Dare to Be First

Our CEO and founder, Faruk Capan, was born and raised in Turkey. He came to the United States – and the University of Central Missouri – for graduate studies. After an internship at pharmaceutical company Marion Merrell Dow (now Sanofi), Faruk landed at Teva Marion Partners (now Teva), where he built the first-ever online patient portal, MSWatch. The first website of its kind, it was a major innovation in the 1990s – as well as a major challenge, as the team learned to manage entirely new ways of communicating with patients.

We’re more than a little obsessed with bold, innovative ideas.

With MSWatch, Faruk learned the invaluable ins and outs of medical, legal, and regulatory reviews. He tested boundaries. And he badly wanted to keep innovating. Very badly. So badly that he would occasionally go rogue and break rules. Finally, his boss said these fateful words: “I don’t want to fire you. But maybe you should start your own company.” With no detailed plan, a six-month-old baby, and little more than a dream, Faruk quit his job and founded Intouch in 1999.

Ever since that first pharma patient portal, we’ve had many other “firsts” – more than we can mention here – leading the pharma industry through innovation. In 2017, Intouch Proto was created to manage unprecedented growth. The following year, Intouch reorganized to become Intouch Group, a parent organization representing multiple agency and specialty affiliates with a diverse suite of full-service capabilities.

We are reimagining the future of healthcare marketing. 

One of the biggest milestones in our history occurred in 2021, when Faruk met Jim Lang, CEO of EVERSANA, the industry’s only fully integrated commercial services platform. They instantly recognized in one another a shared mission to transform the global life sciences industry with unmatched digital and data-driven commercial solutions that improve patient care and set out to reimagine what a healthcare agency could be. By early the next year, EVERSANA acquired Intouch Group and we became EVERSANA INTOUCH Proto. 

Today, we’re part of a global presence in healthcare marketing, a six-time pharma agency of the year winner, a Great Place To Work® for five consecutive years and awarded one of the top 20 most creative healthcare agencies. And as part of the 7,000+ EVERSANA employees worldwide, we no longer sound much like a start-up. Yet Faruk still approaches our business as one to ensure we continually adapt, evolve, and grow. It’s why we continue to champion our unique capacity for seeking and embracing change, our tenacity in taking on major challenges, and our commitment to true innovation and what’s next.