In 2025, the medical device industry trends are not just shaping the future—they’re redefining the present. As technology advances at an unprecedented pace, regulatory landscapes evolve, and patient expectations rise, the industry stands at a pivotal juncture. Embracing these trends offers a pathway to innovation, market expansion, and enhanced patient outcomes. However, success requires strategic foresight to navigate challenges in compliance, operational efficiency, and trust-building.

Explore the key trends shaping 2025, uncovering data-driven insights and actionable strategies to seize opportunities and maintain a competitive edge in this rapidly evolving industry.

MedTech Trend #1: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Integration

AI is revolutionizing the medical device industry by addressing inefficiencies in diagnostics, streamlining regulatory approvals, and enabling highly personalized experiences and patient care. These advancements tackle critical challenges such as the growing demand for precision medicine and operational efficiency. However, the industry faces unique challenges that many other sectors don’t encounter. Strict regulations around HIPAA, PHI, and PII create significant barriers, making it difficult to adopt off-the-shelf AI solutions from fields like commerce or digital experience. These regulations demand that AI be specifically tailored to ensure data privacy, security, and compliance, limiting the utility of plug-and-play approaches seen in other industries.

Recommended Approach: AI implementation brings value to every stage of the product lifecycle. However, by considering AI as a standalone strategy across your organization, you’ll miss the true potential that a holistic strategy can provide. Instead, consider it as a powerful enabler of broader business objectives. In the design phase, predictive analytics identify unmet market needs and guide the development of innovative, consumer-relevant product features. During regulatory submissions, AI-powered compliance tools streamline the process by reducing review times and ensuring adherence to complex guidelines, accelerating time-to-market. In the post-market phase, machine learning models enhance device monitoring by predicting failures, optimizing performance, and enhancing reliability, safety, and care plan adherence. In each phase, a well-formed strategy aligns key business priorities with organizational capabilities – people, technology, and processes – to create a cohesive framework.

Related: Outpace the Competition with Smart Predictions

MedTech Trend #2: Building Consumer Trust in AI-Enabled Devices

Consumer trust remains a significant consideration to the adoption of medical devices, especially those that are AI-enabled. Patients need confidence that their data is secure. Meanwhile, providers require assurance that these technologies are reliable and inclusively designed and tested to enhance care delivery for all populations. For healthcare leaders, building trust is not optional—it’s essential. Successfully addressing these concerns translates into higher adoption rates, stronger provider relationships, and expanded market share. Transparency and engagement are critical to creating a trusted brand that resonates with all stakeholders.

Recommended Approach: Building trust requires a multi-faceted strategy rooted in transparency, education, and clinician advocacy and centered on a core tenet: know your audience. Clear communication about how a device and AI operate, the benefits, and safeguards in place to mitigate AI bias and protect patient data can significantly alleviate skepticism. Drive understanding and adoption by deeply understanding your audience personas and journeys, then tailor experiences around those insights. Demystify AI and support better health decisions by educating through interactive webinars, videos, and other preferred modes, speaking the language of your patients and your providers. Adhering to robust data security standards, such as GDPR and HIPAA, and transparently communicating these measures to stakeholders reinforce confidence.

You May Enjoy: Your Playbook for Building Trust in Artificial Intelligence for Medical Devices

MedTech Trend #3: Regulatory Evolution

Evolving regulatory frameworks, including updated FDA guidelines, underscore the critical importance of cybersecurity and proactive risk management of medical devices, particularly those that are AI-enabled. These developments reflect a growing emphasis on protecting patient safety and ensuring data integrity in today’s interconnected healthcare landscape. For medical device leaders, embedding compliance into the innovation process is crucial for building stakeholder trust and positioning their organizations as reliable partners in a competitive market.

Recommended Approach: Adopt a compliance-first mindset, collaborating across regulatory, IT, and R&D teams to ensure a unified approach to evolving standards. By integrating cybersecurity protocols into the earliest stages of product design and regulatory documentation, your organization can proactively address vulnerabilities and innovate confidently while protecting patient trust and ensuring market viability.

See Also: Innovate Medical Device Software Quickly and Compliantly

MedTech Trend #4: Direct to Consumer Wearables and Devices

The demand for wearable medical devices is rapidly increasing as patients play a more active role in managing their well-being and seek real-time health monitoring tools that seamlessly integrate into their daily lives. In turn, these devices enable proactive disease management and generate valuable data for providers, facilitating personalized, data-driven care beyond the traditional care setting. Concurrently, providers are expanding into digitally connected services, such as telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, and personalized care plans, enabling patients to manage their health in more convenient and accessible settings. For medical device leaders, the wearable market presents significant growth potential, provided usability, privacy, and interoperability challenges are addressed.

Recommended Approach: To maximize the potential of wearable devices, organizations must prioritize user-friendly designs that integrate easily into patients’ routines, encouraging adoption and compliance. Interoperability is also critical. Ensuring wearables integrate seamlessly with electronic health records (EHRs) enhances their value for patients and providers by enabling coordinated, data-driven care. By overcoming these challenges, wearable devices can become indispensable tools in modern healthcare, supporting long-term adoption and loyalty while driving better health outcomes.

Strategic Position: Meet Customers Where They Are

MedTech Trend #5: Collaborative Innovation for Growth

Mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships are reshaping the medical device industry, enabling organizations to scale operations, accelerate innovation, and expand into new markets. These collaborative efforts address the rising costs of R&D while meeting the demand for advanced technologies, helping companies remain competitive in a fast-evolving landscape. Strategic partnerships offer access to cutting-edge technologies and fresh perspectives, shortening product development cycles and facilitating faster market entry. For medical device leaders, these alliances are essential for addressing unmet market needs, navigating healthcare complexities, and driving long-term growth.

Recommended Approach: Organizations should pursue partnerships that align with their strategic goals and operational strengths. Evaluating compatibility across technology, culture, and objectives is essential for fostering productive relationships. Robust integration plans for mergers minimize disruptions and maximize synergies, ensuring a seamless transition. Partnering with startups, academic institutions, or tech firms provides opportunities to access disruptive innovations such as AI-powered diagnostics and next-generation wearables. These collaborations position companies as leaders in innovation, allowing them to efficiently meet market demands and deliver transformative healthcare solutions. Strategic collaboration is no longer optional—it is a necessity for maintaining a competitive edge in the medical device industry.

See More: Drive Business Velocity and Growth

Expert Digital Healthcare Consulting Services for the Medical Device Industry: Innovate, Modernize, Lead

The medical device industry is at a pivotal moment, with groundbreaking advancements in AI, evolving regulatory landscapes, and a growing emphasis on consumer-centric healthcare reshaping how organizations innovate, operate, and deliver value. These trends are not just reshaping the industry but also creating new opportunities to lead through innovation, operational efficiency, and patient-focused solutions.

We combine strategy, industry expertise, and cutting-edge technology to empower medical device companies to adapt, thrive, and lead in this rapidly evolving environment:

• Business Transformation: Activate strategies that align clinical innovation with business objectives for transformative healthcare solutions.
• Modernization: Leverage advanced technologies like AI and machine learning to drive innovation, regulatory compliance, and operational excellence.
• Data Analytics: Harness enterprise data to generate actionable insights, enabling precision medicine, device reliability, and market leadership.
• Consumer Experience: Build trust, transparency, and engagement with AI-enabled devices and wearable technologies to elevate the patient journey.

Our partnerships with leading technology providers, recognition from top industry analysts, and consistent ranking by Modern Healthcare as one of the largest healthcare consulting firms demonstrate our expertise and commitment to results.

Discover why the top medical device manufacturers and healthcare organizations trust us to deliver measurable outcomes. Explore our expertise in the medical device industry and contact us to learn how we can help you lead in this new era of healthcare innovation.

Following best practices for KPIs (key performance indicators) is an essential start for any marketing initiative, but it’s often an overlooked step. Let’s look and why KPIs are so important and some practical advice that can help you incorporate, and get value from, your KPIs.  

What is a KPI?  

KPIs and goals often get muddled in the heat of a project. In essence, goals are broad and tied into your overall business goals. For example, an example goal might be ”Increase in lead form submissions.” When we think of the overall goals that a marketing team might have, it’s easy to see how this particular goal would fit into a larger bucket of “Increase website leads” or “Increase top-of-funnel activity.” 

But the goal doesn’t give us any insight into the details. And that’s where KPIs come into play. In this scenario, we might set our KPI as “Increase leads from the Learn More landing page by 20% from July through December 2024.” Now that’s a KPI we can get behind. However, we still have a loose end — how will we track it? 

Back to our scenario, we can easily track this KPI by tracking the number of submissions from this webpage over the time period selected. We can also benchmark the leads we brought in during the period of January to June 2024 as our baseline. We could also look at our performance year over year by benchmarking using July to December 2023’s results. Either way, now you know how to track, and you know when you’ve been successful.  

Best practices for KPIs 

Now that we’re speaking the same language on goals, KPIs, and tracking, let’s look at some best practices to help you make the most of your KPIs.  

Make sure your KPIs are aligned to your business goals 

Sure, this feels like a no-brainer. But you’d be surprised how many organizations don’t make the link. If you have a KPI that doesn’t move one of your goals forward, it’s time to reevaluate that KPI (or even the goal itself). 

Know your audience 

You likely have KPIs that are meaningful to you. Those KPIs may be different from those of your boss, their boss, or others around the organization. Make sure you’re aware of what different folks need to know. And work those into both your KPIs and tracking. 

Prioritize what KPIs you will track 

This is another “gotcha” for some organizations. More KPIs are just … more. A smaller list of key KPIs that are meaningful to you and the organization is more workable. And as you optimize based on your results, you can bring in additional KPIs to track. This may require some education for others within your organization. But you’ll have more success if you track what matters most — and do something with that data! 

Benchmark your KPIs 

What does success look like to your organization? Perhaps you can look at past data to set a solid benchmark. Or, in some cases, you may not have previous data and need to estimate benchmarks. Either way, having a baseline is key. You can always adjust that baseline if you need to as you begin to get data and learn from it. 

Track your KPIs consistently 

Are you tracking by day, week, month, quarter, or year? The answer likely is “Yes,” but you’re looking at different metrics during those periods. Create a plan for your KPI tracking, and make sure that you are thinking about what you want to know and when you want to know it.  

Have a plan for what you’ll do with the data 

Data is most powerful when it leads to optimization! Don’t ”set and forget” tracking. Create opportunities for the team to review the data and follow where it leads you. When will you take the opportunity to pivot based on the data? Who will do that work? As you are planning for how you track, plan for how you will optimize as well.   

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps healthcare and life sciences organizations better understand their audiences and create digital experiences that educate, resonate, and drive action. Contact us today for more information.  

Brand activism is a new buzzword in healthcare and life sciences spaces, and consumers are increasingly expecting their brands of choice to drive social change.

I recently conducted a series of consumer interviews for a major medical device brand. This brand has built a great deal of trust with their audiences by offering a top-notch product with great service. But when I asked interviewees what advice they have for this brand, their responses weren’t about product features or price concerns. In fact, their responses weren’t about anything to do with what the brand does. Overwhelmingly, the folks I interviewed wanted to see this organization advocate for their audiences and use their brand voice to drive positive change. Essentially, they wanted to see the brand stand for something.

This small group of consumer’s I spoke with share similar sentiments found in recent research by Edelman, Nielsen, Pew Research Center, and eMarketer. Simply put, consumer expectations around brand activism is on the rise. According to this research, over half of Gen Xers make buying decisions based on alignment with brand values and beliefs. As you look at millennials and Gen Z, that percentage goes up.

So let’s talk about what brand advocacy looks like in healthcare and life sciences and how organizations can begin to build greater advocacy into their plans.

What is brand activism in healthcare and life sciences?  

No doubt your organization has a mission statement and core values detailing why you do what you do and how you do it. Good brand activism docks right into that sentiment, the effort that the organization takes to bring awareness to and effect change that improves conditions for society, and often, more specifically, for the segment of society they serve.

Brand activism is active, alive and always on. It’s not simply slapping a new logo on a social media profile to align with the topic of the month (though it rightly can include that). Brand activism is deeper than that. So let’s look at a few ways your organization can get involved and drive good change.

Brand activism can be local, regional, and (or) global

Let’s first look at where brands can direct their activism. Some of that depends on where you operate, who your audiences are, and what your mission is. For example, if you are a local primary care practice, you are likely looking for ways to drive change right in your local community. It’s where you and your audiences live, work, and play.

Contrast that with a global medical device organization. It is operating on a national and international stage, likely looking at driving policy change and creating awareness on a larger scale. Wherever you fall on this scale, make sure your activities align. Consumers aren’t expecting a small practice to drive new national healthcare policy. But they are likely looking at your outreach efforts at home.

Brand activism to support your audiences

What are the biggest obstacles in your business? I recently worked with a client whose business is dedicated to a very specific disease state. And, while this condition is serious, it often plays second fiddle to other chronic conditions, and patients don’t always understand the seriousness of the condition. That’s quite an obstacle. But this organization can be looking at how to bring greater awareness to the condition itself.

Your organization likely has obstacles that limit access to needed education and treatment among certain audiences. Using your brand voice to deliver a consistent message can make a difference. Are providers asking questions during visits that can help uncover the condition you support? Are patients armed with the information they need? Do they know what questions to ask their provider when they are at risk? If not, this is a great place to drive change through activism.

Brand activism can stretch into many walks of life

Ultimately, when we look at diving change, that can put us into many different arenas: political, social, environmental, economic, among others. Your advocacy can put you on the front lines of legislation, finding innovative ways to reduce the environmental impact of your products, or increasing access for your services in marginalized or underserved communities.

And for those audiences that we discussed a few paragraphs up, seeing your organization actively live your values is a major trust builder. This work can also strengthen your position as an industry leader. The best part? The community you operate in is very likely to be healthier for your efforts.

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps healthcare and life sciences organizations better understand their audiences and create digital experiences that educate, resonate, and drive action. Contact us today for more information.

The healthcare brand persona is the new archetype marketers are creating to fully articulate their brand’s voice, tone, and feel. 

“Cura te ipsum.” It’s Latin for “Heal thyself” — a proverb physicians have told themselves for thousands of years. The idea is that you can’t take care of others unless you take care of yourself. Well, in today’s hypercompetitive healthcare industry, we think healthcare organizations (HCOs) should take this to heart as well: “Scire te ipsum,” or “Know yourself.”

If you’re a healthcare marketer, I’d wager you have an audience persona or two hanging out in a folder. And for those who don’t, my colleague Michael Adkins and I have written extensively about the value that these tools bring to just about every area of your organization. However, most overlook the need for a brand persona. Let’s look at how marketer’s can “Know yourself” more deeply and create a brand persona that connects, resonates, and drives action. 

What is a healthcare brand persona? 

If your brand were a person, how would they look, act, talk? What words do they use? What vibe do they give off? Why did they get into healthcare, and why should patients trust them? And, perhaps most importantly, how are they different from the personas your competitors are creating? 

These are big questions, and like any good movie or book, the richer the detail you can infuse your brand persona the more opportunities you give your audiences to form a connection. A brand persona is an articulation of the answers to these questions. A brand persona is essentially building a realistic story around the type of brand you want to be.  

Step 1: Create a brand persona foundation 

Michael Adkins wrote an article about brand archetypes, and I can’t think of a better place to start when thinking about your brand persona. In essence, Michael argues that a brand archetype can not only help you understand who your brand is but also who you want it to be. Is your brand a Caregiver, offering empathy, trust, and support? A Sage, the wise, academic researcher? Or perhaps the Everyman, a reflection of the audiences you serve? Or perhaps you’ve veered into other archetypes that may not quite fit the character and culture you want your organization to represent.    

Step 2: Build detail into your brand persona 

Let’s say you go through the archetype exercise and determine that the Caregiver is the archetype of choice for your organization. Great choice! Now, let’s break that down further using an old standby in the development of stories: who, what, when, where, why, and how.  

• Who is this Caregiver? Where do they live? What do they do for fun? Do they have kids, a job, pets?  

• What does this Caregiver do? What makes them a Caregiver? What characteristics do they display that makes them empathetic or supportive? What do they do to build trust with your audiences? What does “caregiving” mean to them?  

• When and where does this Caregiver provide care? Are they providing care only at your organization? Out in the community? For their families? Are they providing care all the time or at  certain times? Are they providing care for the disadvantaged or for marginalized communities?  

• How are they providing care? We looked at what caregiving means to your persona, but let’s take that a step further and look at how they provide care. For example, are they focusing on preventive care and wellness, emergency care, urgent care, or education? Or perhaps a mix of all? How do they deliver that to the community?  

• Why are they a Caregiver? Ah, perhaps the most important one of all. Brands need to be able to speak to their why, and your brand persona needs to have a strong perspective on why they are in healthcare and taking on the Caregiver archetype. Simon Sinek has done a lot of work on helping people and organizations articulate why brands do what they do, and this quick video from his TEDx talk is a great primer for uncovering your organization’s why.  

Step 3: Look no further than your own staff members to inspire your brand persona  

If digging into the ”who, what, when, where, why and how” is challenging, or if you simply want to verify some of those detail you’ve build into your brand persona, your staff members can help. Every organization, and just about every department, has those employees who are the rock of the group. They’ve been around, know a lot, and embody the best that the organization has to offer. They are the culture drivers (and, most likely, they are called on to interview prospective employees or mentor new hires for that very reason).  

Find those folks, and take them out for coffee. Ask about their who, what, when, where, why, and how. Odds are, they are a very close match to the brand persona you are creating. And their knowledge and passion will help you infuse your brand persona with realistic nuances that give your persona personality.  

Step 4: Introduce your brand persona to the organization

Now that you’ve built your brand persona, don’t keep it to yourself. Pop it into your style guide, make sure your content authors are familiar with who they are embodying with each word, let HR use it as they are speaking about the organization to prospects, and give it to your front-desk folks to inspire them as they are greeting each person that walks through the front door. Finally, make sure that your digital front door embodies the spirit of your brand persona.  

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps healthcare and life sciences organizations better understand their audiences and create memorable digital experiences that connect and convert. Contact us today for more information.  

For medical device companies, building loyalty among nurses is a key element in driving growth. In this post, we’ll look at four loyalty builders for the nursing population. These loyalty builders are designed to engage and drive relationships among this critical stakeholder group.

Nursing is the most trusted profession in the U.S. In fact, 78% of people report that nurses have “high or very high levels of honesty and ethical standards,” according to a 2024 poll. Now, while we tip our hat to all the nurses out there, this incredible statistic doesn’t come as a huge surprise. It’s no secret that nurses form unique connections with their patients, creating an environment built on skill, empathy, and passionate patient care.

Why are nurses so trusted? Well, whole books can be written on the subject. But instead I’ll give a few examples from several years of research with nursing populations.

Nurses are easier to talk to

As part of my research for a women’s health medical device, I heard story after story about how nurses, not doctors, were the first people that patients disclosed a set of symptoms that they described as “embarrassing”. They reported feeling more at ease, having more time to connect, and believing that the nurse would take their concerns seriously. Obviously, patient experiences vary, but this largely female population of interviewees felt they could be honest and receive empathy and care in return.

Nurses can be easier to see

Nurses are often easier to get appointments with quickly when problems or questions arise. That kind of quick, just-in-time support gives patients the feeling of always having someone in their corner. I’ve spoken to many patients who consider their nurse practitioner the first stop for issues that need quick attention. Of course, that quick attention is nothing without our next trust driver…

Nurses know their stuff

Think of the last time you needed a quick answer on a child’s symptoms, wondered if you needed to hit the ER or urgent care center, or asked a question about your prescription. Your first call was likely to the office, where a nurse walked you through a series of questions that resulted in just the needed information. We’ll talk more about those “first calls” below. But suffice it to say that patients know that when they need answers, nurses have them.

Trust isn’t built in a day. But over time, activities like these will support meaningful relationships between your organization and nurses. Let’s examine how medical device organizations can build this same kind of trust and loyalty among nursing populations.

Medical Device Loyalty Builder #1: Make communications with nurses personal

Nurses are certainly in a league of their own. So if you are creating generic communications aimed at all clinical populations, you’re missing opportunities to connect with nurses on their specific needs, experiences, and questions.

If you have a nurse on staff, use them as you develop editorial calendars, nurture campaigns, and website material. It is critical to ensure that you are providing meaningful information that nurses can immediately act on. This will make it clear that your med device organization knows its stuff, not only about your products but also about your audience.

If you don’t know where to start in creating personal communications, might I interest you in a persona and journey map?

Medical Device Loyalty Builder #2: Arm nurses with education

Nurses work hard to build relationships. and they wear these as a badge of honor. A nurse recently told me, “Oh, whenever our patients have a question, they call me!” We joked about having time to take these calls during her very busy days, but it was clear from the conversation that she was proud that her patients made her their first call.

“I know that patients will call me, so trust me, I want to know every ‘Beep,’ ‘Bop,’ and ‘Boop’ the device makes.” I loved this comment because it spoke to the depth of understanding she wants in a device prescribed or recommended to her patients. She knows that the deeper her knowledge, the better she can confidently support her patients through setup, normal usage, and troubleshooting.

As you look at your current website content, are you helping nurses understand your product to the level they want? Is it presented in a way that they can quickly find information and translate that easily to patient populations? Are you making it easy to contact your own support team to answer additional questions that may arise? Do you have handouts, online walkthroughs, or other patient-facing materials that nurses can provide to their patients? If not, this is a great opportunity to work with nurses to understand your educational gaps and create engaging content to fill them.

Medical Device Loyalty Builder #3: Seek feedback from nurses

We hit on the idea of working with nurses. And if you aren’t already capturing feedback from this population, now is the time to start. These folks are on the front lines and can give you valuable feedback on patients’ needs, their needs, doctors’ needs, office/system needs, and more.

So how do you connect? You can create annual surveys, start social conversations, complete a series of one-on-one interviews, start a nurses network designed to offer a deeper level of support and community around your product, and more.

Many medical device organizations have nurses on staff. Leveraging these professionals’ experience is a great way to create a deeper understanding of this population organization-wide. Perficient’s Healthcare & Life Sciences practices include nurses and other clinical roles. I’ve seen how this firsthand knowledge supports audience understanding and helps make our communications sharper and more meaningful for our audiences.

Medical Device Loyalty Builder #4: Empower nurses to advocate  

I interviewed a nurse not long ago about a medical device. I asked how it came to be in use at her facility. She said, ”Oh, I love this product—I found out about it at my last job. When I moved here and found out it wasn’t in use, I reached out to the rep and got an in-service setup.”

This nurse’s advocacy of a product she saw benefit from is more powerful than just about any marketing, advertising, or sales activity you can imagine. This nurse is not only trusted by her patients but by her colleagues as well. And her advocacy of this product brought a new client to a medical device company.

So that raises the question — how are you helping nurses advocate for your products? Are you providing them with materials they can share? Are you monitoring social media, sharing content from nurses, and creating your own shareable content that your fans can run with? Do you have easily shareable content on your website that nurses can send on to their peers?

While we’re thinking about sharing, how are you celebrating National Nurses Day (and the other observances in May)? How are you leveraging nurses who are in the field using your product and willing to talk about their experiences? How are you showing that you understand this audience and are a partner in helping them help their patients?

If you haven’t already, now is the time to think about how you can support the trust, loyalty, and advocacy that nurses can bring to your business. Medical device companies can implement these strategies to embrace this critical audience as part of their main outreach strategies going forward.

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps medical device organizations understand their audiences, drive connection, build loyalty, and support conversions among their stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem. Contact us today for more information.

Imagine this: You are a marketer at a medical device organization. Your products are cutting-edge, innovative, and best-in-class. It’s every marketer’s dream. But here is the big question: Is the experience your digital product catalog delivers as innovative as your products?  

Often, the answer is “No,” and that’s not surprising. Many of us remember the days of paper catalogs and brochures. They are the forefathers of today’s digital catalogs — the ones that sit in the center of your website and, in many cases, closely resemble the product catalogs of yore. 

However, consumer preferences and expectations are changing. And many organizations are finding it more challenging to get face-to-face with the audiences they serve on a consistent basis. That’s why unlocking the power hidden away in those online product portfolios is so critical to helping drive awareness, interest, and conversions. Let’s look at a few ways medical device marketers can supercharge the digital product catalogs. 

Your digital product catalog should be as innovative as your product 

If your product is cutting-edge, the best way to demonstrate that is likely not static product photos or paragraphs of text. Sure, those pieces have their place. But do they truly showcase what makes the product compelling? Can you interact with it, move it around, click the buttons, play with the interface? If not, your product page will benefit from a shot of interactivity.  

Think about your last demo or trade show. What did your audiences actually do when they had the product in hand? Those actions should plant the seed of interactivity that you can build into your web experience.   

Your digital product catalog should give a feel for the product 

Years ago, I worked on a project with a medical device company that was looking at ways to better reach its audience members — which, in this case, was surgeons who performed a specific type of surgery. After interviewing a group of surgeons in this category, we heard loud and clear that they considered their surgical tool as an extension of their hand and described the surgery as something akin to sculpting.  

As you might guess, this insight had our minds racing with possibilities. In a digital space, we can’t put this tool in the surgeon’s hand. But what can get us close? We can allow the surgeon to manipulate the tool with their mouse and simulate the ease of switching one head for another on the tool’s base. This gave our audiences a much better understanding of how this product might work for them. And you can bet they jumped on our friendly “Schedule a demo” CTA just to the right of the product interaction.  

Your digital product catalog should feature layers of product knowledge 

Now, you may have hooked your audience with a slick interactive experience. But when dealing with clinical teams, we know that is never enough. Layering in additional levels of knowledge allows audiences to go as deep as they’d like. Benefits, product information, specifications, ordering information and costs are the tables takes — no product page is complete without those. But can we go deeper? Sustainability information, papers and journey articles, and testimonials are all going to earn bonus points with your audiences, especially if you can make those a bit interactive too.  

Whatever layers of information you decide to include, make sure it is easy to access from one location. Many sites silo the product pages from other resources, which just means your audience is either going to miss your great resources or spend several extra clicks trying to find it. I like to think of product pages as product hubs – one location for everything you could want to know about the product.    

If you’re not sure what to include, go back to your personas and journey maps to hear directly from your audiences on what is most important to them.

Your digital product catalog should include a variety of media 

Finally, successful product pages typically contain a few types of media. Perhaps there is a text-based testimonial by a loyal user or a video giving a glimpse of the manufacturing and QA process. Maybe you’ll include an explainer video or animation showing the product in action. Linking to podcasts, webinars, demonstration videos, customer stories and more will help round out the product page experience and help your audiences see a 360-degree vision of your product.  

Before you jump into creating an interactive digital product catalog, be sure you are clear on the needs, wants, and perceptions of your audience members. Bells and whistles without any substance can turn audiences off. But creating a meaningful experience that energizes and educates your audience is a recipe for conversion.  

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps medical device organizations create memorable experiences that put your products into the hands of your audiences, driving usage, inspiring loyalty, and creating advocacy. Contact us today for more information.  

Like many of you, I sat down recently to take in the 58th Super Bowl. Having no teams in the game, I was largely there for the commercials — and, sure, for the Taylor Swift sightings. And, to those ends, I was pretty satisfied. I absolutely loved CeraVe’s Michael Cera commercial. And Ben, Matt, Tom, and JLo did not disappoint with the Dunkin’ ad that had been teased in the days leading up to the game.

However, the ad that got me the most excited was Veozah’s “Not Flash” spot. While it wasn’t the flashiest spot of the night, no pun intended, it did shine light on an issue, and an audience, that you don’t see many ads targeting. So what made this spot so exciting?

Veozah’s Super Bowl Ad Highlights an Invisible Issue

By 2025, over 1 billion women will be in menopause. But it’s an issue that we as a society largely don’t discuss. According to Psychology Today in 2022, 42% of women between 50 and 59 have never discussed menopause with their healthcare provider. That means that the headaches, hot flashes, fatigue, anxiety and many other symptoms are likely going untreated.

Menopause has traditionally been a taboo topic, a reflection of getting older in a world where women aging isn’t necessarily a point of celebration. Discomfort or embarrassment in discussing menopause with peers and providers can further push this stage of life into invisibility.

But for women in and approaching menopause, this is not an invisible phase of life. And seeing it discussed in front of an audience of approximately 115 million can go a long way in driving the collective conversation and helping remind women that they are not alone.

Veozah’s Super Bowl Ad Targets an Invisible Audience

Let’s face it: Middle-aged women are not prime targets for most advertisers. In fact, according to the Harvard Business Review, only about 5% to 10% of marketing budgets are earmarked for women in the 50+ category. But that same cohort of women is responsible for about 27% of consumer spending, according to Forbes. With this mismatch of buying power versus marketing attention, it’s no wonder that 91% of women in this category feel misunderstood (and ignored) by today’s marketers.

Veozah is a breath of fresh air here, speaking directly to an audience that feels ignored, with a message bound to resonate with a great many of them. Not to mention that its manufacturer, Astellas, pushed that message out in front of a massive audience. Merely mentioning the word “menopause” in such a public forum no doubt makes it easier for women to mention it at the doctor — or with their peers.

So What Can the Super Bowl Teach Us About Invisible Audience Marketing?

As life science marketers consider their own audience mix, now is the time to dig further into your personas and journeys to uncover what invisible audiences you should be highlighting. Caregivers, for example, are rarely targeted but carry an awful lot of decision-making support, influence and even buying power. Spouses hold a similar role but are often invisible when it comes to marketing and advertising.

Invisibility often manifests when we consider people of color, LGBTQ+ populations, and other segments who have unique needs, may be at greater risk for certain conditions, or who may have distrust for healthcare systems. Uncovering these populations, and then shining a light on their needs, opportunities, objections, and the ways in which you can support their health and wellness will help you to ensure that all of your audiences have their time in the sun.

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps healthcare and life sciences organizations understand their audiences (visible and invisible!), to drive connections, build loyalty and support conversions among their stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem. Contact us today for more information.

Overcoming Healthcare’s Mountain of Mistrust, our series on building trust among healthcare consumers, has reached its conclusion as we turn our focus on medical device companies.  The analytics and opinion-polling firm Gallup has found a decline in Americans’ trust in many institutions and industries, and the healthcare and life sciences spaces are no different. Building direct, meaningful relationships with consumers is essential to growth, and that relationship building is quickly becoming an expectation for today’s consumer.

To recap, my colleague   took us through:

• Part 1 of the series, which focused on providers, and
• Part 2, which focused on payers (insurance companies)

And now, in Part 3, we will focus on medical device organizations, looking at key ways that organizations can conquer the mountain of mistrust.

Trust in the medical device space is comparatively healthy

Consumer trust research in the medical device space is still slim, but if we look at a 2019 survey by Salesforce, 72% of consumers reported trusting medical device companies. This is a high mark compared to the 49% who reported trust in pharmaceutical organizations and the 81% who reported trust in their providers.

If that study were run today, would the values be much different? Perhaps, but I expect we’d still see providers leading the pack and pharma pulling up the rear. This leaves medical devices somewhere in the middle, with a solid foundation and lots of room to grow. Let’s look at a few ways that medical device organizations can avoid mistrust.

What opportunities can medical device organizations leverage for trust-building?

• Education drives trust in medical devices

As the saying goes, knowledge is power, and if you’ve ever worried about a medical condition you or a loved one has experienced, you know just how comforting accurate, empathetic information is from a trusted source. With so much information — and misinformation — floating around, medical device companies have a great opportunity to be the voice of knowledge. A recent Adobe study reveals that 73% of consumers express concerns about the trustworthiness of the online content they consumer. Medical device companies can leverage the trust they’ve built to address this consumer pain point through knowledge sharing.

And that knowledge sharing can take many forms: knowledge about the overall condition, about product selection, about product usage, about providers in the space, just to name a few.

Creating a platform for trusted, accurate knowledge dissemination can not only help to drive awareness and sales but can also help create ”better patients.” Knowledge can drive proper and more consistent usage. And it’s not a leap to think that greater outcomes can follow that educationally enhanced usage.

Of course, your clinical audiences demand a deeper level of understanding and providing them with content that will help them understand the product inside and out is essential. A word of warning: Don’t count your consumer audiences out when it comes to clinician-geared educational experiences. Several years ago, I worked with a medical device organization that had a library of procedure videos demonstrating the product in a real surgical setting. Once we dug into the analytics, can you guess what we found? That’s right — at least 50% of those videos were viewed by folks we could identify as patients. Not all consumers will want this level of detail, but make sure it’s accessible for the ones who do.

• Transparency drives trust in medical devices

The need for consumer transparency has been a hot topic for years now — and for very good reason. A Statista study found that 60% of surveyed consumers reported a belief that the most important traits of a brand are trustworthiness and transparency. That’s a powerful majority. And it underscores why giving your consumers a peek behind the curtain is a recipe for trust building. So what can medical device organizations do to increase transparency.

• Transparency around how their data is collected, used and stored.
• Transparency around pricing and consumer costs
• Transparency around the use of AI, both device-based and in consumer experiences
• Transparency around the research & development and quality control processes

These are just a few examples. I don’t doubt that your unique organization has other transparency levers that you can pull.

• Excellent consumer experiences drive trust in medical devices

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m a big proponent of creating personas and journey maps for each audience segment an organization serves. When the conversation shifts to consumer experience, here is where those journeys come in handy.

As you walk in your consumer’s shoes, think about what experiences will drive trust and empathy. For example:

• For those seeking to understand what products are best for them, how can you provide an interactive experience that helps them compare products and bubble up those that may be more appropriate?
• How can you make it easy for consumers to share their findings with their providers to start a more personalized conversation?
• How can you make it easy to find pricing information, and talk to customer care when questions arise?
• For those with DTC sales, how can you make the purchasing process as streamlined as possible? How can you support questions in those first weeks of usage?

There is no limit to the ways you can create unique, memorable experiences that demonstrate your knowledge, empathy, and authority in the space you inhabit. But it all depends on your consumer trusting what you tell them. Take the time to build trust with your consumer, and you’ll find that it’s easier for them to take the next step with you.

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps medical device organizations build trust and drive conversions among their audiences. Contact us today for more information.

A few weeks back, I wrote about key trends that would impact the medical device world in 2024. This time around, I’m going to be counting down some 2024 resolutions for medical device marketers. In most organizations, nobody is closer to consumer audiences as the marketing team, and that is no different in the med device space. In fact — and this may be my first lukewarm take of the year —nurturing the relationship with consumers is the real magic of med device marketers. Digital marketing, social media, analytics, messaging — all just tools to understand and befriend audiences.  

So what should you as a medical device marketer be thinking about as they make their New Year’s resolutions? Here are five that should be top of mind.  

Resolution #1: Educate your consumers interactively 

I absolutely love the educational power that marketers yield. In fact (medium-hot take incoming), I think it may be the most powerful tool in the marketer’s arsenal. If you can teach consumers something that can help them live a better life, you’re instantly building trust, loyalty, and advocacy. And at this point, you likely already have educational content on their site. But it’s flat, and (we can be honest here) many of our audiences don’t take the time to read all the great content we produce.  

So, the resolution is to take your educational content and reimagine it. Download Duolingo and get inspired by the gamified way they are teaching language learning, What can Headspace teach you about chunking and organizing content topics? Can Seek give you ideas on how to motivate audiences with badges and challenges? No need to build out an entire app to educate your audiences. Well, then again it would be cool if you did! But integrating some of these interactive ideas into your site can quickly engage audiences. What’s more, it can make your content more memorable and drive better product conversion and usage too.  

Resolution #2: Take care of the caregivers 

November is National Caregivers Month, and if you didn’t take a moment to celebrate the loved ones who support your patients, make it a goal for 2024. Caregivers have a tough job, and they are very influential when it comes to product research and purchasing. Depending on your product and user, they may be another audience you want to forge a relationship with this year.  

Resolve to think beyond caregivers, too. Did you know that women make 90% of household healthcare decisions? No doubt there are women who are instrumental in helping a loved one make a decision about one of your products, even if men primarily use your products. What other audiences might you be sleeping on?  

Resolution #3: Extend your relationships 

You likely are well versed in nurture campaigns. But my challenge is to take a closer look and what you have set up and see where you might be able to send a just-in-time message that makes a huge difference to your audience. Are you sending educational materials out to help with setup and initial usage? Are you following up weeks after a purchase to check in on how users are faring with their purchases? Are you introducing your support tools and team and bringing awareness to the variety of questions they can help with? Are you sending tips and tricks from real users? Are you highlighting influencers and content creators in the space that can support their journey? 

Email open rates for healthcare are among the highest across all industries. So resolve to get inspired by some of those nurture emails sitting in your own inbox. Dig into a few of these messages. Think about how some of the tactics could be applied to your organization or product. Then, let your creativity take over.  

Resolution #4: Let your authenticity show 

I’ve talked about authenticity several times on the Perficient blog, and it is one of my favorite subjects. It’s hard to build relationships with a stuffy, corporate voice — but, then again, in healthcare and life sciences, we have regulatory obligations. And, let’s face it: Most folks won’t want to buy a medical device from an organization that feels too casual.  

However, consumers have made it clear that authenticity is exactly what they are after. (I mean, it was Merriam Webster’s word of the year in 2023.) So how can you strike the balance? One way is to lean into consumer quotes and testimonials, whether patients or clinical profiles. Another is to introduce members of your team through profiles, slick social quote cards, and storytelling (how did they get into healthcare? Why medical devices? What drives them every day?).

What kind of ”voice” is bubbling up in these collateral pieces? How can it be translated into your web presence, marketing materials, call center scripts, and other consumer-facing materials? Understanding how your consumers and internal staff members talk about the product they are passionate about can help bring that authentic voice to life.  

Resolution #5: Pay attention to Gen Z 

Finally, don’t sleep on Gen Z. While many med device marketers no doubt have Gen Z squarely in their sights, you may not be paying attention to what this new generation is doing online if your target audience is older consumers. But where Gen Z goes, we all go. These are the caregivers and patients of the future. And the language they use, their digital footprint, and their healthcare preferences will be helping the industry to continue to evolve for years to come. Understanding and connecting with this audience, where appropriate, will help set you and your organization up well for building strong relationships that last into the future.  

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps medical device organizations better understand their audiences and create memorable experiences that drive conversions, usage and inspire brand loyalty. Contact us today for more information.  

The medical device industry is in a constant state of evolution. We are seeing more sophisticated consumer expectations, advancements in technology, regulatory changes, and changing healthcare needs – just to name a few.

As we gaze into our crystal ball, five key trends have bubbled up. Let’s look at what is poised to impact the medical device industry in 2024.

Trend #1: Taking a deeper look at AI/machine learning

Organizations are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology into their medical devices, the experiences that drive consumer awareness and usage, and into the data that powers organizations. Medical device organizations can see the vast opportunities. Yet they also realize that implementing AI/ML tools is a marathon, not a sprint. By starting with the desired outcomes and thoughtfully mapping goals to capabilities, deeper integrations that provide a higher level of meaning for the business and consumer audiences will emerge in 2024.

Organizations are also starting to think about AI/ML as another tool that empowers their human workforce. From algorithms that can quickly surface patterns in clinical trials that can be further investigated by data managers to the consumer care staff member who can quickly access the right information at the right moment. One thing is clear: AI/ML may be most powerful when it’s put in the hands of people.

Trend #2: Consumer-centricity continues to advance

Without question, patient-centricity is the future of the medical device industry, as it is across healthcare. So much so that I don’t think the term ”patient” is as accurate as ”consumer.” Consumers have more choice than ever. They are looking for more personalized, convenient, empathetic, and even educational experiences. This holds true with the medical device websites, marketing, products, and support they access. When marketer’s align these to their consumers, the better chance organizations have of gaining a loyal long-term consumer.

Medical device organizations will be thinking more about the relationships between the organization and consumer and the consumer and their product in 2024. And they’ll be looking for opportunities to drive deeper connections with both.

Trend #3: Health at home and diagnostics

Here’s a shocking statistic: Almost a quarter of the U.S. population will be 65 and older by the year 2060. When we talk about the evolution of healthcare needs, the baby boomer population is driving a good deal of that change. Aging in place, remote monitoring, and products that allow for a safe, healthy, and independent lifestyle will continue to make an impact in 2024 and far beyond.

It’s also worth noting that even though the members of the 65-plus population aren’t digital natives, they have gotten the hang of it. They are using their devices to research and order products; track their health trends; and communicate with family members, friends, and even their healthcare professionals. If your website is not optimized for this new vision of 65-plus, the time is now to transform. Your audience is already well versed in some of the best digital experiences around.

Trend #4: Sustainability and mission

One may look at this trend and suspect it may be driven by younger millennials and Gen Z. But the truth is consumers across age brackets are thinking differently about the products they purchase and the companies behind those products. Organizations in the medical device space are exploring eco-friendly materials, energy-efficient production methods, and other strategies to reduce their carbon footprint. Meanwhile, marketers and sales teams are exploring ways to bring that message to market. It’s a strong one. And when everything else is equal, an earth-friendly story can drive a consumer to choose one product over another.

However, an organization’s eco-friendly story is not the only one that consumers want to hear. They are also interested in learning about a company’s history, mission, values, and philosophy. A recent survey by the World Economic Forum found that 70% of respondents buy from brands they believe reflect their own values and principles. Creating content and digital experiences that articulate those values — and show how your organization is living them — is critical.

Trend #5: Connectivity, security, and trust

As more and more devices are connected, issues of security continue to surface. In fact, conversation swirl around the vulnerability of device security and potential for hacking. We’ve already seen vulnerability in the provider space with health systems being knocked offline and patient data mined. It’s only a matter of time for the medical device industry to be affected.

Tightening security and protecting patient data are only one part of the equation. Consumers’ willingness to provide their health data to organizations outside of their health system has declined since 2020. So it’s not only about creating a safe, secure environment for your consumers. It’s also about communicating that story to them and building up their trust.

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps medical device organizations better understand their audiences, create memorable experiences that drive conversions, and inspire brand loyalty. Contact us today for more information.

If there is one thing marketers across the world have in common right now, it’s using artificial intelligence (AI) as part of their digital experience. With the emergence of tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, to name just a few, AI is becoming more commonplace by the day. And it’s giving marketers endless inspiration for how a few AI bells and whistles can wow audiences and increase conversions.

Before we get too excited about those bells and whistles, though, work through the following consumer experience AI checklist before jumping on the AI bandwagon.

1. I know what my audiences and my organization want to achieve with AI

Odds are there are friction points in your current consumer experience that leave audiences and internal staff members equally frustrated. The good news is that this is often a fantastic starting point for having a conversation about AI.

Are your audiences getting lost on your site and need a way to find relevant information more quickly? Perhaps a chatbot is in order. Are your customer-service representatives struggling to keep up with the volume of callers? That chatbot sounds like it might support them too.

Whatever friction points you uncover, you’re likely find solutions that will benefit both internal and external audiences, and those should often find their way to the top of your priority list. Either way, be sure that you start with the problem (or opportunity) and work backward to the AI tool through a comprehensive set of use cases. That helps ensure what you implement will truly enhance the experience.

2. My data is ready for AI

If there is another thing that connects all marketers, it’s a love of data. Marketers truly embody the left brain and right brain working in perfect harmony, but that balance is thrown off when the data they have access to is inconsistent, inaccurate, not fit for purpose, or duplicative.

Before implementing AI tools, take a long hard look at your data. Clean, organize, and isolate irrelevant data as needed. Additionally, it’s also important to look at the goals you’ve created and make sure that the data you have access to will truly help you understand performance and can offer insights on where and when to optimize.

3. My team is ready for AI

As with any new tool, training and education are critical to help your teams understand AI concepts and the tools you wish to put in place now. In many organizations, the use of AI tools in a marketing context will only continue to grow. So giving your teams a solid foundation now will allow everyone to move forward with confidence and enthusiasm. Creating internal workshops, bringing in external experts, or taking online courses will help instill a culture of learning as you begin to move AI into your toolkit.

In most cases, AI-enabled tools will have some impact on your team’s day-to-day processes and workflows. It’s important to map out those changes, ensure you have ownership and responsibility articulated, and train your teams on their new AI-powered normal.

When you use AI in a consumer-facing experience, it is also important to give customer-service teams an understanding of what the tools are meant to do and how to help consumers troubleshoot if they have trouble using the tool, are confused by the results, or need general support. While many consumers are already using AI-enabled tools in their day-to-day lives, they may not realize it. And they may need some extra assurance from you that the tools are accurate, safe, and there to support their access to care and wellness.

4. My content is ready for AI

Ahh, content creation. It’s a task that truly never ends. And AI can have big impacts on how you approach content creation, from how it’s developed by your team to how it’s delivered to your audiences.

Depending on your goals and the AI-enabled tools you wish to implement, think about how your content program will change. If you plan to use AI to develop content, how does that change the review and approval process — and how will you ensure that content carries the voice and tone of your organization? If you plan to use AI to serve up content to your audiences, think through the consumer interactions. Do you have content to cover all use cases? What gaps may your audiences fall into? How will you keep up with the volume of content needed, depending on how you plan to use AI tools?

Once I complete my checklist – then what?

While this checklist scratches the surface of creating a comprehensive AI roadmap, it should give you an idea of some of the marketing-specific considerations that AI-enabled tools bring into focus. The biggest takeaway I can offer is to remember that you don’t have to boil the ocean with your first AI implementation. Creating a crawl, walk, run approach will allow you to dip your toes in AI-enabled waters, understand the value that AI is bringing to your audiences and your organization, and then build increasingly sophisticated tools on top of the strong foundation you’ve built.

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps medical device organizations understand how to use the human side of artificial intelligence to build loyalty and drive conversions among their patient, provider, and partner audiences. Contact us today for more information.

I recently had the pleasure of attending HCIC – The Healthcare Internet Conference with Perficient’s Senior Healthcare Strategist, Kayla Brown. Kayla and I were both invited to speak at the conference, and, while we were there, we took full advantage of the great learning opportunities that always arise with the industry comes together. Kayla spoke about driving consumer centricity with enterprise digital experience platforms and I joined Bayhealth’s Digital Innovation and Consumer Experience Program Manager Leigh Ann Coleman on strategies for optimizing recruitment, retention, and staff engagement approaches in health systems, and how Bayhealth as found success thanks to their recent careers-driven project. While we hope we brought great insights to the attendees, we certainly gained our share as we attended sessions, chatted with our peers, and kept our finger firmly on the pulse of the healthcare industry. So, without further adieu, here are our top insights from HCIC 2023.  

 1. People love superlatives

In an HCIC keynote session, John Youshaei, Forbes writer and former marketing lead at YouTube and Instagram, explored core principles of writing for a consumer audience, especially on social channels. His entire talk was engaging and thoughtful, but our ears especially perked up when John referenced our high school yearbook days and a love for somewhat meaningless superlatives.  

We often find ourselves gravitating to this narrative in the content we consume online. Top 10. Best and Worst. — These headlines and their supporting stories provide a contextual benchmark, or if we’re being really honest, a research shortcut.  

What we recognized in John’s approach is that by adding individual perspective we can hold ourselves accountable to the connection that links content with the nuances of our organizations and audiences. (And we hope you see that commitment to connection demonstrated in the “Top 10” list we’ve prepared here!) 

 2. Use AI to your advantage

Throughout so many of the sessions we circled around the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) – and for years we have been leveraging it without worry that autocorrect, or grammar check, would take our jobs. The theme was leveraging AI to do the portion of your task you hate the most, consumes the most time, or falls outside of your skillset. If that is overcoming blank-page syndrome – use it to create the first draft of your copy. If that is understanding how to process data models, find a way to make it work for you.  

Obviously, these are two wildly different scenarios – but finding ways to leverage AI to make you better at your job, or make your organization better, leaves you more time to spend providing input or context, providing a differentiated view, or answering complex problems. AI is not at the point where it can take our jobs; human intervention is key. We must work hard to provide the human element necessary to refine the model – and not approach it with fear, but with the goal of controlling and enhancing the experience. 

YOU MAY ENJOY: AI in Healthcare

3. Converge the silos

As teams expand and roles and responsibilities blur, it is more critical than ever to remove silos and build cross-functional teams to drive forward consumer-focused, complex solutions. But when this is in play, how do we create structure, ownership and autonomy? In a hallway conversation, we talked about the difficulties of the decision by committee and how they put a lot of pressure on consensus which is not always possible.  

How can we move the conversation to assuming positive intent and building trust with other areas of our organization? While at the same time making movement to more Agile processes and a faster iteration cycle to de-risk those outputs, knowing that we will use learnings live to reiterate? One answer is to understand that a great experience requires the consumer knowledge that marketing brings to the table, the technical know-how that technology teams provide, the medical knowledge that clinical partners contribute, and many, many more stakeholders from across the organization. A great digital experience simply can’t be created without cross-department collaboration. 

Senior Strategist Kayla Brown speaks at HCIC 2023 on Consumer Centricity With an Enterprise Digital Experience Platform

 4. Recruitment and retention require a team effort

Speaking of silos, recruitment and retention is another place where we see a significant impact. No longer can we rely that there is a pool of staff large enough to fill all our open positions – and keep marketing to our highly competitive roles. Instead, we must focus on a partnership to derive the greatest result – bringing together HR, Clinical Leadership, Marketing, Business and Technology stakeholders to help solve for the only limited resource (our people).  

As colleagues are continuing to be asked to do more with less, we need to think about the ways that our solutions are driving economies of scale, and the impact that new solutions have on our retention efforts.  

Marlana Voerster speaks at HCIC 2023 Master Class: Recruit, Retain and Engage Job Seekers: How Bayhealth Excels in a Highly Competitive Job Market.

 5. Momentum to hire internally and build domain expertise

Digital is not going anywhere, and as the influence of digital and technology expand to marketing, consumer support, business development, and patient experience, many organizations are thinking of ways to grow those capabilities internally. Though this comes with tremendous upside, it can sometimes come with a steep learning curve. Healthcare is complex, heavily regulated and often not a factor of consumer choice [who do you know that wants to go to their physical] – making it different than a lot of other consumer-focused industries – however, customer obsession should be our numbe

r one priority. How do we take the innovation and new ideas coming from our domain and technology experts and challenge ourselves to think differently about the ways health systems and health plans have traditionally done things? How can we then think of partnerships, technologies and consulting relationships to either support scale, or solve complex challenges?  

 6. Reduction of point solutions

Another topic that consistently got talked about was the decision to consolidate spending and reduce point solutions. As any good seller knows, there a lot of people in a health system or health plan with buying autonomy – and often point solutions are built around those use cases and dollar amounts – what we are left with is a number of technologies aimed at solving specific problems and built for singular purpose. The question becomes how do you consolidate? How do you start to identify what is out there, understand the way those tools are being used, and, if appropriate, make a choice – 1. scale them to the enterprise or 2. retire them, in favor of a more robust solution. The wake of this consolidation can leave you with a variety of use cases that compete in priority, and that has left teams with overflowing backlogs and lack of strategic direction. 

 7. Fractured brand experiences still pose challenges

Much to the chagrin of marketing managers everywhere, we are still seeing organizations struggle with creating a holistic brand experience. Many still run across rogue landing pages or micro sites and are seeing some parts of their organizations adopt martech solutions to solve individual awareness goals. While this wack-a-mole is frustrating, it also creates problems for the brand itself, from inconsistent experiences to content and messaging that fails to align with the mother ship. Not to mention the SEO implications and valuable sets of data locked in silos. For marketers, educating internal audiences on the value of a consistent, aligned brand experience (and acting as the brand police, from time to time) continues to be a valuable – and critical – part of the job.  

 8. The digital front door isn’t the start of the journey

For most healthcare consumers (even ones loyal to a health system) the journey does not begin at your digital front door. As much as we would love to own that experience from start to finish, the reality is that journey likely begins with an offline conversation, a google search, a referral from a friend in the context of a conversation, or a health topic article in a separate publication. This can have both positive and negative impact on our content strategy. For one, stop investing in stock content – though it is important to have baseline content so consumers can find available services – without perspective or differentiation, it is unlikely to outperform other available resources – instead invest that time and energy in ways that resonate with consumers through peer validation, provider perspectives, and simple clear messaging. Two, think differently about where those consumers are within their action funnel – assuming this is their fourth interaction on the topic, will help us define clear calls to action that align with their journey to make intelligent choices on how to best engage them. The influence of non-digital channels and the available digital ecosystem cannot be ignored when it comes to the influence they have over patients and prospective patients.

9. We’re moving beyond the digital front door

In the land of acquisition and retention we need to level up our conversations surrounding digital front door to include the entire patient experience. In a talk led by Cris Ross and Edward Marx, two CIOs turned patients in the face of cancer, they highlighted the way that even for those of us who live our lives in healthcare, the complexity of receiving care can sometimes feel insurmountable. Complexities like government regulations, privacy, health insurance coverage, and even those that are system-imposed often get in the way of delivering simplified, consumer-centric and quality care that meets the needs of our patients and their families. Historically silos have made it nearly impossible to drive real change when it comes to things like ease of access, referral management, patient education and resources – but as access diminishes, and new players enter the market (that are not bound by traditional methodology, our focus needs to broaden to think differently about the challenges that our patients face. We must push our healthcare leaders to think differently than traditional models and create buy-in with key stakeholders who are looking to push the envelope in an effort deliver care in the right way. We hear this is going to be a book soon – it is going on our must read list. 

10. Everybody owns the experience – yes, even your patient consumers

One of our biggest takeaways is that no one group within an organization ‘owns’ the digital experience, for better or worse. It is a group effort in the truest sense, and organizations need to ensure that whoever the digital experience rolls up to understands that they are similar to a conductor of a large group of musicians, they need to harness the skills of each of their ‘musicians’ and lead the group to play in harmony to create beautiful music, or an engaging website, as the case may be.  

But patient consumers are part of this symphony, too. After all, their needs, preferences, and expectations are driving the digital experience forward. When teams can put the patient at the center of their cross-department collaboration, memorable experiences can happen.