Archive for the ‘Digital Healthcare’ Category

How to Get the Most from Mobile Marketing in Pharma

Click on the image to visit Med Ad News and read the full article.

Our interactive director, Joe Doyle, weighs in on the criteria needed for successful pharmaceutical DTC smartphone apps. The full article in Med Ad News from PharmaLive includes a full view assessment on digital, social, and experiential marketing strategies from leading healthcare marketing strategists.

Read the full article here.

Striking a Balance: Emotive Websites that are Usable

During an internal creative review meeting for a hospice website this week, I heard something that I never thought I would hear: “That call-to-action is too strong.” You could almost hear the wheels start spinning in everyone’s mind.

After discussing the call-to-action further, we realized that the problem wasn’t the CTA itself, but an unbalanced execution.

Half of the room thought that the website was not emotionally branded enough and the CTA was too much, too soon. They believed it needed to be about the connection first and foremost. The other half of the room agreed that the emotional branding was very important, but that the usability of the site needed to come first.

They’re both right. We just needed to strike a better balance. Continue reading »

A Five-Star Content Strategy for Medicare Plans

Have you updated your content strategy to reflect the latest changes in the Medicare world? Not only will leveraging your Medicare rating help you win over plugged-in seniors, but the 2010 federal health law tied the ratings to cash bonuses, too. Five-star-rated plans will also have the ability to enroll members year-round, while other plans abide by Medicare’s annual open enrollment period (Oct. 15 to Dec. 7 this year).

Medicare ratings measure how well health and prescription drug plans perform on more than 50 items, which are grouped in five different categories, such as customer service and cancer screening. The reviews are based on a five-star ratings system created to help seniors become better shoppers (PDF). Continue reading »

Preventative Medicine for Healthcare Technology

Doctors are busy keeping viruses away from their patients — but these days humans aren’t the only ones catching a bug. As technology takes a front seat in the development of modern medicine, there are now growing concerns for the safety of hospital networks and their digital data. A 2006 article from Fierce Health IT highlights security breaches of two healthcare organizations, a perfect example of the dangers of an increased digital presence.

Malware infections threaten the safety of patients and their personal information. Unfortunately, medical software is hard to protect and is often left vulnerable because of the difficulty in installing antivirus software on medical devices. Security researchers have been able to hack into devices ranging from insulin systems to pacemakers. Continue reading »

Hospital Websites: Beauty is in the Eye of the User

In April, we featured a blog post entitled What Do Consumers Want from a Health Plan Website?, which encouraged health plan companies to tailor their sites to consumer needs. But hospitals and clinics should also ensure that their sites don’t leave a user feeling confused and frustrated.

Hospitals face a complex balancing act. On one hand, visitors to a hospital website want to accomplish many tasks, including finding a doctor, getting directions, making an appointment and evaluating the hospital. But they also want clear and concise pages that are user-friendly. In the information age, in which 140 character tweets and text messages rule the air, people want a multitude of information in quick spurts.

The problem is that hospital stakeholders may not even realize that there’s a problem! It becomes automatic for them to click through a series of links or deal with a messy homepage. The best strategy for an employee wishing to revamp the site is to sit down and pretend to be a prospective patient. Picture yourself as a mom whose kid has a weird-looking rash or someone with an emergency.

Once you have taken on a persona, look at your site with their eyes, and focus on four main questions: Continue reading »

iPad Apps: Cutting-Edge Sales Tools for Superior Products

Before joining the account team at HCB Health, I spent a number of years as a medical sales field rep. One job specifically required me to sell $275k+ pieces of capital equipment to surgeons. At the time, my only sales tools were paper-based brochures and my winning attitude. While I found success by forming positive surgeon relationships, I often wondered if superior sales tools would make me a more successful salesperson?

Today, developing those superior sales tools is a hefty part of my job at HCB Health. I make it a goal to lead the pack in terms of how our clients market to surgeons. For many of our clients, those superior tools are iPad-based.

iPad apps can be a unique, creative and efficient way to sell your product. The best of these are tailored to a client’s products, goals and sales rep needs. Below are a few different approaches we’ve taken to best accommodate various medical equipment products and sales: Continue reading »

Vote for Tweet This – Your Healthcare Brand Can Be Social

SXSW is just seven months away, and if some of our healthcare friends in the know are correct, the 2012 version of SXSW will be even bigger and better for #HCMKTG and #HCSM professionals. We can’t wait, and we have a few ideas already in motion.

Our dual presentation submission this year is from yours truly and Dave Gannon, one of our client partners. We plan to share a path that attendees can use to start and present a plan for their own company. From our panel description: Continue reading »

The Rise of the EMR

In our modern wired world, more and more personal information is becoming digitized. Though late to the game, the healthcare arena is joining the trend.

Meet the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) — an application for storing and accessing patient data online. Also known as an Electronic Health Record (EHR), it has the capacity to document every injury and ailment a patient has suffered since his or her birth. It can help physicians anticipate adverse reactions, eliminate duplicate services and ultimately help the industry more effectively perform its primary function: saving lives.

The Future of Healthcare

A recent MedPartners article touched on an increase in EMR adoption brought on by the recent healthcare reforms: Continue reading »