Health Technology, Digital Healthcare
Article | September 7, 2023
Global efforts to tackle gender inequality have grown in recent years. But there is still so much to be done. Figures from the United Nations show that outcomes for women and girls continue to lag across a range of issues, including poverty, education, work and health. And according to the World Economic Forum, at the current rate, it will take 108 years to close the gender gap.
Although healthcare is founded in objectivity and science, gender bias is still remarkably common. We wanted to understand more about female perceptions of healthcare, so we undertook consumer research that delved into the experiences of women compared to men. The results pointed to a clear disparity, finding that women are less likely to visit the doctor when they have symptoms of ill health and, in some cases, are taken less seriously when they do seek medical advice.
Women being left behind
According to our research, a significant proportion of British women feel disappointed in the healthcare they receive, with one in five reporting they weren’t taken seriously when presenting symptoms to a healthcare provider. What’s more, a staggering one in four said they are reluctant to seek medical advice at all for fear of wasting a GP’s time. These statistics suggest that, not only are female experiences of healthcare damaging their relationship with clinicians, but they could be eroding confidence in recognising and acting on warning signs and symptoms too.
This sentiment is particularly evident when focusing on cardiac care. One in eight women (13%) feel ignored when presenting symptoms of heart disease to healthcare professionals, compared to just 4% of men. And of UK adults who have received a coronary heart disease (CHD) diagnosis, women experiencing symptoms were 55% more likely than men to visit the doctor multiple times before receiving a referral for further investigation. On top of this, women are five times more likely to receive a false finding from the cardiac stress tests that are traditionally used to assess heart health.
“There does appear to be a gender bias in onward referral to secondary care and for diagnostics in the local area, which is influenced by the attending healthcare professionals’ risk assessment. Traditional teaching has led to gender bias, as we are programmed to attribute a lower level of pre-test probability and risk to females. This may have contributed to a general lack of awareness around cardiovascular health in women. For example, in a survey I carried out among more than 600 female employees working within North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, 82% said they didn’t feel informed about their cardiovascular health. Considering participants included some of the most medically informed women in the UK, the results speak volumes about how we view cardiac health among women.”
- Dr Rebecca Schofield, consultant cardiologist at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust
These widespread misconceptions around heart disease and heart attacks are often exacerbated by what we see in the media – think of the countless TV stereotypes of male characters clutching their chests and falling to the floor.
But given that CHD is responsible for one in 13 female deaths, it appears that public health efforts have failed to make people aware of the risks for women. It is, perhaps, not surprising then that 42% of women with CHD did not immediately recognise their symptoms as signs of heart disease. In short, women are missing out on time-critical diagnoses and treatment due to a lack of awareness and education among both healthcare providers and the public.
Technologies making a difference
Thankfully, progress is being made to improve healthcare outcomes for women. Innovative technologies are increasingly providing diagnostic solutions that can reduce incidences of human bias and give clinicians greater clarity on the presence or severity of different conditions in their female patients.
For example, AI is already being used to detect diseases such as cancer more accurately. Its adoption is facilitating reviews and translations of mammograms 30 times faster, with 99% accuracy, reducing the need for unnecessary biopsies.
There’s extraordinary potential for AI and healthcare, and it’s something the NHS continues to recognise, most recently with the launch of its Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab) and NHS England’s (NHSE) MedTech Funding Mandate. The latter aims to accelerate the uptake of selected innovative medical devices, diagnostics, and digital products to patients.
As part of the NHS efforts, NHSE has mandated the HeartFlow Analysis for use in hospitals across England for patients, male or female, who might otherwise be sent for a cardiac stress test. The HeartFlow Analysis is a gender-neutral technology that takes data from a coronary CT scan of the heart and leverages deep learning (a form of AI) and highly trained analysts to create a personalised, digital 3D model of each patient’s coronary arteries. This then helps clinicians to quickly diagnose CHD and decide the appropriate treatment for patients of any gender. Time spent in hospital is minimised for patients and often layered testing and unnecessary invasive diagnostic procedures can be avoided.
Final thoughts
While AI is helping us tackle gender bias in certain areas such as oncologic and cardiac testing, healthcare professionals are not absolved of responsibility when it comes to confronting this problem. It remains incumbent upon clinicians to recognise unconscious bias that would deter them from referring women or minority patients for much-needed testing.
Outside of the hospital, public health education efforts must expand so that far more of us can recognise shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, back or jaw pain, and other symptoms beyond chest pain to be indicators of a heart attack in a woman. Knowing what to look for and overcoming personal bias that might lead to these signs being disregarded, may allow us to help one of the more than 100 women who will experience a heart attack in the UK today.
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Health Technology, Digital Healthcare
Article | August 16, 2023
Mental illness is a fatal illness. Surprisingly, mental health is grossly underfunded all over the world. Despite countries' economic strength, there are still no long-term and solution-driven results for addressing mental health. According to WHO reports, only one in every fifty people receives medical treatment for severe mental illnesses.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a global initiative to create a more equitable and sustainable world. According to the World Health Organization, "there can be no health or sustainable development without proper mental health." As a result, mental health is one of the most critical pillars in creating a sustainable world in the future. In short, if mental health is good, sustainability will follow naturally.
Positive Mental Health = Thriving Sustainability
According to the WHO’s decision-making body, ‘The World Health Assembly (WHA),’ mental health deserves to be at the top of the sustainability agenda because it affects people of all ages.
It means anybody can be diagnosed with a mental illness, which is directly proportionate to sustainable development. So, a similar amount of treatments, diagnoses, and awareness should help people overcome mental illness.
However, on the other hand, according to the WHO's 2020 Mental Health Atlas, only 23% of patients with mental illnesses have been integrated into healthcare systems in developing countries. This highlights the undeniable fact that the world's 280 million people suffering from depression have been kept away from receiving a proper diagnosis, treatment, and care. Moreover, up to 85% of people with mental illnesses are untreated. The numbers are shocking!
Such statistics are enough evidence to create a supportive culture free of the stigma that mental illness is incurable and encourage patients to seek help when they need it. It includes geography-specific mental health resources, proper diagnosis, care, medication, availability, accessibility, other requirements, and adequate support systems.
Global Action is Key to Both
Providers of mental health services cannot do it alone. Instead, it requires a strong global response. In this case, leading companies and legislative bodies should exert influence to promote cost-effective, widely accessible, and evidence-based treatments for mental health disorders.
Some low-cost solutions to this global problem will eradicate it and bring about long-term development to support this point. As a result, the solutions are as follows
Improving social and economic environments as part of sustainable development
Integrating mental health into general primary health care
Providing appropriate care and treatment through trained and supervised community members
Using technology to introduce the most up-to-date solutions for mental health disorders
Wrapping Up
Transformation is essential today, both technically and in terms of humanizing. Otherwise, sustainable development will be impossible to achieve unless the enormous challenge of mental health is addressed. Therefore, healthcare leaders will need to develop transitional plans to increase coverage in real-time to accomplish this. This should include proper diagnosis and progressive tracking of mental health treatments.
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Healthtech Security
Article | August 31, 2023
Is your health technology company publishing content online? Not sure how to make your health tech content marketing effective?
Each step taken in the process of content marketing matters. Skipping essential steps may negatively affect the whole process. The following steps are critical in your content strategy:
• Defining your ideal buyer
• Gathering insights about how they make decisions
• Documenting how your content will address their needs
Lately, health tech companies are facing too much competition. Thus it would be wise to equip yourself with a good marketing strategy, including a clear content marketing plan. This blog focuses on making your health content marketing more effective, overcoming challenges, and eliminating the chances of failure.
Content Marketing challenges for Health Tech Marketers
Heath tech brands face multiple obstacles with health tech content marketing. They must deal with many challenges such as content proliferation, uncoordinated and inconsistent content creation, and difficulty in reaching out to customers and prospects with relevant and timely content.
A lot of hard work and time is required to create great content. Let us have a closer look at the challenges faced by health tech marketers related to content marketing.
Determining Content Marketing ROI
Many of the health tech content marketers are struggling to show ROI from their content marketing efforts. They cannot claim a specific conversions rate from a channel or a piece of content. Often digital conversion paths of the health tech industry cannot be analyzed or tacked.
Some other biggest challenges of health tech content marketing are tying content to conversions, defining appropriate and relevant metrics for measuring and evaluating the impact of the content marketing efforts on its bottom line.
Figuring Out How to Feed the Content Beast
Including health tech brands, many brands spend too much time thinking and worrying about creating compelling content. Or they worry about making content thattheir boss, salespeople, or other stakeholders need. The goal should be creating content consistently that is necessary for the client's journey. Your health tech content marketing should focus on your target audience searching online for your product and business.
Proving Credibility and Authority
Many health tech marketers struggle with defining a credible and authoritative voice for their brands. They fail in the process of cutting through the noise and grabbing the attention of their target audience for this very reason.
A health tech content marketing strategy should maintain the brand’s identity, improve its authority, and boost ROI. Here, thought leadership has a role to play. Use your people, their expertise, and their passion effectively to share what they know about your product with your target audience. Trust and credibility will follow.
Maintaining Volume, Quality, Speed
Another significant challenge of health tech content marketing is developing compelling, engaging content fast without compromising on volume and quantity. For many marketers, a big pain point is trying to stay agile and nimble within a large corporate structure.
Continuous Learning
The marketing landscape is ever-changing. It means health tech marketers have to dedicate themselves to learning throughout their life.. They also have to reinvent through innovation to avoid extinction. Primarily, health tech content marketing needs constant innovation and learning. Everyone is trying to navigate the learning curve. It is very challenging for marketers to train teams and update them with the latest marketing practices.
Influencer Marketing
Another challenge faced by most marketers in their health tech content marketing efforts is identifying influencers to amplify content. Creating great content is just the first step. Having an effective promotion strategy to reach your prospects with your content helps.
Reasons for Health Tech Content Marketing Failure
A study by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) on health tech content marketing shows a vast gap between results and goals. Is there discontent in health tech content marketing? Eighty-five percent of the survey participants said they have a content marketing strategy, but only 4 percent only said their content marketing strategy was effective.
So, it's clear that something was not working for them. Here are some of the key reasons:
The Absence of a Content Strategy
Except for some large tech companies, such as IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce, most vendors do not have a content marketing strategy. For many tech companies, content marketing is part of their overall business strategy. So consider building a health tech content marketing strategy to have a leg up on your competitors.
Lack of Sponsorship
Creating compelling content is a low-priority task for most B2B tech companies. A small marketing team usually takes care of health tech content marketing with limited resources and budget. It results in content that does not align with your market positioning and business strategy.
Content-Creation Bottlenecks
Content marketers need quality content for marketng. For this, subject matter experts (SME) should be involved in the process of content creation. SMEs, most often, are too busy to participate in the process. As a result, the content may turn out low in quality and might not be consistent
Lack of a Content Distribution Strategy
Unless you promote high value content on all the digital and social media channels, no one will hear about your health tech brand. Most B2B health tech companies fail to promote themselves through effective health tech content marketing on multiple digital and social media channels.
No Patience
B2B health tech companies want instant results. The survey by in 2020 HIMSS points out the minimum time needed to fetch results from content marketing programs. A health tech content marketing program launched in this quarter will not bring you any developments in the same quarter.
Effective Content Marketing Plan for Health Tech Marketers
The global pandemic has accelerated the shift towards digital marketing. Many healthcare technology marketers focus on pure sales collateral and product-centric content instead of thought leadership and human-centric content.
Here are five areas that deserve more attention in your health tech content marketing plan. These should be top priorities in your content plan.
Planning the Process and Setting Reasonable Goals & Objectives
Data shows that most healthcare technology companies do not have an effective health tech content marketing plan. It is not surprising that these companies, accelerating ahead everyday, do not have the time to plan or enough resources to execute it. There are three reasons behind it:
• They never made planning a proper priority.
• They realize they don’t have the time.
• The team doesn’t know where to start.
Good planning with realistic goals and expectations solves this issue. Quality content marketing is a long-term investment, not a short-term performance vehicle.
Benchmark the Market & Your Competition
Investigating your competition may get you down. Analyzing every aspect of your competitors’ content, including approach and strategy, will help you learn many essentials things. You will get ideas to improve your health tech content marketing from your competitor analysis.
Do not get confused between your sales competitors and content competitors. Your sales competitor is the one who sells your exact product or service. Your content competitors are companies ranking on search engines for the same content that you want to ranked for on search engine result pages. In addition to pure sales competitors, these content competitors can include major publishers such as trade associations and newspapers.
Fine-Tune Your Messages, Themes & Topics
It is effortless to come up with a long list of content ideas. It is vital to understand the themes and topics, which will work better for your business goals. The topics should be worth the time and effort you put in. Your themes, topics, and other content ideas in your health tech content marketing plan should support your core health tech messaging.
People usually tend to create content randomly and wonder why their content marketing does not work in the end. Fine-tuning your themes, messages, and topics and making sure they are all unified in the process is a big part of ensuring your content succeeds in the end.
Address All Four Content Distribution Channels
Creating great content is just a first step to your health tech content marketing. You may have to think of the content distribution channels: owned media, internal channels, earned media, and paid media. All of these channels have multiple options for content distribution. Depending on your company’s business goals and particular situations, you can choose the best-suited application from these channels.
Get the Most Out of Your Content Marketing Efforts
Maximize your health tech content marketing investment with the three Rs: refresh, repurpose, and repromote.
Refreshing means updating old content that performed well in the past. It may include changing the published date and updating the internal links to timely and more current information. Repurposing means changing the format. You can make a blog post out of a webinar or create an infographic out of a case study. Promoting and redistributing older content that performed well in the past is repromoting.
With content marketing, it is tough to have long-term success without a documented strategy and commitment. With a detailed process, you will have clarity about your goals and the tactics you will use to achieve them. If you do not have this practice, it's better to develop your strategy and write it down to improve your health tech content marketing's better effectiveness.
Content marketing is a proven way to connect with the tech industry audience, especially in health tech. Creating great content about your business, which the audience finds reliable and helpful, will make your company reliable and a trusted source to solve problems.
Doing it alone may be a tiresome job. We, at Media 7, provide all the assistance in marketing technology products online. We have the right solution for all your demand generation, lead generation, sales, and marketing problems. Media 7 converts leads and turns them into your happy customers forever. To know more about Media 7, visit: https://media7.com
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is content marketing important in health tech?
Content marketing is crucial in health tech as unique content makes your target audience trust your brand and consider it a trustworthy source for solving their issues. Moreover, to build your brand, content marketing is a vital component.
How do you create a successful health tech content strategy?
When you create a successful health tech content strategy, an ideal buyer profile, buyer persona, customer journey, etc., should be considered. Along with that, you should have clear objectives and goals when you make a content strategy.
What is the essential step in creating a health tech content marketing plan?
The essential step in creating your health tech content marketing plan is defining your targeted audience and understanding the buyer persona. It will help you create relevant and audience-focused content.
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Article | June 3, 2021
With data security becoming a pressing issue in the healthcare industry, having a robust security operations center is the cybersecurity solution. Over the past few years, US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data breaches have been at an all-time high. Moreover, in the United States alone, cyber-attacks on the healthcare systems result in a loss of US$6.2 billion every year. Thus, making the use of SOC in healthcare very crucial.
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