Category: Healthcare

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Consumer & Healthcare Healthcare Healthcare Devices
medical device marketing 1200x600 c default
medical device marketing 1200x600 c default

The latest innovations in medical device marketing are the stuff of science fiction. Here’s what brands need to know about health and wellness marketing.

Google, Apple, and other high tech titans are entering the healthcare market in force, unlocking new treatment and care innovations that radically improve patient outcomes.

This transformation is having an especially profound impact on medical device marketing, whereby manufacturers continue to invest in digital approaches and develop extraordinary products.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the most important recent trends – and most fascinating products – in the medical device market. 

The evolution of IoT-powered medical devices

The Internet of Things is revolutionizing how people interact with everyday devices – everything from thermostats and refrigerators to their vehicles. Yet perhaps no category offers as much potential as IoT medical devices.

Sensors embedded within these devices (whether wearable, implanted or even ingested) can collect critical patient data for analysis. One remarkable example is an ingestible capsule designed by researchers at MIT that is controlled by Bluetooth wireless.

Patients swallow the capsule, which then sits in their stomach for one month, dispensing custom medications and transmitting critical health information via smartphone to healthcare providers. Perhaps even more impressively, these devices are created via 3D printing.

Other sensor-equipped wearables are being used to help people prevent seizures, track blood glucose levels and automatically administer insulin.

An explosion in healthcare data

The phrase “Big Data” is a cliche at this point, but the profound impact data analysis is having on healthcare services is hard to overstate. Consumer health apps are working in concert with electronic health records and diagnostic images to give providers and researchers a vast galaxy of health information to parse and form into actionable insights.

This digital explosion has also allowed researchers to create predictive models and simulated clinical trials. These virtual trials can be simulated millions of times to assist with the analysis of medical device efficacy and safety.

These simulations are also finished millions of times faster than conventional drug and device trials, which can help speed the often slow and methodical regulatory process. This can help give patients access to cutting-edge, life-saving medical device technology faster and more efficiently.

The promise of precision health

For all of its existence, modern medicine has taken a “one size fits all” approach to treatment. Yet thanks to technological advances, we are on the cusp of a revolution in how treatment is delivered: Precision medicine.

Precision medicine allows caregivers to offer patients personalized, targeted approaches to treatment. It does this through the analysis of genetic information, environmental factors, and personal health data collected and analyzed by medical devices.

This allows patients to receive therapies that are optimized to work optimally within their specific body – a transformative new approach to dealing with some of the most serious diseases in existence.

As data analysis grows more refined, our understanding of genetics deepens and medical devices grow more powerful and sophisticated. The power of precision medicine holds the potential to create vastly improved health outcomes.

Is your medical device marketing up to speed?

There’s no doubt that medical devices are at the epicenter of some of the most exciting and innovative developments in technology. Healthcare advertising agencies, however, often do a poor job of conveying these developments to the public. Some pharma marketing agencies lack sufficient domain expertise, while others lack creative power or cutting-edge AdTech services. Either way, it’s a shame when great devices are poorly served by uninspired and ineffective medical device marketing.

BIGEYE is different. Not only are we a forward-thinking, creatively inspired full-service marketing agency, we’re also experts in medical device marketing. If you’re ready to consider a new and better way forward for your next marketing or advertising campaign, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. 

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Healthcare Marketing/Business Pharmaceutical
cropped Pharma Digital Ads scaled
cropped Pharma Digital Ads scaled

Pharmaceutical companies dominate the airwaves in the U.S., but face a much tougher challenge on the Web.

Turn on a TV during daytime hours, and the odds are strong you’ll see the work of a pharmaceutical advertising agency. Ads for prescription drugs are everywhere during peak viewing hours for older viewers, and only slightly less omnipresent during evening hours.

The numbers bear this out: Pharmaceutical companies are spending about $6 billion on TV ads annually. With an aging population and medical advances keeping us healthier longer, this is a state of affairs that’s likely to continue.

Yet while pharmaceutical ads are everywhere on linear TV, they are much less well-represented in the digital sphere — and there are a few reasons why progress on this front has been halting.

Paging Dr. Google

The Internet has become the public’s number one source for health information. When consumers have a troubling symptom, Google and WebMD are often the first stops. Physicians aren’t immune to the powers of the Internet either, and often use online searches to supplement print sources when developing clinical opinions and treatment plans.

Yet despite this rather transformational change, pharmaceutical advertising is still limited in the digital realm. TV and magazines still receive the vast majority of pharmaceutical ad and marketing spend.

There are two reasons why digital advertising in the pharmaceutical industry remains a relative rarity: Government inaction and federal regulations.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has taken an exceptionally methodical approach to providing guidance on what is allowable and what is illegal in terms of digital pharma ads and online pharma marketing. Without clear guidelines, companies have been historically risk-averse in terms of formulating digital strategies. While the FDA is slow and deliberate when crafting policy, it sends out warning letters with much higher velocity.

Compounding this difficulty is the current rate of technological change. By the time the FDA offers pharmaceutical marketing guidance on a digital platform, two new platforms have been developed and released.

Bypassing Programmatic Roadblocks 

There’s another rather large fly in the ointment for digital advertisers: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. This federal law grants US citizens privacy rights that protect the use of medical data.

For programmatic advertisers, this is a substantial challenge. By harvesting location data, search data and other personal information, advertisers can serve highly targeted ads to consumers when their intent to purchase is at its apex. This, obviously, is a very powerful tool.

It’s also a tool that’s constrained by regulations in some instances, however. If a pharmaceutical advertising agency wants to initiate an automated ad campaign, they must proceed with caution. 

HIPAA outlaws the use of first-party data to link a consumer with a medical condition. This means that a pharmaceutical advertising agency cannot use such data to identify a consumer as a high cholesterol sufferer, then serve her an ad for Lipitor.

While this is a significant limitation, it isn’t a complete deal-breaker. Advertisers often use indirect targeting based on related conditions. They also white-list the sites their ads appear on and use audience proxies (such as medical websites) when creating automated campaigns. Agencies can target content (serving Viagra ads in an article about erectile dysfunction, for example) but can’t target specific consumers. These strategies help them stay on the right side of compliance.

Is indirect targeting based on third-party data or related conditions as effective as standard programmatic approaches? That’s unlikely. Yet it can be quite effective, especially when compared to linear TV ads, which offer only the most crude form of demographic targeting.

And, as digital advertising tools continue to evolve, indirect targeting may improve to a point where it is nearly as effective as using first-party data. 

One thing is certain: Digital spaces remain under-utilized within the context of pharmaceutical marketing. As today’s Gen X and millennial consumers age, pharma brands won’t be able to rely on linear TV and print magazines to reach their audiences — and brands at the vanguard of this transition will be in the strongest competitive position.

The Takeaway

If you’d like to see what a tech-focused pharmaceutical advertising agency can do for your products, contact BIGEYE today. We’ll help you harness the full power of advertising and marketing across every medium.

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Healthcare Marketing/Business Pharmaceutical
Pharma marketing scaled
Pharma marketing scaled

Looking for a low risk, low overhead, but high impact way to introduce AI into your pharma marketing? Then consider the chatbot.

Customer service is one of the most obvious applications for automation — and companies have been ruthlessly efficient in its deployment. Newer tech-based firms, in particular, have opted for near-total customer service automation, at least for routine queries. Most consumers are no doubt familiar with the lengths one must go to in order to get an actual carbon-based life form on the other end of a phone or computer interaction.

While dealing with endless irrelevant computer-generated questions is tiresome now, consumers are about to get some relief. AI and natural language processing (NLP) are growing exponentially smarter. Soon, consumers will have difficulty discerning silicon-based vs. carbon-based customer assistance. As chatbots and other automated programs grow more capable, brands will also be able to extend their functionality into the realm of pharmaceutical marketing.

How Chatbots Can Help Brands Incorporate AI Into Pharma Marketing

AI is playing a critical role in pharmaceutical industry product development. Major companies such as Pfizer and Google are using AI to help with early disease diagnosis. Artificial intelligence is also used to accelerate timelines for new drug discoveries. AI is also positioned to play a critical role in the emergence of personalized medicine, where tailored therapies are created based on a patient’s genetic profile.

Heady stuff, to be certain — yet also fairly far outside of the bailiwick of your conventional pharmaceutical advertising agency or pharma marketing department.

There is, however, one AI implementation that is both effective and viable for marketing purposes: The chatbot.

Today’s chatbots have come a long way from the rather static and limited versions consumers first encountered. Part of this is due to a gradual shift away from rules-based AI (where a chatbot responds according to pre-determined rule sets) to a fully realized NLP implementation. In the latter, a chatbot can continually learn and expand its repertoire, growing more accurate and responsive over time. 

In fact, today’s NLP-based chat applications have grown astonishingly life-like, even incorporating human-sounding conversational pauses and stammers. Some chatbots even make intentional errors to increase their verisimilitude.

Serving an Automated Marketing Role

In the context of customer service and marketing, it’s not difficult to see the benefits of having an intelligent helper who sounds like a human and who is ready to assist with patient queries 24/7. This is especially helpful in an industry where consumers frequently have simple questions about dosages, interactions, and other issues. If your chatbot is capable of seamlessly handling these lines of interaction, it frees up personnel to work on higher-value tasks — one of the core advantages of automation.

That’s merely one application of chatbot AI, however. While a well-designed bot can provide consumers with information and facilitate positive experiences, it also plays another critical role: It accumulates a vast trove of data culled from thousands upon thousands of consumer interactions.

Obviously, privacy regulations govern how first-party data can be used. Yet this information is still quite valuable in terms of identifying how processes can be improved and how consumers respond to particular messages.

Teva and other leading global pharmaceutical brands have created chatbots for their internal properties and are using them for pharma marketing purposes. Teva’s Maxbot implementation, in fact, recently won several awards from the Pharmaceutical Marketing Society.

Smaller brands should also follow suit. Though these brands may not have the internal resources to develop a chatbot, the right pharmaceutical advertising agency may be able to develop a chatbot solution that fits the bill.

The Takeaway

At BIGEYE, we believe that technology plays a leading role in the success of a modern pharma marketing campaign. If you’re looking for more from your pharmaceutical advertising agency, we urge you to contact BIGEYE today.  

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Healthcare Pharmaceutical
Pharmaceutical marketing 1200x600 c default
Pharmaceutical marketing 1200x600 c default

The global pharmaceutical industry is experiencing profound changes — and understanding the impact of these changes is critical for those involved in pharmaceutical marketing.

According to a new industry report, the era of pharmaceutical firms succeeding with low innovation products and indiscriminate TV pill pushing is coming to a quick end. The successful pharmaceutical firm of the future will feature smaller and more agile sales staffs, products that truly add value for patients, and marketing efforts that are laser targeted.

Let’s take a closer look at some key trends shaping this future, and how brands can partner with the right pharmaceutical advertising agency to develop campaigns that fit this evolution.

Projecting Pharmaceutical Industry Trends

A recent report compiled by PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) outlined the tectonic shifts altering the pharmaceutical industry. Some of these dynamics are associated with broader societal change; others are tied to new technology or evolving consumer preferences.

Highlighted developments in the PwC report include the following:

  • Chronic disease rates are growing at a rapid pace, creating a larger — and sicker — population of patients/consumers.
  • Healthcare payers are giving physicians less latitude in terms of prescription decisions.
  • The “pay-for-performance” model is also becoming more established in the industry, as payers seek to tie reimbursements to actual health outcomes.
  • Healthcare boundaries are now overlapping and an interdisciplinary approach to patient care is gaining favor.
  • Demand for pharmaceutical products in the developing world is robust, as globalization raises wages and technology increases access to healthcare. Demand for medicines, however, varies widely in global markets.
  • Governments across the globe are placing a greater emphasis on prevention rather than treatment, hoping to control costs and improve patient outcomes.
  • Regulators are assuming a more risk-averse posture.

All of these developments are collectively transforming how patients are treated, and changing the underlying business dynamics across multiple related industries. Most importantly, if you’re a leader within a pharma brand — or a pharmaceutical advertising agency — these trends provide a lodestar of sorts to help inform your industry marketing and advertising campaign strategies.

Marketing and Advertising Through the Lens of Trend Analysis

As industries evolve, advertising and marketing must evolve in parallel. In the case of the pharmaceutical industry, it’s important that advertisers stay away from a product-focused approach rooted in yesterday’s industry model.

Instead of being overly focused on follower products, brands should invest in developing innovative new products that fill an unmet or underserved market niche. PwC describes innovation in the context of drug development as products which:

“cure a disease or condition; prevent a disease or condition; reduce mortality or morbidity; reduce the cost of care; improve the quality of life; are safer or easier to use; or improve patient compliance and persistence.”

PwC claims that a mere eight new medications meeting those criteria were launched in 2018. In the absence of innovation, patient outcomes suffer. Yet this also creates an exceptional competitive opportunity for brands capable of innovating.

Other core imperatives for today’s pharma marketing and ad departments, according to PwC, include:

  • Recognizing how payer, provider, and pharmaceutical value chains work together.
  • Developing the capability to effectively market specialist therapies, which will become more important in the coming years. 
  • Introducing products with multi-nation launches and live licensing.

Deeper, cultural changes are also critical. Brands need to foster a modern marketing and advertising culture capable of supporting a knowledge-based commercial organization. 

Such initiatives are certainly ambitious, especially in an industry where firms have been able to make margin by developing low innovation follower products and pairing them with tired, yet tried-and-true, marketing techniques. Yet ambition and innovation are exactly what’s called for, given the massive structural changes that will alter the shape of the pharmaceutical industry in the coming years.

The Takeaway

If your pharmaceutical advertising agency isn’t pressing you to think three moves ahead, it’s time for a re-evaluation. The pharmaceutical industry will experience a sea of change in the coming years, and brands that begin adapting early will be in the best competitive position.

At BIGEYE, we have the right combination to help pharma brands win: Domain expertise, a sophisticated suite of technological tools, and a full range of pharmaceutical marketing services.

Contact us today to learn more about BIGEYE, and what a forward-thinking pharmaceutical advertising agency can do for your brand.

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Direct-To-Consumer DTC Marketing Healthcare Pharmaceutical
prescription drug ads scaled
prescription drug ads scaled

Direct to consumer prescription drug ads are everywhere in the US — and almost unseen everywhere else. Here’s why.

In the U.S., consumers are bombarded with ads for pharmaceuticals — so much so, in fact, that the very form has become a cliché (think about “active seniors” pursuing their favorite activities while a narrator rattles off a list of side effects). If you work for a pharmaceutical advertising agency that isn’t based stateside, it’s an entirely different world, however. 

The U.S. is the only large market where direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising is permissible. Only one other country (the ‘tiny by comparison’ New Zealand) allows the practice — and that nation has seen repeated efforts to ban consumer prescription drug ads.

Let’s take a closer look at why direct to consumer drug marketing works, and any changes that could lie ahead.

The Power of Direct Advertising

While direct advertisements for pharmaceuticals are now inescapable, the truth is that they’ve only been around for 22 years. The practice of marketing medications to consumers was made legal under the Clinton Administration in 1997, immediately unleashing a torrent of new advertising on the public in a previously unseen category.

The rationale behind this move was simple: When people suffering from a certain affliction would see an ad for a product that treats their symptoms, they would ask their physician about the product, opening up an important dialogue about their health in the process.

However, the reality hasn’t always proved so simple. When direct advertising certainly works in terms of generating brand awareness and sales, some physicians have raised objections about the role it plays in patient health.

In a Food and Drug Administration survey, 65% of physicians reported feeling that direct advertising sent confusing messages to patients; a smaller number of physicians reported feeling pressure to prescribe as a result of direct ads.

This has occurred against a backdrop of massive expansion in direct pharma advertising dollars. According to a Journal of the American Medical Association study, total direct pharma ad spending grew more than 360% from 1997 to 2016.

The reason for that ad spend is simple: It results in sales, and lots of them. Another federal study showed that for every $1,000 pharma companies spend on direct advertising, they add 24 new patients. Pharmaceuticals supported by direct consumer ads add patients at a rate seven times higher than drugs without ads.

Alternative Approaches to Direct Ads

One alternative to direct pharma advertising that has gained traction in recent years is the Disease Awareness Campaign (DAC). This model eschews product-specific direct ads in favor of a less commercial advertising approach that aims to heighten awareness.

Gilead, one of the world’s leading drug developers, has used the DAC approach in support of its new hepatitis C treatment. The ads encourage people to seek testing for the disease without getting into the merits of Gilead’s product. 

Ultimately, it is unlikely that we see a move to significantly restrict direct pharmaceutical advertising in the US. In fact, it seems likely that other nations may follow the lead of the U.S. and New Zealand and loosen regulations. The European Commission, in fact, has undertaken hearings to explore that possibility, though any approved ads would likely be much less promotional in nature than what is seen in the U.S.

If you’re running a pharma brand or a pharmaceutical advertising agency, perhaps the best approach is one of moderation. Take advantage of the reach and efficacy of direct advertising, but make sure it’s done in a way that stresses awareness and maintains a sense of professional ethics. 

Ultimately, drug companies, physicians, and patients all need to pull in the same direction to create better health outcomes.

The Takeaway

At BIGEYE, we believe that a great pharmaceutical advertising agency offers its clients three things: Domain expertise, advanced technological tools, and a sophisticated understanding of the existing marketing landscape.

Don’t hesitate to contact us today to learn more about what BIGEYE can do for you.

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Consumer & Healthcare Healthcare Marketing/Business
Medical marketing agency A partner that provides a healthy impact 2 scaled
Medical marketing agency A partner that provides a healthy impact 2 scaled

Even with the help of a talented medical marketing agency, health insurance companies are never going to be sexy, or set consumer pulses racing. Most Millennials report that they would rather go 24 hours without using any social media than sign a stack of healthcare insurance forms. Yet this industry does have a major ace in the hole in terms of brand perception and audience engagement: healthcare is a social good, and Millennials are pro-social consumers who expect brands to do their part.
By developing a compelling medical marketing campaign, brands in the health field can get the message out about the differences they are making in people’s lives — something that’s good for both society and business.

How Cigna positioned itself as a healthcare champion

Speaking at the recent ANA Masters of Marketing Conference in Orlando, Florida, Cigna’s Global CMO, Susan Bacus, said that 81% of people believe global brands have the power to make the world better, according to recent research. Additionally, from its own internal research, Cigna discovered that roughly 70% of healthcare costs are linked to lifestyle choices.

Given these numbers, the company took action in a few key areas to transform how the brand operates and is publicly perceived. The first step was a stronger attempt to improve health outcomes through prevention. To help accomplish this, Cigna devised a clever “TV Doctors” marketing campaign featuring some of the most famous fictional physicians from the small screen, all of whom encouraged people to get regular checkups.

The results were impressive — and not merely from a patient care perspective. In the aftermath of the campaign, preventative visits jumped 18%, customer growth spiked 6% and revenue climbed 9%.

In addition to the campaign, Cigna also placed a new emphasis on discussion of larger societal issues affecting wellness while also taking a more empathetic approach to its health guidance and advocacy efforts.

Bacus said Cigna’s campaign and subsequent changes proved that caring for people and good business are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a more empathetic approach is actually better for business; it not only drives superior health outcomes,  but it improves how a brand is perceived by a public that’s increasingly cause conscious.

Using the power of medical marketing to make the world a better place

Cigna’s “TV Doctors” campaign is a good example of how a medical marketing agency can serve the business interests of an enterprise, while also serving a larger societal good. Brands can choose to pursue cause-related marketing by partnering with a non-profit or follow Cigna’s example of reorienting its marketing messaging and business processes to improve real-world outcomes.

This kind of altruistic, cause-related marketing offers a variety of benefits: It attracts new customers, it deepens the loyalty of the customer base you already possess and it enhances a company’s image. It also helps brands stay aligned with audience expectations. This is especially true in the medical field, where access to affordable insurance coverage is not universal, and the “business” side of medicine is often a sensitive subject.

What a top medical marketing agency can do for you

Being a top Florida advertising agency, we help healthcare firms create the kind of compelling marketing campaigns that engage audiences and win new customers. If you’d like to see what a dynamic new medical marketing approach could do for you, please reach out to us today.

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Audience Branding Healthcare Identity Implementation Naming & Architecture Nutraceuticals Qualitative Research Quantitative Research
Decoding a hidden world by using a pharmaceutical naming agency
Decoding a hidden world by using a pharmaceutical naming agency

When is the last time you heard someone ask a pharmacist for a refill on N-methyl-3-phenyl-3-[4- (trifluoromethyl) phenoxy]propan-1-amine? How about fluoxetine? The answer is probably more common than you think. While the scientific and generic names for Prozac aren’t particularly memorable, they do provide a revealing look into the byzantine world of pharmaceutical naming.

Many small and medium pharmaceutical researchers and producers don’t realize how important naming is until the FDA rejects their patent and sends years of research and clinical trials back to square one. A pharmaceutical naming agency can help decode the mystery and ensure your work makes it to market.

Why pharmaceutical naming matters

The FDA strictly regulates and subsequently rejects between 20 – 25% of drugs’ generic and brand names to avoid confusion that might lead to misdosing, confusion over a drug’s efficacy, or that might lead to patient stigmatization and privacy violations. Once approved, the naming process continues to play an important role in a drug’s success because a pharmaceutical company may only market their drug under a brand name, rather than a generic or scientific name, once it has been patent protected.

Competing companies may market the same generic drug under a different name to make the market more competitive. While Advil and Motrin are both brand names for ibuprofen, their name, positioning, and marketing plays an important role in which the consumer ultimately chooses.

How a pharmaceutical naming agency can boost your success

The average pharmaceutical naming agency creates between 2,000 – 5,000 names for each drug before beginning the FDA screening process and march to patent protection that will allow brands to compete in the market. A top Florida advertising agency like BIGEYE can help kick off that process by vetting names that may raise flags for the FDA or that will not stand out from the competition.

By partnering with a creative team, your brand can focus on the science and success of your product while your agency ensures your research and work does not get delayed because its name sounds too similar to another drug or accidentally includes the common shorthand for another scientific component.

Contact us today to learn more about how we’ve helped other drug producers enter the market and break through the clutter of competition from big pharmaceutical companies.

 

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Creative & Production Healthcare Voice Development
How hospitals are using amazon alexa and google home
How hospitals are using amazon alexa and google home

A smart, reliable voice assistant makes life easier — and in turn helps make us more productive. The truth is that we live in a world where mobile and smart devices are used for almost everything. By moving these functions from a smartphone to a voice assistant, the experience becomes simpler and less mediated. Having the power of the Internet not merely at our fingertips, but also ready to be activated at the sound of our voice, is a development with massive implications — not only at home, but also in the workplace.
One key example: Hospitals, where the stakes couldn’t be higher and the need for innovative technological solutions is ever-present, are on the verge of experiencing a patient-care transformation facilitated by voice apps in healthcare.

The growing presence of Alexa in healthcare

Within medical centers, the shift from desktops to laptops — and later from laptops to mobile — was a significant one. Today, voice technology is supplementing mobile and may largely replace it within the next decade. Recently Healthcare IT News took a close look at how voice technology is being deployed at several prominent hospitals.

At Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston, Amazon Alexa development is in full swing. A team of IT professionals and developers have created applications that allow patients to ask Alexa (or Google Home) to call for a nurse, check what’s on the evening menu, find out when a physician is arriving and other fundamental tasks.
Normally, many such activities would require the attention of a medical professional. By using voice technology to automate these processes, hospitals are providing timelier services and freeing up personnel for value-added tasks.

At Northwell Health in New York, IT teams are developing with Alexa and Google Home. Here, they use cases for voice technology that include letting patients know how long they will be waiting in emergency rooms and directing them to nearby urgent care centers.

Once mature, the technology would allow someone who slices open a finger while preparing a meal to ask Alexa which nearby medical center has the shortest wait period. Because Alexa is integrated with Northwell’s app, she can query local hospitals and urgent cares and provide an optimal solution within seconds using real-time data. This allows those who are injured to get treatment quickly, while also reducing bottlenecks at local hospitals.

Finally, Libertana Home Health is leveraging voice technology to help elderly clients live independently. Alexa is not only a useful tool to help people remember appointments and medication schedules, but it also provides a form of social interaction.

A pilot study conducted by the organization showed that voice assistants can help reduce loneliness by interacting with the elderly. Alexa can be programmed to play cognitive games that enhance memory and deliver daily personalized greetings.

The takeaway

Voice technology is helping to transform patient care. Our agency has been at the forefront of this developing trend, creating deeply useful third-party apps that allow organizations to unlock the full power of voice technology.

If you need assistance with Amazon Alexa development or Google Home programming, we’d love to help do the same for you.

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Healthcare Personal Care
Doctors Nurses and Amazons Alexa Healthcares Future Pillars 1200x600 c default
Doctors Nurses and Amazons Alexa Healthcares Future Pillars 1200x600 c default

Today, Amazon’s Alexa (along with devices from Google and Apple) provide a near seamless user experience and perform fairly complex tasks. This, of course, is still only the beginning. Amazon has been vocal about its desire to extend Alexa’s reach virtually everywhere. The goal is to create access to voice technology platforms in every setting, from smart thermostats to smart refrigerators.
Ultimately, Amazon aims to have developers embed Alexa’s technology in all kinds of objects — and one of the spaces where Alexa is already seeing significant integration is the healthcare sector.

Paging Dr. Alexa?

Across the world IT departments at major medical centers, along with third party voice app developers, are busy figuring out new and novel ways to incorporate Alexa and Google Home into healthcare settings.

It’s not difficult to understand why those in the healthcare sector are so intrigued by the possibilities offered by voice technology. It’s a life or death business where even a relatively small mistake can have deadly consequences. Any technology that can increase efficiency while reducing errors (and subsequently lowering potential liability costs) will be heartily embraced.

Ashraf Shehata, a partner at KPMG’s Global Healthcare Center of Excellence, reports that Alexa is continually becoming more sophisticated in terms of responding to health care requests. In other word’s, she’s becoming smarter over time.

Currently, Alexa is being used to help surgeons run through pre-procedure safety checklists, photograph, log and timestamp comments made during surgery and log patient notes between caregiver shifts. All of these functions not only improve health care processes, they also help protect against liability by enhancing safety and accuracy while providing a clear digital record.

Additionally, voice technology is used to help patients follow their prescription dosages, identify and treat minor illnesses and even route them to the medical center with the lowest patient backlog. Alexa and Google Home also offer access to a large and continually growing digital content library of health care information. Users can access information about symptoms, illnesses, medications and treatments with a simple voice command.

Voice technology also has the potential to transform administrative tasks. Anyone who has worked in the healthcare space understands the enormous amount of time that’s spent record keeping, scheduling and dealing with supply chain issues. Voice technology platforms can simplify and streamline these processes, allowing medical professionals to focus on patient care and other areas where the most value is added.

The takeaway

Voice technology is already impacting patient care for the better, but we are still at the very beginning of a profound transformation. Those who start adapting early will receive the greatest benefits in terms of efficiency, accuracy and productivity.

Third party developers play a key role in helping businesses and organizations unlock the true potential of Alexa and other services. If your organization could benefit from the implementation of a world-class voice technology application, don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.

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Healthcare Voice Development
shutterstock 1012682011
shutterstock 1012682011

In the healthcare field, the voice technology platforms developed by both businesses (Amazon Alexa and Google Home) have been lauded by medical practitioners and developers alike.
It’s not difficult to see why the interest has been so apparent. While voice interaction has been a resounding success in the consumer market, allowing users to save time by automating essential home functions, its applications in business and organizational contexts are just now being explored.
One thing, however, is certain: As voice technology matures, its effect on the healthcare industry operations will be profound.

How voice technology changes how patient care is delivered

Voice app development in the medical field is somewhat constrained by the fact that most major voice tech products are not yet HIPAA compliant (though Amazon and others are working to achieve this). Yet even working within these limitations, developers have already made remarkable strides toward making healthcare more efficient and accurate.

Medical centers are using Alexa and other platforms to transmit routine medical data to patients in their homes. Hospitals are also using voice technology to help with surgical note taking or record keeping. Voice technology also has a crucial role to play in helping people become more involved in their own health care.

One app, as well as many others, created by Boston Children’s Hospital, allows users to access information about common medical conditions and prescription medicine dosage. Apps such as these can help deliver much-needed information virtually instantly, without the need to waste time performing manual searches.
Communicating via voice, rather than having an experience that’s mediated by a screen, has immense potential for helping patients become more engaged with their own health. This will ultimately give them the power and agency necessary to make substantial improvements to their own lives.

What the future holds

While these initial developments are quite promising, they represent merely the first steps toward deeper voice technology integration with healthcare services. Some of the world’s most prominent medical centers are experimenting with voice technology in an effort to build applications that will transform how hospitals operate and how patients are treated.

Third party voice application developers are busy dreaming up innovative new uses for Alexa and her competitors in healthcare settings. Amazon is busy supporting this wave of development; one example is a recent software development challenge the company co-hosted with pharmaceutical giant Merck. Developers were tasked with finding creative voice technology solutions to help people manage chronic conditions such as diabetes.

Devices such as Alexa are well-suited to help people manage these chronic conditions. By asking simple questions such as “have you taken your medication today?” Alexa and other platforms can help ensure that patients remain compliant with their treatment needs. This is critically important, as some studies have shown up to 50-percent of patients do not comply with their dosing schedule — a problem that has massive public health consequences.

The takeaway

Voice technology has a major role to play in the healthcare field — and we’ve only begun to see this impact take shape. Our firm has been at the forefront of this trend, and we’ve used our expertise to help clients in a variety of fields harness the power of voice technology to improve their own processes.
In the coming days and weeks, we’ll publish more content explaining how voice technology can benefit both hospitals and patients by driving better financial and personal health outcomes.

Need help incorporating voice technology into your current strategy? Contact our team of professionals today to learn more about our voice interaction services.