The healthcare industry will never be the same. New data and technologies enabling telehealth services and remote monitoring programs are revolutionizing patient care, while personalized medicine based on advances in genomics and biology is at long last becoming a reality. Healthcare professionals can now identify trends with generative AI that assist in diagnosis and treatment recommendations, driving a shift to more frequent and earlier monitoring and interventions at scale that are predicted to generate exponential societal benefits.     

Healthcare marketing isn’t immune to innovation either, and it is playing a critical role in the healthcare evolution. With advances across martech and adtech that are helping pharmaceutical companies, providers and insurance companies deliver information on treatments and services to more precise audiences at the right time, marketers are doing their part to fundamentally change the dynamics of patient care.  

Democratizing Health Knowledge

Healthcare marketers are better equipped to empower the people they serve, and to put patients at the core of decision-making, treatment planning, and health management. Utilizing data and technology while keeping sensitive information protected, they can drive engagement with more relevant messages and are better equipped to provide health-related information to those who need it most. 

Knowledgeable patients are more likely to ask questions on specific treatments and have productive conversations with their care providers, so they are able to actively participate in decision-making regarding their healthcare options and to make choices that align with their individual values and preferences. They are also more apt to continue medications or preventive treatments for greater efficacy.    

Through their campaigns, marketers are helping democratize health knowledge, addressing disparities that can adversely affect health outcomes by reaching historically underserved populations who often face barriers in accessing and receiving care, and creating a population of informed would-be patients.   

Building Better Health Journeys

As care becomes more personalized, health journeys can provide critical insight into causation and other factors surrounding disease and wellness. Understanding the various stages and experiences a person may go through when seeking and receiving healthcare services – from the initial concern or need for care to the ultimate resolution or management of the issue – can eliminate assumptions about the real determinants of health and help identify new solutions. 

Although data-driven analytics are essential for healthcare professionals and clinicians to uncover these insights, the highly regulatory conditions concerning the use of health data has challenged the development of valuable health journeys. Fortunately, healthcare marketers have started to look to other industries such as financial services and insurance, also subject to strict governmental and self-regulatory frameworks, to adopt best practices on how to analyze data while complying with strict privacy protections. 

Healthcare marketers and their partners are utilizing proven de-identification and tokenization technologies and privacy-safe environments that keep sensitive information protected while allowing for the analytics needed to reveal insights that can improve outcomes. With such functionality, data scientists have the ability to layer on other information such as social determinants of health (SDoH) and de-identified claims data that provide visibility into the treatments used by insurance members, validating assumptions with real-world data. 

Prescribing a Patient-Centered Approach

Patients are people with different needs and interests, and marketers’ role is to pay attention to how people react to messaging and adjust accordingly. By customizing and optimizing audiences engineered with privacy-by-design, they can focus on groups more likely to be interested in certain health information, perform in-market tests and build feedback loops that collect signals more quickly and effectively, improving overall engagement and intelligence. 

Healthcare marketers are better equipped to measure, test, and learn what resonates with specific audiences and develop a deeper understanding that helps shift the focus from traditional, provider-centric models to one that values the patient’s perspective and actively involves them in their care.  They can also coordinate campaigns to healthcare professionals, imparting the insights they have developed on consumer populations that can help prepare them to have conversations that lead to better care. 

With the right data, tools and technology, healthcare marketing can be a valuable tool in improving public health and promoting healthier societies by building stronger connections between providers and patients. Saving lives through better communication is not only possible but an achievable and measurable outcome.