Digitas has absorbed Medical Broadcasting Corp. (MBC), which it bought in January 2006, and has formed a health division called Digitas Health, reports Ad Week. Digitas Health will serve nine of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, the company said.

Digitas Health will bring together MBC's expertise in web design and creative with work Digitas had already done for pharmaceutical clients like Pfizer that mostly encompass relationship and direct marketing.

Digitas Health will be led by David Kramer, a cofounder of MBC, who as CEO of Digitas Health will report to Digitas President Laura Lang. It will be headquartered in Philadelphia and will also operate across the Digitas network of offices, including New York, Chicago and Boston.

"This is the next and important step in recognizing the full value of [Digitas CEO] David Kenny's original vision of MBC in the first place," said Kramer. "He saw an industry in need of substantial change. The healthcare industry has been a late adopter" of interactive advertising.

The move comes a little over two months after the completion of Publicis Groupe's $1.3 billion acquisition of Digitas Inc., which as an independent company included the agency of the same name, Modem Media and MBC.