Health Technology, AI
Article | July 18, 2023
COVID-19 has been a catalyst for change, with the diagnostics industry taking centre stage and rising to the challenge of a global pandemic. One of the silver linings of this mammoth task has been the unprecedented time and focus dedicated to finding new technologies and solutions within the sector.
The lessons learned from the pandemic now need to be taken forward to improve breast and cervical cancer detection, prevention and treatment across the UK over the coming years.
In the more immediate term, the diagnostics industry, alongside public health leaders, faces a daunting backlog as screening programmes for breast and cervical cancer were put on pause for months. These two life-saving tests have been some of the most overlooked during the pandemic and getting back on track with screening is critical as we start to turn the corner. We believe innovation in diagnostics, particularly artificial intelligence guided imaging, is a key tool to tackle delays in breast and cervical cancer diagnosis.
The scale of the backlog in missed appointments is vast. In the UK, an estimated 600,000 cervical screening appointments were missed in April and May 2020. And an estimated 986,000 women missed their mammograms, of which an estimated 10,700 could be living with undiagnosed breast cancer. It is clear that hundreds of thousands of women have been affected as COVID-19 resulted in the reprioritisation of healthcare systems and resource allocation.
Both cervical and breast cancer screening are well suited for digital technologies and the application of AI, given both require highly trained medical professionals to identify rare, subtle changes visually –a process that can be tedious, time-consuming and error prone. Artificial intelligence and computer vision are technologies which could help to significantly improve this.
What does AI mean in this context?
Before examining the three specific areas where digitisation and AI can help, it is important to define what we mean by AI. It is the application of AI to medical imaging to help accelerate detection and diagnosis. Digitisation is the vital first step in implementing an AI-driven solution – high quality images demand advanced cloud storage solutions and high resolution. The better the quality of the input, the more effectively trained an AI system will be.
The first area where AI-guided imaging can play a role is workflow prioritisation. AI, along with increased screening units and mammographers, has the potential to increase breast cancer screening capacity, by removing the need for review by two radiologists. When used as part of a screening programme, AI could effectively and efficiently highlight the areas that are of particular interest for the reader, in the case of breast screening, or cytotechnologist when considering cervical screening.
Based on a comparison with the average time taken to read a breast screening image, with AI 13% less time is needed to read mammogram images, improving the efficiency with which images are reviewed. This time saving could mean that radiologists could read more cases a day and potentially clear the backlog more quickly.
For digital cytology for cervical cancer screening, the system is able to evaluate tens of thousands of cells from a single patient in a matter of seconds and present the most relevant diagnostic material to a trained medical professional for the final diagnosis. The job of a cytotechnologist is to build a case based on the cells they see. Utilising these tools, we are finding that cytotechnologists and pathologists are significantly increasing their efficiency without sacrificing accuracy to help alleviate the backlog of cervical screening we are seeing in many countries.
Prioritising the most vulnerable patients
Another key opportunity is applying AI to risk stratification, as it could help to identify women who are particularly at risk and push them further up the queue for regular screening. Conversely, it would also allow the screening interval for those women at lower risk to be extended, creating a more efficient and targeted breast screening programme.
For example, women with dense breast tissue have a greater risk factor than having two immediate family members who have suffered from breast cancer. What’s more, dense breasts make it more difficult to identify cancerous cells in standard mammograms. This means that in some cases cancers will be missed, and in others, women will be unnecessarily recalled for further investigation.
A simple way to ensure that those most at risk of developing breast cancer are prioritised for screening and seen more regularly would be to analyse all women on the waiting list with AI-guided breast density software. This would allow clinicians to retrospectively identify those women most at risk and move them to the top of the waiting list for mammograms.
In the short term, to help tackle the screening backlog, prior mammograms of women on the waiting list could be analysed using the breast density software, so that women at highest risk could be seen first.
Finding new workforce models
Being able to pool resources will allow resource to be matched to demand beyond borders. Globally, more than half a million women are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year and the majority of these occur where there is a lack of guidance to conduct the screening programme. The digital transformation of cervical screening can connect populations that desperately need screening to resources where that expertise exists. For example, developing countries in Africa could collect samples from patients and image these locally, but rely on resources in the UK to support the interpretation of the images and diagnoses. Digital diagnostics brings the promise of a ‘taxi-hailing’ type model to cervical cancer screening – connecting groups with resources (drivers with cars) to those who are in need (passengers): this is an efficient way of connecting laboratory professionals to doctors and patients around the world.
It’s going to take many months to get cancer screening programmes up and running at normal levels again, with continued social distancing measures and additional infection control impacting turnaround times. But diagnostic innovation is on a trajectory that we cannot ignore. It will be key to getting cancer screening programmes get back on track. AI is a fundamental piece of the innovation puzzle and we are proud to be at the forefront of AI solutions for our customers and partners.
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Health Technology, Digital Healthcare
Article | July 14, 2023
Do you have a difficult time explaining your mental health issues to your family and friends?
If so, here are six suggestions on how to discuss your mental health issues with your friends and relatives.
1. Talk to a counselor: The most important thing that you need to do is to talk to a counselor about your mental health problems. Seeking professional help will go a long way in overcoming your current issues. In addition, a counselor will be able to give you additional advice on how to deal with your friends and family members.
2. Don’t argue with others: It is important that you do not get into arguments with those who are giving you a hard time. Your number one priority is getting your life back on track. Your health is more important than what other people may think.
3. Watch who you hang out with: It is important to surround yourself with positive people. Try to keep your distance from those people who are giving you a difficult time. Remember that your goal is to remain positive and hopeful. Do not let the negative people in your life bring you down.
4. You are not alone: It can be very frustrating to deal with your mental health issues when your friends and relatives are on your case. Remember, you are not alone. There are millions of people around the world who struggle with their fears, anxieties, and depression. The key is to find those people who can relate to you.
5. Stand your ground: It is important to stand your ground when dealing with family members and friends who are giving you a hard time. Explain your situation and your feelings to the people in your life, however don’t let them hassle you. Your number one priority is to get better and not to please everyone that you know.
6. Join a support group: There are many mental health support groups in your area that can help you. Many hospitals, churches, and counselors in your area will be able to provide you with a list of groups. These mental health organizations will be supportive of your situation and they can give you additional advice regarding your problems.
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Digital Healthcare
Article | November 29, 2023
Healthcare marketing, for a healthcare provider, is challenging as a lot of technologies are emerging in the market. What matters is choosing the right healthcare marketing techniques and technology to market your products and services. The global digital health market size was USD 51.3 billion in 2015. According to Global Market Insights, this is expected to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.9% from 2016 to 2025. However, to compete with your opponents and to face the challenges of increasing patients buying your products and services, you need an excellent and well-designed marketing strategy with the latest healthcare marketing trends.
As we have entered a new decade, healthcare providers should look into developments in the healthcare marketing brought out by the year 2020. The global pandemic has changed all the practices in the industry, including the style of healthcare marketing and technology. Since the turn of the century, online marketing has been a part and parcel of healthcare marketing. However, healthcare marketing is witnessing a new era. This can be attributed to the increasing integration of various smart devices in the everyday lives of people and the introduction of artificial intelligence algorithms. Are you ready to leverage these technological transformations and changes?
This article discusses some of the major healthcare marketing trends to be integrated into your healthcare marketing strategies.
Reviews Matter
One of the important healthcare marketing trends that you can use is online reviews from happy patients. Healthcare providers have largely relied upon these online reviews— the patient sentiment—to establish a reputation and acquire new patients. These reviews are widespread across multiple online platforms and anyone can easily access them.
A study conducted by Binary Fountain in 2019 claimed that 60% of people use online reviews to choose a healthcare provider. It also claimed that 75% are influenced by online feedback when they go for a healthcare provider. This shows how influential this healthcare marketing trend is. Thus, in 2021, healthcare providers should concentrate on acquiring positive reviews and replying to both good and bad reviews and feedback. It is crucial to respond to negative reviews for your online reputation management, as 70% of patients consider it important to address patient concerns publicly.
Content is King
Content marketing is yet another healthcare marketing trend that healthcare providers should focus on. Producing educational, entertaining, engaging, and high-quality content is crucial in increasing your online brand visibility and patient engagement. This aspect of online marketing came into existence ever since Google became the king in the search engine market and established their ever-evolving algorithms.
To leverage this healthcare marketing trend, healthcare providers should have a plan for creating content holistically and publishing it on multiple platforms in different forms. All content that goes online should be well-produced and authoritative. All forms of text-based content, such as articles, blogs, press releases, white papers, and case studies, should be well-written and have high-quality links. It is also good to add images to your content to increase engagement.
Within this healthcare marketing trend, video marketing is considered to be the most effective one because online visual content appeals to users more than any other form of content. To make the most out of your videos, you can run video ads on YouTube, share them on your social media pages, and post them on websites and landing pages.
Responsive, Fast Loading Websites
Among the online healthcare marketing techniques, it is very important to have a very responsive and fast loading website. Also, the navigation on the site should be smooth and easy. This is because the websites with these features win more patients.
Websites of healthcare providers with ads and pop-ups, navigation issues, and slow loading will make users leave the site in no time. This will be much realized in 2021 as patients expect websites to load instantly on all their devices, including their smartphones.
To increase patient acquisition, you may have to streamline and optimize your website for both mobile and desktop viewing. Here are some quick tips to make your website loading fast and navigation easy:
• Decrease image size on your website
• Switch to a faster web host
• Clean up unnecessary code.
Growing Influence of Social Media
Having a strong presence on all social media platforms is an effective digital healthcare marketing tactic. The online presence of your healthcare organization should not be limited to your website. To maximize your brand’s reach and to have an impact in 2021, you may have to make full use of all social media platforms. In terms of lead generation, engagement, marketing, and reputation management, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, among others, are turning more influential nowadays. According to Statista, social media has 2.82 billion active users. More specifically, according to Hootsuite, as of 2020, 90% of older adults use social media to seek or share healthcare information.
This most influential healthcare digital marketing trend can be effectively used by creating and promoting targeted ads on all these platforms. Also, by interacting with users through likes, comments, and shares and publishing content regularly, you can increase your organic reach. For any healthcare provider and marketer of 2021 and beyond, it is a massive mistake to neglect the power of social media.
Data-Driven Healthcare Marketing
In 2021, to personalize outreach campaigns, healthcare providers and marketers will have data and tools. Adhering to HIPAA regulations, healthcare providers can design various marketing materials according to key demographics, such as key health concerns, income levels, age range, etc. This is the more granular approach to reach new patients and to keep your regular and current patients loyal to your brand. This personalized healthcare marketing technique will make patients feel that they are treated well and slowly build up trust in your brand.
A customer relationship management (CRM) tool, which is reliable and healthcare-specific, can store relevant patient data. To optimize your marketing strategy, insights from the stored data can be considered. Thus, this important healthcare marketing technique—data-driven healthcare marketing—helps you personalize your healthcare marketing campaigns.
Turning to Telemedicine Technology
Demanding physical processes and spatial barriers are not yet a big restriction for healthcare providers. Artificial intelligence, telemedicine, automated systems, and IOT contribute a lot to make healthcare more efficient and accessible. Highlighting these features in healthcare also becomes an effective healthcare marketing technique.
Using telemedicine software, healthcare can be provided remotely, which eliminates the need for an in-house visit. Although this breakthrough happened at the start of the century, it will become more accessible, viable, reliable, and will be used widely than ever before in 2021. Patients with mobility and transportation issues prefer using remote healthcare services and adding these facilities to your services can be considered a part of healthcare marketing tactics. So start offering remote healthcare services, if you have not started yet. This will eventually increase your brand reputation and build up trust.
Self-Serving Technologies- Patient Profiles, Chatbots, and Appointment-Scheduling Modules
As part of healthcare marketing plan and strategy, patient profiles, chatbots, and appointment-scheduling modules are incorporated by providers in their websites. These additions provide more awareness and control of their health to the patients. Updating your website to include these self-serving technology will help you improve the patient experience online.
Look forward to the new developments in healthcare marketing technology to improve your healthcare marketing, which is suitable for you. Embracing all of these changes and transformation in healthcare marketing strategy will help you stay ahead of your competitors with effective healthcare marketing campaigns strategies.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are technological advances in healthcare?
The year 2020 witnessed a lot of technological advancements in the healthcare industry due to the pandemic. Some of the major ones among them are personalized medicine, telemedicine, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
What technology is used in healthcare marketing?
Blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots, voice search, and augmented reality are some of the major technologies used in treatment and marketing in healthcare in 2021. However, the technology in healthcare marketing is ever-evolving as new trends are set every moment.
Why is technology important in marketing?
Technology is very important in businesses and marketing as technology helps businesses grow. It also creates relationships and it is necessary for communication between the customer and the organizations. Technology is an essential part of any business for development and growth.
What is the most effective healthcare marketing technology?
There are many existing and emerging healthcare marketing technologies in the global market. However, the most effective marketing technique is social media; generating leads through social media and websites.
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Article | April 17, 2021
The healthcare industry is witnessing an unparalleled phase of expansion and vitality. It is a phase of radical revolution due to the wake of digital transformation. Digital transformation has opened up enormous unique opportunities that were unimaginable until a few years back.
These digital trends are bringing companies and individuals together. Data is the starting point of the digital revolution. These data are then transformed into relationships. Today, including healthcare companies, the success of every company is at stake. In other words, it is how you communicate with customers that matters.
This blog is all about healthcare digital communication, especially healthcare video marketing.
We’ll start by looking at data that demonstrates the power and effectiveness of the video marketing medium. There is nothing equal to the power and efficacy of video marketing in our world today. Then, we’ll look at the video marketing best strategies, healthcare video marketing best practices, and successful examples for healthcare video marketing.
There’s Nothing More Effective than Video Marketing
Here are some numbers that alone demonstrate why video is the most effective marketing medium in the digital age:
More than 5 billion videos are viewed on Youtube every day;
78% of online users watch at least one video every week. And 55% watch one every day;
According to estimates by Cisco, by 2022, 82% of all internet traffic will be generated by video. This percentage was already 72.3% in 2017;
When it comes to video, 55% of people pay more attention than any other type of content;
when viewing a video, the average user retains 95% of the message it contains; this percentage goes down to 10% when we talk about the text;
about 100 million hours of video watched every day on Facebook;
82% of registered Twitter users consume video content constantly;
on Instagram, posts containing video record 38% higher engagement on average than posts containing images;
54% of consumers say they want to see more videos from the brands they follow and support.
Such statistics are compelling for brands, and brands are taking notice. As a result, brands are moving to implement videos as much as possible in their marketing strategies, with excellent results. Two statistics below offer additional proof:
87% of marketing professionals use video in their strategy.
88% of marketers are satisfied with the ROI generated by video marketing campaigns.
This collection of data proves one thing: video is the most effective tool for healthcare digital marketing. And this also applies to the Healthcare sector. It’s even more accurate for this sector, which is intimately involved with consumers as part of their daily lives. Thus, healthcare video marketing is much effective and should be included in your healthcare marketing plan.
Strategies and Best Practices of Healthcare Video Marketing
So, let’s take a closer look at how we can build a video marketing strategy in the Healthcare sector, the fundamental points that must be included, the best practices, and some examples of success.
Start from education
It is often said that we live in the information age. Today, as never before, we have access to all the information we could need in just a few seconds, maybe with just a few taps on our smartphone during a coffee break. Health information is undoubtedly among the most sought-after online. In Italy alone, web searches made on this topic are 4 billion per year, a constantly growing trend.
The downside of all of this is the difficulty of finding your way around this mass of information, which is sometimes complex, misleading, or even untrue. That is why the first task of a company in the Healthcare sector is education. Education is not just a responsibility; and it’s also an opportunity.
In this sense, healthcare videos marketing prove to be the best ally. Healthcare video marketing is a way to provide the consumer with an effortless way to have access to transparent, precise, and authoritative information from your brand. That can be the first step toward establishing a relationship of trust with your brand.
Be clear, but also calm
In this case, let’s start immediately with an exciting and practical example. Targeted toward their younger patients, Miami Children’s Hospital created a healthcare video marketing campaign that explains what happens before, during, and after heart surgery. Understandably, this is a sensitive topic. With this effort of healthcare video marketing, the Miami Children’s Hospital manages to achieve the complex objective of providing clear and authoritative information while at the same time reassuring the viewer.
How?
They make the healthcare video marketing campaign compelling, authoritative, and reassuring by showing the faces of its staff members, demonstrating their professionalism, the environment, the healthcare technologies used, and everything related to the surgery. In this way, the high level of preparation and humanity of the people involved stand out to the viewer.
Learn to be engaging
As we saw above, you have to know how to correctly inform and educate your audience using influential healthcare video marketing trends, all with a calm demeanor. However, it’s also true that success also depends on your ability to excite and involve the viewer for healthcare video marketing in the sector. In short, the keyword is ‘storytelling.
An excellent example is the healthcare video marketing campaign carried out by the dental health department of Bupa UK and addressed to children (but applicable and reachable to adults as well). Through a great use of animations and storytelling, the brand uses the well-known story of the tooth fairy and associates it with childhood memories. This healthcare video marketing campaign has proven to be an excellent vehicle for establishing a truly intimate relationship with the viewer (and, not surprisingly, the video has exceeded 1.3 million views on YouTube).
Another effective way to be direct and engaging is to use influencers in your healthcare video marketing campaigns. An exciting example is the Australian pole vaulter, Amanda Bisk, diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. On her Instagram channel, Bisk talks about her path to fight the disease through fitness, and she has quickly become one of the most famous figures in Healthcare on the platform.
It’s important to note that today, more and more brands target top influencers and micro-influencers. Micro-influencers have a much smaller yet targeted and loyal following of fans. Therefore, their healthcare video marketing messages are perceived by the public as more authentic and personal.
Personalization
94% of marketers believe that personalization is crucial for the future of the business in which it moves. But what do we mean when we talk about personalization?
First of all, it’s not something new: knowing your audience has always been the best way to make a profit, calibrate your communication and your “tone of voice,” and increase engagement and loyalty. But what is the turning point of personalization today?
It is a digital turning point. Today, we all leave traces online at every moment: geolocation, Google searches, preferences on social networks, apps (which in Healthcare are increasingly widespread), and so on. We are talking about a vast amount of data that benefits both companies and consumers from a win-win perspective.
Therefore, it’s a matter of utilizing efficient systems to collect this data, dynamic systems designed with an omnichannel approach in mind. From the collection, the next step is to analyze and interpret this information. Then, you will want to divide your audience into many micro-targets with homogeneous and consistent characteristics to target with tailored communications and offers.
In conclusion, these facts are all the more true in a sector like healthcare that impacts people’s daily lives. The best healthcare video marketing strategy for brands can only be to get closer and closer to customers. That is precisely where specialized companies like us, Media7, come into play. Through compelling B2B healthcare video marketing efforts, we create opportunities for interaction and the possibility to insert custom calls to action.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is a video marketing strategy?
Video marketing strategy is creating, curating, and utilizing videos for marketing products and services of companies to the targeted audience. Marketing teams design the strategy. The idea behind the strategy is to keep the audience engaged with the brand.
Are videos effective for health tech marketing?
Videos are much effective for health tech marketing as people prefer to watch things than reading. Also, people are likely to trust what they see than reading. Videos are the highly impactful medium of marketing for any domain of business, including healthcare.
How to start with healthcare video marketing?
The first step to healthcare video marketing is to define your video marketing strategy. Fix and analyze the target audience to understand the online behavior trends to get an idea about their video engagements and clicks on various social media channels.
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