The healthcare industry is changing. The digital revolution in other industries has consumers aware that technology can deliver more efficient and relevant services. But regulated industries, like Healthcare and Life Sciences, are being pulled in multiple directions at once. The rapidly evolving demands of digital and multi-channel marketing are hard enough for healthcare firms to grapple with on their own. Throw in the regulatory, security and organizational demands inherent in healthcare and you get an industry that’s struggling to keep up. Healthcare marketing must be re-imagined to satisfy customer expectations. The first steps are establishing a digital foundation, acquiring resources and expertise, and re-thinking how healthcare companies go to market.

What is disrupting the industry?

• Non-Traditional healthcare companies are entering the market: With Amazon, Apple and Google setting their sights on disrupting the existing healthcare model, traditional healthcare companies are faced with a small window of opportunity to improve consumer engagement before this disruptions hits.
• Healthcare consumers expect retail-like experiences. As with every consumer, healthcare consumers expect connected and personalized experiences. Digital engagement in other industries is leading healthcare consumers to have higher demands and expectations.
• Misalignment between regulatory and legal requirement and consumer expectations: Consumers have demonstrated that they are willing to trade a degree of privacy for personalized experiences, while regulatory agencies are adopting a harder line on privacy compliance.

What is the industry doing about it?

A 2017 survey of over 500 healthcare executives by E-consultancy shows the healthcare industry has a new-found sense of urgency to create a consistent customer experience that spans both offline and online worlds. Here’s a few example of what the industry is doing:

• Consolidation and Mergers of Unlikely Healthcare Partners: As a competitive response to the Nontraditional players entering the market, the healthcare market is consolidating in interesting ways (ie: CVS acquisition of AETNA, and AETNA aligning with Apple).
• Digitization / modernization of systems - Healthcare companies are typically burdened with legacy systems and are beginning to upgrade to platform-level enterprise systems that integrate with new and old technologies.
• Acquisition of talent and expertise from other industries: Healthcare companies are beginning to hire digital marketing experts from other industries to bridge the digital gap and align experience delivery with consumer expectations, all while maintaining regulatory compliance.

• Organizational Inertia. Healthcare companies have been very successful operating in the status quo and are slow to change from the C-suite down.
• Content, data, and teams functioning in silos. There are disjointed skillsets in the workforce that don’t have much digital expertise. The silos create challenges when connecting processes and data.
• Legacy systems and manual processes. Siloed systems for managing and delivering content results in difficulty finding existing content, asset duplication, and lack of consistency.
• Lack of patient-centric perspective. There is a need to meet consumer demands for retail-like experience, and consumers already view healthcare websites as hard to navigate. Companies must put the customer at the center while dealing with the confines of regulatory mandates.
• Lack of test and learn mentality and development. Regulations make targeting specific audiences and delivering personalized experiences a challenge.

1. How many potential members or patients are you losing as a result of a non-existent or poor online or mobile enrollment process?
2. How is a disconnected online and offline customer experience impacting customer acquisition? Retention? Loyalty?
3. What is the cost and time associated with creating, updating and maintaining the various enrollment forms and applications for members and patients across your enterprise?
4. What is the cost and time associated with managing, updating, scaling, and integrating disconnected and siloed marketing systems and data platforms?
5. What compliance risk are you exposed to as a result of manual PHI collection, transcription, storage and disposal processes? (HIPAA Compliance)
6. What compliance risk are you exposed to as a result of siloed content, manual version control, and non-compliant approval and storage of content? (FDA Compliance)

What should our customers do?

Differentiate by delivering healthy and meaningful experiences.

• Shift to a customer-first mindset, where omni-channel support is paramount.
• See the customer as a person, not a device, so you can understand their behavior.
• Integrate data into a unified system so you deliver relevant experiences.
• Speed production, delivery and approvals of content across devices.
• Explore managed services to assist with compliance.