Bartling brings more than two decades of experience with her to be senior managing director in FTI's 25-strong UK healthcare team, which sits within the agency's strategic comms offer.
The team advises more than 100 healthcare clients, including FTSE 100 companies such as Hikma Pharmaceuticals.
Other FTI health clients include cancer-diagnosis company Angle plc and Ascensia Diabetes Care.
The agency said it had expanded its remit within healthcare to include public affairs across the UK, EU and the US, as well as change-management programmes for big pharma clients and M&A deals for healthcare clients.
Previous experience
Bartling joins FTI from the global healthcare agency Health Unlimited, where she was a board member, leading PR and comms.
Prior to this, she was at Edelman for 13 years, with spells on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bartling was vice-president and then senior vice-president of health for the firm, based in Chicago, before coming to the UK as director of its UK health team.
She became deputy managing director of health and finally managing director of the health team, a post she held for nearly three years.
Bartling began her healthcare comms career working in public affairs for the American Medical Association before joining the American College of Healthcare Executives, where she rose to become its vice-president of comms and marketing.
Commenting on her appointment to FTI, Bartling said: "It is an exciting time to be joining this prestigious global communications practice, and I am looking forward to working with its diverse team of experts."
Ben Atwell, global head of healthcare and life sciences at the agency, added: "[Ann's] appointment comes as we continue to build on our foundation of financial communications, strengthen our corporate communications capabilities and expand our global offering."
Click here to subscribe to the FREE pharma and healthcare comms bulletin to receive dedicated healthcare news, features and comment straight to your inbox.
Make sure you register for the site to access more than one story per month.
To submit a news, comment, case study or analysis idea for the pharma and healthcare comms bulletin, email Ian.Griggs@haymarket.com
