Patients as Consumers: Where Will Their Dollars Go?

As the healthcare system in the U.S. evolves in response to the changing technology and regulatory landscape, patients are being recast as health consumers. Better informed and more conscious of costs, patients are expected to be smarter shoppers when it comes to deciding their healthcare options and spending their dollars. The potential impact is immense.…

Patient Empowerment: The Path to Better-Informed Health Decisions?

Patient empowerment. There’s no single, agreed-upon definition of what it is or how to get to it. But, patient empowerment is generally seen as leading to collaborative, coordinated care. It supports an approach to care that honors the patient’s preferences, values, cultural traditions, and socioeconomic conditions. All of these characteristics are cornerstones of patient-centered healthcare,…

Owning Your Health Identity: New Thinking for New Rights

There’s growing concern that our personal health data, genetic data, and even in some cases our physical cells, are being collected and sold for profit—often without our knowledge or consent. As such, there is a growing belief that we, as individuals, should have the option to claim the right to own our personal health data…

Biological Property Rights: Are Your Cells, Genome, and Personal Data Truly Yours?

Whether people realize it or not, their every move online, and sometimes offline as well, is being captured by data brokers. These brokers feed a $50 billion market research industry with information that is primarily used to sell us things. Like those awesome wireless headphones you recently searched for and now seem to see everywhere you…

Ignore Social Media and Put Your Healthcare Brand at Risk

In the 14 years since Facebook launched, social media has become an undeniable part of everyday life for most people. Today, 77% of people access social media in one form or another. And yet, healthcare marketers are seen as lagging behind marketers in other industries when it comes to using social media. Ogilvy Healthworld counters…

How to Effectively Reach Patients in a Digital World

The world is growing more and more digital everyday—both the world in general and the healthcare world in particular. So, as we move further into the digital realm, we need to find out how to effectively reach patients in a digital world. We are surrounded by smartphone health apps, cloud-connected medical devices, and software-driven therapies.…