I had the privilege of interviewing Cyndee Holden, a fantastic healthcare B2B marketer, at ANI 2011 in Orlando. She talks about why ARUP was the only lab company at ANI, and why CFOs need to start paying more attention to containing lab costs.
The iPad and the iOS will change the expectations of the health B2B market.
OK, so the hype around iPads and healthcare may have some truth to it. So what does that mean to marketers?
Some marketers talk about how health care companies can market their wares through apps. Sure. Build an app, if it makes sense for you. Or they talk about iPad’s implications for mobile marketing. Yawn. Of course. A bigger screen + connectivity is a boon to messaging by mobile means. You don’t need me to tell you that.
There are two “tablet consequences” I find important: One, the iPad and the iOS will change the expectations of our market. Two, iOS will lower barriers to entry in the Health IT/eHealth space.
Tablets will further condition people to expect immediacy. I mentioned yesterday that iOS is not a program-based operating system, but a task-based one. We can use our iPhones, iPads, Android or Blackberry devices when we want to accomplish one thing, like looking up some bit of information or connect with our important data. There’s virtually no limit to the one-off tasks that these devices can help us do.
These devices make information retrieval immediate, just-in-time, when we want it, how we want it. And these devices are being adopted by tens of thousands of our most important customers. Doctors are interested in iPad because of its immediacy, its ease of use and its ability to enhance—rather than roadblock—their workflow.
That means that dead simple ease of use is an expectation. As more and more health care technology moves to the iPad, the audience will expect them to behave like apps—small, simple, and usable. Ease of use will no longer be a differentiator, it will be a requirement. That’s more of a takeaway for a product marketer than a communicator. Still, it’s important for communicators to understand biases, and this is the direction our audience is heading, especially as the older guard retires.
The health technology space will get more crowded. You don’t need millions of dollars and hundreds developers to create an app, so there will be more companies sprouting up that offer apps to meet highly specific needs. As the health care app space gets crowded, authenticity and relationships will become even more important. Winners will not only have a terrific product that solves a real problem but have a brand that captures the imagination and encourages genuine interactions.
Now, I realize that these are directions that modern consumers have been taking for some time, but iPad/iPhone/iOS have hastened the movement.
Any other “tablet consequences” that you can think of?
Photo credit: Ben Dodson (cc)
I was a skeptic about all the iPad+Healthcare hype. But my skepticism is waning.
When the iPad 2 was released, I braced myself for the deluge of bloggers and tweeters who would find some connection between iPad 2 and healthcare. The deluge was significant. And much of what was discussed was at best hyperbole and at worst search engine baiting. What was worse was the number of iPad+Healthcare+Marketing posts I saw. Frankly, the only connection I envisioned between the iPad and health care marketing was another shiny device to give away at trade shows.
But now that the hype is waning, my skepticism is waning, too. There are still reasons to look at the iPad with a wary eye, but also plenty of reasons to be open to the possibility that the iPad—and iOS—might just be the biggest thing to happen to eHealth/Health IT since ARRA.
iPad has blown open the tablet market. Tablets have been around for years, but not until iPad have they gone mainstream. I remember when Microsoft came out with its Windows XP Tablet PC edition. There was much talk then about its uses for health care. But reality never lived up to the hype. Now, while doctors and hospitals aren’t necessarily beating down Apple Store doors to purchase iPads, their adoption rate is pretty good for being around just a year.
Docs want devices that are easy to use. One of the terrific things about the iPad is its ease of use. Millions of iPads have already sold. My 60-something neighbor can’t live without hers. My 30-something wife—who is a bit of a technology dunderhead (sorry, sweetie, but you know I’m right)—had to have one. She uses hers every day. Doctors, many of whom are technophobes, are only reporting minor usability troubles with the iPad. If any device could grease the skids for greater EMR use, it’s the iPad.
iPad is task-based, not software-based. As a group, doctors are the busiest multi-taskers on the planet. Wouldn’t it be great if they could have some program at their fingertips that will help them do just that one thing? With Windows slapped on a tablet, that’s a completely foreign concept. But with the iOS, it’s happening already.
Now, there are certainly other devices out there that do the same things. But iPads and the iOS are the market and the adoption leaders. If one tablet device can be pointed to as leading the revolution, it’s the iPad.
So marketers, why should the iPad mean more to you than a trade show giveaway? More on that tomorrow.
Photo credit: Robert Scoble (cc)
e-Health or Health IT? Yes, there is a distinction, and I believe it's a critical one.
Back at HIMSS11 in Orlando, I had a nice conversation with Bill Oravecz, a consultant who specializes in helping doctors make smart decisions about EMRs. He asked a question that I as a marketer hadn’t thought of before. “What is eHealth?”
He must have noticed the puzzled look on my face because he kindly answered his own question. “It’s all about health, and making it easy to be healthy. Just like eCommerce was about making commerce easier and eBusiness was about making business easier, eHealth is about making health easier. ‘Health IT’ puts too much emphasis on technology. The emphasis should be on health.”
This conversation, at the largest health IT conference in America, was refreshing, and it changed my perspective. I’ve long believed that health IT was an answer to health care’s issues with cost, quality and access. Great technology removes administrative waste and drives cost out of the system. Great technology brings best practices into greater focus, improving quality of care. Great technology makes great care more widely available.
But the future is not about health technology. The future is technology helping us be healthier.
May I add myself to the many who have used the brand Apple as a positive example. Apple is a technology company that understands it is not a technology company. They’re more like Maytag than they are like Microsoft. Apple is a home appliance company. They understand that their technology should make life easier and that the form and function of their hardware and software are just as important, if not more important, than their cool features.
I’m no Apple disciple—I don’t own Apple stock and I run my business on PCs. However, I do own an iPhone and I got my wife an iPad for Christmas, and the overall simplicity of these devices is impressive. While my PC is essential for getting things done when I’m at my desk, my iPhone is an essential device when I’m living my life, moreso than other smartphones I’ve owned. They’ve made being connected easy.
As marketers, I think it’s essential that we stop thinking of our companies as technology companies and start thinking of them as eHealth companies. Our technology will improve the health care system, but ultimately, are companies will be irrelevant unless we impact the health of individuals.
And let’s make sure that everyone in our company understands that “e” doesn’t stand for “electronic.” It stands for “easy.”
Photo credit: Pascal Lagarde (cc)
Some HIMSS11 staffers wasted thousands of their companies' dollars
I’ve said before that trade show staffers need to treat trade show booths like a stage. When you walk on the stage, you’re at best in character and at least in business. Well, the trade show secret shoppers of HIStalk caught more than a few HIMSS11 booth staffers loafing on the job:
Mr. HIStalk:
I got some e-mails from execs of some of the vendors I mentioned yesterday as ignoring my “I’d like a demo” booth body language to give them a second chance. I did so today, with mostly the same results. I should mention, however, that my title and hospital name on my badge wouldn’t necessarily make me a likely candidate, although the small font size makes it unlikely that they ignored me for that reason. Today was the last exhibit day and nobody was paying much attention to those of us still roaming the exhibits late into the afternoon. Mostly I saw reps talking on the phone or sitting together in their couch / table areas making dinner plans or cursing as they spoke animatedly among themselves (I’ve noted that young, male sales reps seem to curse a lot in each other’s company – it’s like using profane emoticons).
Inga:
From one very smart CEO: I figured out how much it cost us per hour to have people here and it is about $7,000. They better be standing on the corner of the booths trying to sell and not checking messages on their smart phones. Good advice that a lot of vendors should have heeded, including some that I kind of wanted to check out. Like CattailsMD, Azzly (the second time I came around), Wavelink, and a dozens of others.
Intelligent InSites’ VP of sales of marketing, Houston Klassen, took some time to talk about marketing his health care software platform.
Physicians are a tough-to-reach audience. Jennifer Farias, marketing director for TopLineMD, tells me how her company has avoided traditional mass marketing expenses while still making inroads with physicians.
Jon Forknell of Atlas Business Solutions, a provider of staffing software for healthcare, spent some time with me at HIMSS11 talking about their marketing efforts. Their focus: direct sales engagement.
Josh Elson of Fluent Care, a provider of real-time location services on the Intelligent Insites platform, took some time to speak with me at HIMSS11.
After meeting with with Hyland Software at last year’s HIMSS conference in Atlanta, I’ve kept an eye on what they’re doing with social media. This year, I caught up with their Twitter account manager, Kaitlin Maurer, who gave me the details of her tweeting and blogging success. Check it out: