals
• New resident marketing for the aged care sector
• Study participant marketing for research organisations
• Opening new medical centres / clinics / service development
• Radiology and medical imaging marketing
• Business strategy for specialists and healthcare corporates
• GP recruitment for rural and regional medical centres
• AHPRA-compliant digital patient marketing (strategy and technical digital execution)

I have been solely responsible for managing medical marketing budgets of up to $500,000 pa for various healthcare corporates, which granted me licence to experiment on a range of marketing strategies and platforms to develop a deep understanding of what works to increase patient numbers, and what doesn’t.

I founded Medsolve because it was apparent there was a significant gap in the market for a medical marketing agency that offered doctors access to industry professionals who have truly worked within the industry at the highest level, as opposed to mainly generic digital marketing agencies that tend to work with plumbers, electricians and furniture removalists, or worse, fake medical marketing agencies that are increasingly popping up that also offer staff with no healthcare sector employment experience or knowledge when scrutinised closely.

The reality is, medical marketing is an advanced, sub-specialised area of marketing, which relies heavily on sector-experience, medical terminology, medical sciences, a thorough understanding of private health insurance dynamics, what constitutes an elective procedure, the demographics of diseases, and the supply and demand of competing services in specific regions. In addition, a complete understanding of AHPRA’s guidelines is also mandatory, given your reputation and registration is at risk. This is hard enough for a non-doctor to learn, let alone a generic marketing agency.

Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my wife, my two kids, playing the drums, the outdoors, mountain bike riding, cooking, philosophy, cosmology and astronomy.