• Health Tech Influencers Worth Watching

    Health Tech Influencers Worth Watching

    Healthcare is in the midst of a major transformation, and technology promises to factor significantly into how this pillar of our society and economy comes out the other side. As the industry continues to evolve and shift further toward a value-based model, emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things, Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality, Predictive Analytics, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence will be key. With that said, these technologies are nothing without the innovators and influencers behind their creation, adoption and utilization.

    Here are a few to keep an eye on in the coming months and years, if you want to stay abreast of what’s happening in health tech

     

    Shahid Shah

     

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    Shahid is an internationally recognized and influential healthcare IT thought leader who is known as “The Healthcare IT Guy” across the Internet. Shahid has architected and built multiple clinical solutions over his almost 22 year career. Notably, he helped design and deploy the American Red Cross’s electronic health record solution across thousands of sites. Shahid also serves as a senior technology strategy advisor to NIH’s and TATRC’s SBIR/STTR program helping small businesses commercialize their healthcare applications.

    Shahid is an exceptional and inspiring speaker. I was fortunate enough to hear him speak at this year’s HITMC conference, where I particularly enjoyed his session “The No BS Guide to Innovation in Healthcare and when it should matter to marketers. Shahid also writes a number of blogs that are worth checking out. You can join his army of health techies by following him at @ShahidNShah

    Mandi Bishop

    Founder of her own consultancy, Lifely Insights, and the former Health Plan Analytics Innovation and Consulting Practice Lead at Dell, Mandi has been a leading voice in health IT for some time now. She is a Twitter powerhouse and continues to be a major advocate for positive change through health tech and policy. Mandi has also dedicated much time and effort to the advancement of women in health tech.

    According to her own LinkedIn bio: “Through my work with industry leaders, from executives and policy-makers to advocacy and activist groups, I am helping to shape the future of healthcare innovation and transformation.”

    Join over 20,000 others, and follow Mandi on Twitter at @MandiBPro — you’ll be smarter for it.

    John Lynn

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    John was one of the earliest bloggers to the health tech table. He is the Editor and Founder of the nationally renowned blog network HealthcareScene.com, which consists of 15 blogs containing almost 7,000 articles, which have been viewed over 13 million times. Plus, John is the Founder of 10 other blogs including the Pure TV Network and Vegas Startups. John’s 25+ blogs have published over 15,000 posts, garnered over 30 million views and had over 122,000 comments.

    Over the last decade, I and a number of the companies I’ve supported, have been lucky enough to work with John on events, interviews, content and speaking, and it has always been a pleasure. John is highly involved in social media, and is followed by almost 14,000 people at @techguy

    Daniel Cane

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    As one of the co-founders of higher education software giant Blackboard, Dan didn’t start his career in healthcare, but some people transcend industries – Dan is one of them. After Blackboard, Dan moved on to become the CEO of Modernizing Medicine, which he cofounded with his dermatologist, Dr. Michael Sherling. After transforming education and making Blackboard all but ubiquitous in American colleges and universities, Dan saw healthcare as the next pillar of our society that could and should be improved through technological innovation.

    Over the last five years, Dan has grown Modernizing Medicine from a fledgling startup in a crowded space to a top tier EHR and market leader. In fact, the company just closed a $231 million dollar round of funding to support its growth and innovation. Dan has gone totally against the grain by bucking legacy practices. He has actually taught working physicians to code software, and has created a solution that physicians and patients actually like. He is a passionate speaker and inspirational leader, and someone worth watching in the coming months and years.

    You can follow Dan on Twitter at @dancane or @modmed.  

    *Full disclosure: Modernizing Medicine is a client of Matter’s that I am lucky enough to work with, so I am predisposed to being a pretty big fan.

    Brian Ahier 

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    Our heaviest hitter on Twitter with a following of over 44,000, Brian Ahier is a nationally recognized expert on health information technology with a focus on health data exchange and analytics. He is the Director of Standards and Government Affairs at Medicity, which is a Healthagen business subsidiary of Aetna. Brian has worked on numerous workgroups, committees, and task forces over the years in the areas of standards and interoperability.

    Brian has written numerous articles for a wide variety of industry leading publications including Healthcare IT News, Health Data Management, Executive Insights, and O’Reilly media. You should check him out if you haven’t already and follow him on Twitter at @ahier.

    Health tech is rich with influencers, and ambitious and passionate people are picking up the torch every day. There are many more out there that are worth keeping an eye on, however, for my money you’d be hard pressed to start with a better five than those outlined in this post. Whether they serve as creators, curators or outright thought leaders, all are influencing real and meaningful change in an industry that could use all the advocates it can get.

    Who would be on the top of your health tech influencer list?

    Ryan Lilly

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  • Key Takeaways from the 2017 Health IT Marketing and PR Conference

    Key Takeaways from the 2017 Health IT Marketing and PR Conference

    I was fortunate enough to attend the annual Health IT Marketing and PR Conference or #HITMC (pronounced hit-mick) in Las Vegas. For those outside of the healthcare marketing and PR world, HITMC is a conference put on by one of the most successful and influential bloggers in the space, John Lynn, and his partner Shahid Shah, who is also a widely respected thought leader in the health IT world. The conference is unique in that it brings together some of the best and brightest, and me, from healthcare marketing and PR, both in-house and agency side. When you consider how quickly healthcare and PR / marketing are evolving, it is immensely valuable to be able to collaborate with and learn from others who are facing the same challenges as you. I was hoping for a very collegial and educational experience at HITMC, and that was exactly what I got. Here are a few key takeaways worth sharing for both healthcare and those in healthcare communications.

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    • Continuing convergence of payers and providers: With the shift toward value-based care (doctors get paid for making you better) and away from our current fee-for-service model (doctors get paid for everything they do whether you get better or not), there is more incentive for payers (insurers) and providers (doctors / hospitals) to work together. This is likely even extending into other areas of healthcare, like pharma. This convergence is transforming the business model of two of healthcare’s key entities, and subsequently the way that technology vendors and service providers must work with and for them.
    • Healthcare is being infiltrated by “outside technology”: Healthcare, which has been traditionally slow to adopt technology and innovate, is finally trying to catch up with the tech experiences we enjoy in our personal lives, and across other industries. This is opening the door to major tech companies that weren’t born into healthcare, like Google, Apple and Microsoft. Because these outside entities can innovate so much more quickly, or so it would seem, many healthcare organizations are willing to take a gamble on their new solution purchases. While they may not believe these outliers to have the best solution today, five years from now they probably will because of their ability and willingness to innovate. This is also driving an increasing number of partnerships between traditional healthcare players and non-traditional tech companies looking to get into healthcare.

    Lessons for Communicators – Healthcare and Otherwise

    • Focus on your “love group”: This was a great lesson delivered by the conference keynote Gary Rhodes regarding where we should focus our energies as communications professionals. Too many companies and marketing departments fall victim to focusing on brand detractors. Every brand has them and they should be addressed, but this should be done quietly and behind the scenes. Where we should really be focusing our energy is on the customers that love our brand / company / client. Learn to see the world through their eyes and let them inform your communication strategy and key messages. Use their love to convert the indifferent and detractors and attract new customers. Spend 80% of your time with your “love group” and 20% focused on detractors. Unfortunately, many businesses and communications departments fall into the trap of reversing this ratio.
    • Know what your media wants from you: This goes back to PR best practices, but still seems to be a challenge for many in the industry. Know what reporters are important to you and your customers and learn what is important to them. After listening to a panel, which included a handful of highly regarded journalists from Forbes, Health Leaders, and com, it quickly became clear that not one of them wanted the exact same things as the other – imagine that. Some like to be asked what they are working on, some hate it and think that you as a PR person are asking them to do your job for you. Some love data and infographics, some could care less and are annoyed by them. Most agreed that they generally don’t care about your product press release. Most also agreed that they’d rather talk to your customer than you. All this said, they all want different things and want you to work with them in different ways. Learn what they like and do your best to give it to them.

     

    These represent just a handful of the many takeaways that I had from the event. Since these topics have inspired several follow on conversations between me and my colleagues over the last week, I thought that perhaps they’d be worth sharing more widely. For anyone in healthcare tech marketing or PR, I’d definitely recommend the HITMC conference as a great way to collaborate and sharpen your skills. There are also pretty active social communities on Twitter and LinkedIn for anyone looking to engage today. I look forward to attending next year’s event and hope that it will continue to grow in popularity. Please don’t hesitate to drop me a note if you’d like to discuss any of these topics or if you’d like to connect at next year’s event.

    Ryan Lilly

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