Haunted Halloween Happenings in Healthcare Marketing

Getting in the spirit of the season, eHealthcare Solution’s employees wrote several scary witticisms about our industry. From alien invasions, zombies, vampires and blood, we’ve covered some of the most frightening happenings in healthcare advertising. Enjoy!

Pharma Marketing’s Thirst for Data is Sucking the Life out of TV Budgets

by Adrian Kaplan, Client Success Manager
Gone are the days of mass media ad campaigns in healthcare. With new innovations in technology, the focus for healthcare marketers has shifted to create personalized, long lasting health narratives that touch each customer’s specific needs. The key to this is through granular data, something TV advertising cannot deliver, but digital can. Digital ads can target down to a specific physician by name, address, specialty, etc. With one Nielson box representing a large group of viewers across multiple demos, TV can only guarantee on broad targets, like age ranges (i.e. Men 25-54 ). Unless TV can adapt and provide deeper reporting, digital looks to continue to sink its teeth into TV’s budgets.

Is Mobile Device Usage the First Sign of the Zombie Apocalypse?

by Molly Kennedy, Digital Campaign Manager and Data Analyst
The use of mobile devices has caused several types of human behaviors that seem to be zombie-like in appearance. According to the Pew Research Center (2015), “This ‘always-on’ reality has disrupted long-standing social norms about when it is appropriate for people to shift their attention away from their physical conversations and interactions with others towards digital encounters with people and information that are enabled by their mobile phone.” Are you a social zombie, too?

There is a fifth dimension…Next stop, the Programmatic Zone.

by Katelynn Mareno, Director Programmatic, Client Success Manager
Self-serve programmatic is not just a dream for small and medium sized businesses anymore. With the new “mypixel” from District M, small businesses will be able to easily access advertising opportunities without the huge cost and extreme skills needed in traditional programmatic marketing campaigns. According to District M “[The mypixel is] designed specifically for businesses who do not have the time, resources, or experience to invest heavily in digital advertising, mypixel offers what we’re told is ‘an integrated ad builder as well as clear and easy-to-understand targeting options to help small business owners launch their campaigns effortlessly.” (Martin, 2017).

Stolen Identities for Sale on the DARK WEB

by Ilya Iaskevich, Senior Programmer and Ad Trafficker
The dark web is a place on the Internet that no ordinary human being can access. It lives deep in the web, and you need special authorization and software to gain access to it. Recently, there was a breach at Equifax that compromised the identity of many people. Now that information is offered for sale on the dark web, evil beings are hunting for it, trying to suck dry your financial accounts and open new ones in your name!

I Vant To Test Your Blood!

by Ron Kost, Vice President, Consumer Solutions
We are living in a time when our phones are more than just phones. Want a pizza? There’s an app for that – Domino’s app! Want to track your Poo? There’s an app for that – Poo Log! Want to play a piano with Cat Meows in place of notes? There’s an app for that – Cat Piano. Want to play a game with pumpkins kicking butt on ghosts? Pumpkin Ninja! There are a lot of silly apps available.

What isn’t silly, and growing in popularity, are apps that help track your health. As the conditions of diabetes and heart disease proliferate, new and unique approaches to the management and treatment of these conditions are also being developed. Patients want to self-manage their condition, but also want to work with their physicians to improve their outcomes. New devices, and their associated apps, are helping this cause. Apps can now provide real time monitoring and reporting back to both the patient and physician. While some of these apps are geared for general diet and exercise, others are dedicated to specific conditions. Perhaps someday soon there will be an app that ties diabetes into an intelligent digital personal assistant (Echo, Alexa, Siri, etc.), and people with the condition will hear the words, “I Vant To Test Your Blood!”

What Would You Pay for Everlasting Life?

by Renee Kennedy, Director Digital Marketing and Analytics
Since days of old, treatment of diseases has seemed like magic to lay people. For example, in medieval times one ritual to cure skin disease involved drawing blood from the patient’s neck, pouring it in running water, spitting three times, and reciting a spell. (Kieckhefer, 2000). In those days, the cost of treatment was reasonable, maybe even affordable – a loaf of bread, a chicken, maybe a goat… But, you get what you pay for.

What would you pay for a treatment that could prolong your life? Today, the cost of life-prolonging cancer drugs seems steep. One prostate cancer drug that came out in the past few years cost $700,000 per treatment, and it only prolonged life 4-6 months. New CAR T-Cell Therapy drugs, where the first clinical trials are proving to be highly effective, cost upwards of $600,000 per treatment. According to JAMA, the median cost of developing a cancer drug costs $648 million, but their revenue after approval is $1,658 million. (Vinay, 2017). Cancer patients, caregivers, and insurance companies have to make the hard decision to pay the price or spit three times and recite a spell.

“Doctor, nothing will stop it!”  Apple: The New Blob

by Molly Kennedy, Digital Campaign Manager and Data Analyst
Word on the street is that Apple has been in several meetings over the last few months with Crossover Health, which works with large employers to create on-site clinics for employees.  While this seems to be a good idea, news outlets are not sure why Apple was in talks with this company.  Are we headed for another Apple health wearable?  Or is Apple considering devouring new industries along with the tech sector?  If they are preparing to absorb other companies, people may be in for an Apple infested surprise with every turn they take. (Farr 2017)

Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you a special bulletin from… the Healthcare Industry

by Jason Mendelsohn, Manager, Partner Relations
With the continuing breakthroughs of science and technology, it is no wonder why these two fields are banding together. A new tool has been created that actually LEARNS how to detect tumors in the breast. Artificial intelligence takes the data, and makes decisions about the data through its learning system and training about the lesions. After reviewing the patterns and data, the system then determines if the tumor is benign or malignant. This tool utilizes several different data dumps to detect the risk that these tumors have for patients that are receiving mammograms. The data the AI tool uses, are the patient’s medical history, family history, demographics, biopsies, and pathology reports.

While this product is still in testing stages, it could mean the difference between life and death for numerous patients. “We believe this could support women to make more informed decisions about their treatment, and that we could provide more targeted approaches to health care in general” says Harvard Medical School Professor Constance Lehman. Does this mean we will be replacing our old systems with computers? We will find out within the next few years if artificial intelligence will be taking over the healthcare field, and possibly the world. (BBC Technology, 2017)

So goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian. . .it's Hallowe'en." Orson Wells

Works Cited

BBC Technology. (2017, October 17). AI used to detect breast cancer risk. Retrieved from BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41651839

Farr, C. (2017, October 16). Apple explored buying a medical-clinic start-up as part of a bigger push into health care. Retrieved from CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/16/apple-considered-acquisition-of-crossover-health-part-of-health-push.html

Prasad, Vinay (2017, September 11). Research and Development Spending to Bring a Single Cancer Drug to Market and Revenues After Approval. Retrieved from JAMA Internal Medicine https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2653012

Kieckhefer, Richard (2000). Magic in the Middle Ages.

Martin, E. (2017, October 18). New Self-Serve Programmatic Advertising Platform Launched for SMBs. Retrieved from Mobile Marketing Watch: https://mobilemarketingwatch.com/new-self-serve-programmatic-advertising-platform-launched-smbs-73564/