Only pure buffer is viable past early game (before level 15).

In DDDA best healing is done with consummables, the way to go is to improve defenses with spellscreen and so prevent damages in the first place.

Now for other pawns in your party, if they arent sent back to the rift, you can revive them indefinitely.... there's even augments to make them stronger and get more HPs back when you revive them.

Also there's a staff, the legion might from the black cat, that make your mage pawn revive automatically a few seconds after they died.

And now for the arisen..... consummables are instant heal and heal fully (anodyne only heal the white part of your lost HPs).

Consumables are king.

But, I'm making my first Primary Pawn into a Mage buffbot/healer...

Though I'm only in my 40's atm and haven't finished the main campaign, Mage Pawns don't seem to get a lot of a chance to cast effective Anodyne, but they do seem to respond quickly with debuff-removal (whatever their spell is that removes lots of debuffs.)

And, the forms of Anodyne I've seen don't really serve to heal very quickly. They're "OK" but may not be worth dedicating a spell-slot too for tough fights. For general adventuring, they're fine.

At my level/progression, bottled Spring Water is better than a healing-focused Mage in terms of the returns from a variant of Anodyne.

ie: In my noob/limited opinion thus far, a healing mage can have their place, but Anodyne isn't going to reliably save a party while in tough combat.

Mages are more comfort / luxury healers for when you can't be bothered to carry around a dozen healing items (though they're pretty common). I like to have one around for the majority of the game simply because the "I don't have to play carefully and I can just let myself heal back a bit in between fights" mentality that doesn't fully kill my pace.
They tend to be lightweight as well, so one with Sinew can carry a lot of items for you.

The thing is that in endgame - especially hard mode, where most monsters can two or three tap you - the mage's healing won't really matter, or be fast enough at all, and their buffing abilities are tied to their knowledge and inclinations (which can and do change, I had to reset mine to Utilitarian so often...), so that often robs them of their two best use cases and leaves you with a mediocre to okayish spellslinger that doesn't have access to the actual heavy hitting.

On the upside, mages get an okay amount of stats from level ups. Could be better but you can easily run a mage for the main game and switch them to be an ok sorcerer later down the line. You might have to reset inclinations though.

Originally posted by ุSideways Terry Crews:

I was planning on being a tank and making my pawn a healer to keep myself and everyone alive. Is it possible to do that?

Yes, you can, but I wouldn't recommend that if your objective is to play BBI Hard Mode.