Event Recap: Healthcare Marketing via Emerging Technologies
On Friday, we went to the Zoo. Didn’t see many animals that early; they were smarter than we were and stayed in bed. Still, 90+ people turned out for the Healthcare SIG’s “Healthcare Marketing via Emerging Technologies.”
For this post, instead of the AMA’s definition of marketing, let’s use Professor Theodore Levitt’s explanation: “Marketing is different than selling. Marketing views the entire business process as a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs.” Think of this as you read the rest.
The seminar’s moderator, Jennifer Texada (Communications Program Manager, MD Anderson), has repeatedly demonstrated that her institution is an “early adopter.” On the other hand, Karen Matthews (Director of Marketing, Scott & White Healthcare in Temple) was engagingly frank about her institution’s relatively new efforts in using electronic medical records and data mining* for more precise message development.
Michael Fouratt (Director of eMarketing, Christus Health, San Antonio) and Abby Lowe (Communications Specialist, Christus Health, Dallas) summed up developmental strategies for social media and demonstrated how Christus has achieved control over its institutional use of everything from Facebook to Twitter – in fact, every institution represented on the panel Friday now uses Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media to some degree.
No matter how often our SIGs explore institutions’ and businesses’ use of social media, attending marketers work for organizations which exist at various points along the new-tech/networking adoption timeline. There was a lot of note-taking – always a good sign. And this was just on the institutional side of the seminar panel.
What about the technologies themselves? Joanne Koonce-Hamar (account manager at Audimation Services, Houston) used deep detail to show how data mining of an institution’s large collection of patient information* could be turned into marketing campaigns.
And lead-off speaker Bruce Blausen (CEO, Blausen Medical in Houston) presented “Driving Business with Mobile Apps.” He combined a discussion of his “Human Atlas” software application with the iPhone and he nailed the seminar title with a pointed how-to demo. You can read more about what he presented here and here.
Blog posts aren’t supposed to bore readers (too much) but there’s a point to this lengthy piece. Our Houston chapter SIGs focus on engaging key groups of AMA members as well as non-member marketers throughout the region in the details of marketing and stakeholder communications programs. The Healthcare SIG delivered the goods – from need-to-know info to networking. Marketing really is different than selling.
A long-time-back American humorist said a zoo is a marvelous place to study the habits of human beings. On Friday, the Healthcare SIG seminar and the venue were a good match. (Thanks to speakers, sponsors, volunteers…and the Houston Zoo, where it is plainly “all happening.”)
*In the healthcare sector, strict regulations govern the confidentiality of patient records. Every institutional participant stressed how carefully these rules are followed.
Respectfully submitted,
Richard Laurence Baron
