Graphic Design and Medical Reporting… Odd Couple, or Just What the Doctor Ordered?

In today’s health-conscious world, where folks of all ages are struggling with obesity and diseases like heart disease and cancer are being diagnosed at an alarming rate, the general public is being encouraged to take a more active role in understanding their medical care.  It’s becoming more commonplace for a patient-doctor relationship to be more of a partnership than ever before.

Technology, particularly the internet, has allowed patients to do their own research and gather information to take to their medical provider so they can work together in managing the patient’s health.  All that knowledge and understanding comes to a grinding halt when it comes to patient lab reports, which are filled with terminology and abbreviations that have the lay person confused and usually concerned.

Enter a few designers into this medical world and voila!  Leave it to a group of marketing and advertising professionals to give a make-over to some hum-drum reports, making them understandable, informative, and even appealing to the eye.  My hope is that this catches on nation-wide so that everyone has the benefit of understanding what’s literally coursing through their veins.

Read the entire story in the Spark Report for more information.

Scott and White’s expanding role in the healthcare industry

YNN’s Crestina Chavez spoke with Austin Business Journal Editor Colin Pope about Scott and White’s expanding role in the healthcare industry and its growing presence in Round Rock. Read the article here.

Scott & White Healthcare’s cardiac rehabilitation program receives certification

National organization certifies hospital specialty care program

The Cardiac Rehabilitation Program at Scott & White Healthcare in Temple has received accreditation from the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation (AACVPR).

Cardiac rehabilitation is a medical program designed to help patients recover following a heart attack, coronary angioplasty or cardiac surgery. The program is designed to improve a patient’s overall health through a comprehensive plan of exercise, diet and lifestyle modification. The vast majority of patients who present with heart disease do so because of a lifetime of behaviors that contribute to heart disease. In order to ensure a healthy future cardiac rehabilitation helps patients learn what they can do to help to prevent more heart disease.

“The certification of this program means that we have fulfilled all the requirements of the AACVPR, and that by doing so we are acknowledged as a high quality program,” said Keith Birkemeier, exercise physiologist and supervisor of Scott & White’s Cardiac Rehabilitation Program. “Patients and families look for programs that are considered the best, and the classification of a program as ‘certified’ helps them locate and choose a program for their care.”

James M. Schmitz, M.D., medical director of the Cardiology Clinic at the Scott & White Heart and Vascular Institute, noted that studies have found that patients who participate in cardiac rehabilitation programs have significantly improved survival. Moreover, patients who continue to attend cardiac rehabilitation not only live longer but also better lives.

About Scott & White Healthcare (sw.org)

Scott & White Healthcare is a non-profit health care system established in 1897. Scott & White is the principal clinical teaching facility affiliated with the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, with a Temple campus that includes a four-year medical curriculum. Along with its 636-bed flagship hospital and clinic facility in Temple, Texas, Scott & White includes 11 other hospitals or hospital partners, and more than 60 clinic locations throughout Central Texas. With more than 850 physicians and scientists, Scott & White has become one of the nation’s largest multi-specialty group practice systems.

Click here for original release.

Colt McCoy donates to Children’s Hospital at Scott & White

McCoy knows firsthand the life-saving and life-improving care children’s hospitals provide… Read More

Facebook Accidentally Lifts & Supports Cancer Group Memberships

I don’t know how I missed it, but I was apparently in the minority.  A few months ago someone on Facebook started a movement with one simple message, asking women to post their bra color on their status.  The request took hold and as it spread across the globe, the wording changed slightly and as it began to gain full momentum, changed enough to give false credit to several cancer groups.  See more on this in this post by Sarah Brown for examiner.com.  Or at Snopes.com.

Does social media work?  The end result of this little game for the Susan G. Komen Facebook group was an increase in followers by more than 950% in less than a week!!  Although this particular movement blossomed from what began as a simple, “let’s see if we can get people to do this,” then morphed into what some deem a scam, the outcome was a needed boost for one of the highest-profile charitable organizations in the country.

The lesson:  YES.  Social media works.  YES.  Social media can be used to benefit the healthcare industry.  And YES.  There are some beautiful bra colors out there.

Don’t Take That Tone With Me!

If the 3 rules in real estate are location, location, location then the 3 rules of marketing are audience, audience, audience. ProBlogger Kelly Diels recently posted “Do you hate your customer?” and examined what can happen when contempt replaces a deeper understanding of your audience. Kelly reminds us that no one does business with companies “that don’t even like them.” Take a look at your own blogs and marketing messages. Do they express a thinly veiled disdain for the values of your audience? If so, you may be ostracizing the very people you hope to attract.

If You’re Smart, You’re Social!

comScore, Inc. released its MobiLens report today on trends in the US mobile phone industry.  Surprising almost no one who has been paying attention, accessing social media sites or blogs grew at more than 3% for the period October 2009 through January 2010 over the previous three months, making it the number one growth activity, ahead of “used browser”, “played games”, or “listened to music”.  That’s nearly 8 million people Facebooking, Tweeting and blogging without being tethered to a computer.  And the number is growing rapidly.

For brands that may still be on the fence about the need or desirability to have a social media strategy, the jury is in.  This is particularly true for certain brands and business types.

To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, if your brand/product/service…

• appeals to early technology adaptors
• relies on word of mouth referrals
• provokes an immediate emotional response or opinion from its consumers
• prompts shoppers to seek advice and referrals from friends
• has a limited marketing budget
• wants to engage with customers in addition to creating transactions
• has a need for immediate customer feedback

… you just might need a social media strategy.

Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers, Jan-10

There are 42.7 million people in the U.S. using smartphones.  That’s 18.25% of total mobile phones in the U.S., and that number grew by 18% from just the previous three months.  You might ask what percentage of smartphone users actually uses their cell phone for social media.  The answer?  Nearly all of them; 94%.

Other key findings:

• 234 million American (ages 13+) were mobile subscribers
• Motorola was the top handset manufacturer (22.9%)
• RIM (Blackberry) was the top smartphone platform (43.0%, or 18.36 million)
• Apple ranked #2in smartphone platforms (25.1%, or 10.7 million)
• Microsoft was the only platform to decline in share (down 4.0%)
• Google had the biggest growth among smartphone platforms (+4.3%)

Additional information and the complete report can be found here.

War is Over

“The true nature of marketing today is not serving the customer; it is outwitting, outflanking, outfighting your competitors. In short, marketing is war where the enemy is the competition and the customer is the ground to be won.”

—Al Ries and Jack Trout, Marketing Warfare, 1986

How the times have changed.  Unfortunately, the acknowledgment of those changes still lags behind the reality.  This is nowhere more apparent than in the language many marketers continue to use.  We still launch a campaign and conduct a media blitz.  The writings of Sun Tzu, von Clauswitz and even Mao have been quoted for decades as having vital lessons for marketing.  But the continued use of this metaphor propagates a false reality: that in the 21^st century, a docile audience can be “won” by some overwhelming show of marketing “might”.

The talk about your company was never a one-way affair.  Consumers talked to their friends, family, and neighbors.  It was common wisdom that word-of-mouth was persuasive and effective in a way that traditional advertising messages were not.  And this worked both ways.  In fact, if a customer had a bad experience, they were more likely to talk about than if they had a good one, a phenomenon that gave rise to the expression, “Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.”  This is still true today.  But what has changed is that the consumer’s voice is now amplified by the power of the Web.

Thanks to the Web, the consumer is now in control to an unprecedented degree.  First, it was the availability of huge amounts of information.  Then it was the ability to search and filter for specific, relevant information.  Social media has now amplified this by enabling virtual communities — tribes — of folks with common interests to communicate in real time, globally, 24/7.  These communities thrive on authenticity, value and trust.  And the recommendations, referrals, and reviews (positive and negative) carry a weight that no advertising campaign could ever match.

Marketing is no longer just about your company and the competitors.  It’s about communities.  Communities that are cynical, savvy, and empowered.  Using the language of conflict and war is a legacy practice that persists through inertia, mental laziness, and force of habit.

If war provides any lessons for today’s marketer, it may be that the new metaphor should be counter-insurgency, not conquest.  Not a win-lose mind-set, but winning hearts and minds.  And you can’t do that while shelling large populations with irrelevant ads.  Think of the waste.  Think of the collateral damage.  …OK, so maybe some war metaphors are still useful.

Healthcare Records Unite!

It’s exciting as a patient to see healthcare technology keeping up with the times. Not just from a standpoint of advanced medical procedures and the like; but also from an administrative standpoint. FastCompany released last week their Top 10 Most Innovative Companies, giving GE top honors in the Health Care category because of their Healthymagination program. According to fastcompany.com, GE is investing $6 billion over the course of the next several years in a variety of innovative health care technology. GE’s Centricity Electronic Medical Record system will allow doctors to manage a patient’s complete medical history, helping to reduce errors *.

As a patient, visiting a medical facility that uses this type of technology is a God-send. If I have a choice, I want to go with the doctor who has all my medical information in one place – it’s more convenient (I don’t have to repeat all my medical information every time I visit someone new); it’s more accurate (I don’t have to worry about one doctor having to decipher another doctor’s handwriting); and it’s more complete (I don’t have to rely on my memory to recite all the ailments I’ve had throughout my 40 years).

This technology is demonstrated beautifully in GE’s “Doctors” commercial . Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have all of your past and present medical professionals assembled in one room to give their undivided attention to you and your medical history? That is the point of EMR and it’s brilliant.

Another nugget: the digital database. FastCompany says that GE, together with Intermountain Healthcare, the Mayo Clinic, and other institutions have created the database, which connects to electronic medical records, allowing comparisons of patients’ medical histories. Imagine having at your fingertips a vast number of patients from which to compare symptoms and diagnoses.  As a patient, this type of technology not only gives me comfort, but makes me thankful to be living in the 21st century.

One must wonder, then, why more hospitals do not tout their capabilities in this area? Scott & White Healthcare, based in Temple, Texas, is an example of a medical group that is leading and innovating in this area, but is not getting the credit they deserve. An early adopter of EMR, Scott & White introduced this technology into their health system more than 10 years ago, yet there isn’t much hubbub about it. Perhaps hospitals are concerned with patients’ perception that they are jeopardizing their privacy.

According to Naveen Venkatachalam, the creator of Sushoo EMR software, however, patient records are perfectly safe. He says the security measures used are similar to what banks use for online transactions*.
Probably the reason for avoiding marketing these behind-the-scenes capabilities are because the capabilities are just that: behind the scenes. What patients really want to see is the warm-fuzzy, the “we-are-here-to-make-you-feel-better” messages. The only technology patients care about seeing is the kind that involves medical procedures and how they can be made less invasive or more effective.

But the behind-the-scenes technology is just as important.  Until marketers develop messages – like GE did – that convince patients of the benefits of EMR (versus its risks), this technology will remain in the backseat and won’t ever really get the heyday it deserves.

*Sources:
1. http://www.fastcompany.com/mic/2010/industry/most-innovative-healthcare-companies
2. http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-electronic-medical-records-safe-says-creator-sushoo-emr-/2010/01/05/4558745.htm

InVision Optical Selects Breeze Integrated Marketing

“Our selection process involved a number of strong agency contenders”, said InVision owner Andy Klein.  “We knew we needed a group with a diverse skill set, strong market knowledge and experience.  We found all three in Breeze.”

Read the complete press release here.