Introduction

Health and wellness has captured the attention of the technology industry. Two of the largest technology gatherings, SXSW Interactive and Consumer Electronics Show (CES) have expanded focus on health and wellness tracks. As health behavior change specialists, Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide has had teams attend these as well as other industry events to understand what innovations are going to impact our industry, who is leading the charge, and how these new products are going to change the lives of patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals.

Our innovation team has identified the following trends and technologies that we believe are likely to affect the healthcare industry this year.

An R&D Mindset in Healthcare Marketing

Facebook hangs posters touting “Done is better than perfect” and “Move fast and break things,” while Google[x] notoriously rewards failure to encourage people to drop “doomed ideas.” But say “research and development” (R&D) almost anywhere in marketing these days and you'll get quite the look. R&D is just for scientists and engineers, right? With so much data available, the assumption is we should be able to target to an N of 1. Unfortunately, that's not the case — quite the opposite, in fact.

Testing and optimization have always been at the core of marketing. Long before the Internet, our own David Ogilvy famously said, “Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.” Today he'd tell you that that makes you good, but testing and optimizing will make you very, very, very, very, very good.

An R&D Mindset in Healthcare Marketing(continued)

Having access to mountains of data hasn't negated core philosophies, it has only made them more important. If, for instance, we can lead with a targeted social campaign that we test and optimize, then the insights can extend the process out to all the major efforts.

In an environment where the variable cost of additional assets and changes is very high, pharma tends to shy away from testing and optimizing. But a little diligence upfront can go a long way toward effectiveness. Social may be taboo for some, but predictive modeling in campaign and asset testing can help make small tweaks to media that can make it massively more effective down the line.

For pharma brands, this type of R&D budget will provide the “holy grail” of innovation and a proven model that teams require to scale brands and help carve out niches in a competitive environment. Start small, build multiple versions, and get them approved at the same time. Then manage your marketing and figure out what's working and why.

Reality Is Becoming More Augmented & VirtualAugmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) seem to have made the list of big technology developments every year for the past few years, as has mobile. That said, AR/VR made some really important strides this past year.

Facebook's purchase of VR headset maker Oculus for $2 billion back in early 2014 sent shocks through the technology industry. While AR/VR interactions are scoped to be the future of computing, even Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg notes that the technologies are currently in their awkward stage.

Along with Facebook's Oculus purchase was Google's announcement that the controversial Google Glass AR project was moving from their experimental Google[x] group into the main company.

Reality Is Becoming More Augmented & Virtual (continued)

Microsoft also surprised the industry with the announcement of Hololens, AR glasses that allow you to interact with virtual imagery that the device inserts into your real-world view.

AR is about real-world experience and it's quickly becoming a multichannel experience. Starting with hi-res 3D video imagery, content can be repurposed across many channels. Other examples of other AR/VR initiatives include Space, a tablet and glasses technology for medical education and training, Samsung's glasses-less 3D television, and Google Cardboard, a low-cost VR experience that makes use of currently available smartphones.

AR/VR content assets can also be included on the web, in interactive rep details, and even distributed as videos to play anywhere. Add hands-free motion sensors like Leap Motion or Kinect or the ability to print parts of the experience in 3D, and the possibilities of AR/VR content creation are limitless.

Wearables Are a Force to Reckon With

Wearables have arrived. 2014 ushered in wearables as both a consumer trend and one of the new fetish objects for the technorati. The trend is not letting up as devices become smaller and find themselves on our faces, wrists, and clothing. The market is not projected to slow down: the market for smart watches is projected at $3.1 billion, with over 11 million units in the market. Fitness bands will have over 20 million units in market, and a new category of smart eyewear will break $120 million.

CES kicked off in 2015 with a huge showing in the wearables industry, from Samsung's Simband, which can produce upwards of 1GB of data daily, to Intel's biometric earbuds, and the Muse headset, which measures brain activity and cognitive function.

As the wearables space matures, widespread sales of smartphones and incentives from employers and insurers will likely change the market in surges. Patients will become comfortable with sharing data, and influencers will emerge teaching patients how to use their data for better outcomes and care.

Wearables Are a Force to Reckon With (continued)

The FDA opened 2015 with draft guidance on what it deemed “low-risk devices.” While not groundbreaking, the draft guidance drew the lines in the sand for most consumer devices on the market today, and to what extent pharma can leverage them.

As consumers (our patients) begin to leverage their wearable devices and the data they generate to manage their health and wellness, pharma will look to leverage this data to provide context in the information they provide: how do metrics such as pulse rate, blood pressure, and quality of sleep equate to a condition or particular state of disease?

Unfortunately, the wearable-device market for consumers is still young and very much in flux. As new devices and sensors are coming to market quickly, each supported by isolated platforms, a new industry of health data aggregators has sprung up. But with all this flux, choosing a device to support can be hard. Brands plan to be around for years, but specific wearable devices will quickly come and go. This makes the decision to go with support for a range of devices versus focusing on what any one device can accomplish.

Connected and Data-Rich Healthcare

Concepts of connected health and the Internet of things mark a dramatic shift in the way healthcare will be delivered in the future. More than half of Americans surveyed by telemedicine group A & D Medical say they want connected health solutions to help manage conditions and wellness. Such solutions would give healthcare professionals (HCPs) flexibility in monitoring, improve the quality of data, and allow personalized alerts for individual patients.

So what is holding us back? The biggest challenge facing the industry is the lack of standards for developers and manufacturers. Right now there is an influx in the market of connected devices and sensors. With major players like Google, Apple, Samsung, Intel and Qualcomm all participating in the space, standards need to be developed to help facilitate adoption of technologies and to help the industry move away from proprietary data formats.

Connected and Data-Rich Healthcare(continued)

Adoption of wearable sensors can be seen in sports. Recently, the NFL has begun using sensors to aid in the evaluation of college prospects. Sensors provide an immense amount of data to help the teams decide on whom to select and when. Downstream, the data collected can further the study of anatomy, and possibly find ways to prevent sports-related injuries in the future.

The adoption of sensors and connected devices by the NFL introduces the notion of quantitative analysis to support decisions. This will also apply to clinical decision making outside of the clinical environment, providing insight that was previously unavailable to HCPs. Commonly, when patients self-report data and observations, they are providing HCPs inaccurate information. They often are reporting from memory and struggle to provide the detail necessary or are afraid of being honest because they do not want to disappoint their doctor. We are now experiencing the Health Technology Revolution.

Healthcare Access for Everyone

As healthcare reform takes hold, thousands of Americans are signing up for healthcare. For many, this is their first time getting health insurance, and any language and education barriers may make the usually complex healthcare system even more difficult.

Pharma marketers need to make sure that healthcare communications are clear and actionable, especially for people with lower-than-normal reading skills.

Healthcare Access for Everyone (continued)

It's likely that these new entrants have access to the Internet and smartphones, and have used their devices to search online and to watch videos on sites like YouTube. Knowing this, healthcare marketers will need to make sure that videos are clear about health conditions, treatments, and the compliance routine for people who are new to the language of the healthcare industry. Health and treatment processes can be pretty intimidating for anyone already familiar with it, let alone someone who is new to the system. Using video can bridge the gap for people who are more comfortable watching and learning. This is especially important if these people use English as a second language. The video imagery can make it easier for them to go back and watch sections again, until they feel comfortable with the information.

Pharma companies should be investing in simple, affordable videos that clearly communicate health conditions, treatments, and health compliance. Care should be taken to balance video-production quality with clear, comprehensive, and accessible content.

Consumer Technology Leaders Becoming Healthcare InfluencersApple, Google, and Microsoft are all competing, not only in the hardware space, with significant and important platforms to acquire data, but more critically, in managing your health and fitness data.

Apple is the favored leader, with HealthKit already in market and many app developers porting their fitness apps to the local device database and taking full advantage of the health data visualizer.

Consumer Technology Leaders Becoming Healthcare Influencers (continued)

At their annual I/O developer conference in June 2014, Google announced Google Fit, an open platform running on their Android platform that will store and manage data from the Google Wear device platform and a wide variety of other health accessories. Microsoft predated both Apple's and Google's efforts with a cloud-based records-management solution titled HealthVault. Microsoft now has an updated product offering in wearables and their own data aggregator called Microsoft Health app.

A late entry, but still one of the largest players in this space, Facebook is also making a play into healthcare. As the #1 global social network, Facebook unites people with like interests and ideas to share. Chronic diseases are plentiful in their representation, and as baby boomers continue to adopt Facebook, there is an increasing expansion of health-related communities, forums, and groups.

Consumer Technology Leaders Becoming Healthcare Influencers (continued)

Though Facebook is the only purely social platform in the mix, each of these significant offerings has social elements at their core. Pharmaceutical marketers will quickly need to galvanize themselves with guidelines and figure out a governed approach to social networking.

Beyond that, these big players are the cutting edge in both technology development and user experiences. Historically, pharma has maintained a level of customer experience and engagement well below that of other industries. And the pharma industry has gotten a pass.

However, as third parties like Google and Apple become more invested in health, they will leverage their consumer industry expertise to quickly raise the experience and engagement expectations of healthcare stakeholders and hire against the knowledge of healthcare they lack.

Savvy marketers will recognize the opportunities for their brands and establish processes and partnerships early on to take advantage.

Open and Actionable Health Data

There are many trends in healthcare behavior change, but the one overarching trend has to be data. From wearables to electronic health records (EHRs), to social and beyond, data is an enabling platform that drives them all.

On the consumer side, we have over 150 wearable devices on the market providing personalized lifestyle data. On the professional side, we have EHR systems that consolidate health records. In the middle are three major health and wellness data aggregators: Apple's HealthKit, Google's Fit, and Microsoft's Health, all released last year. Supporting them are tools like HealthData.gov, which provides over 1,700 data sets from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) open-data initiative.

Open and Actionable Health Data(continued)

There is a breadth of data available, but data without interpretation or visualization is not useful. Pharma has to become savvier at understanding the resources available to them and the business models they are competing against. It's no longer a brand-on-brand battle for attention. Major platforms, government, and innovative third parties are all part of the landscape of data gathering and exchange.

Healthcare marketing has become less about advertising and more about behavior change, with positive outcomes as the primary performance indicator. In the digital world, we can measure ourselves on effectiveness at both the tactical and patient level. The most successful programs are those that provide the most value to our audiences. Liberated data is the first step to garnering the actionable insights that will help differentiate your brand from others.

3D Printing Matures

In short, 3D printing is poised to disrupt healthcare. In fact, the reality is that 3D printing is already shaking up the industry.

Already in 2015 it was reported that MakerBot PLA Filament was used to 3D-print custom tracheal scaffolding, which was combined with living cells to create a tracheal segment. In another example, a surgeon printed a 3D model of a little girl's skull to get a better idea of how to perform surgery. In yet another example, a man aided in saving his wife's life by 3D-printing a tumor that was misread and sending it to a doctor to convince him to try a new procedure.

Surgeons and researchers are already using 3D printing for practice and experimentation with human prosthetics and small implants. It is an attractive technology for surgeons because it is easy to use, inexpensive, reduces cost of experimentation, and has the potential for patient customization. As more physicians get access to the hardware, we are expecting to see newer uses for 3D printing in patient surgery, treatment, and beyond.

3D Printing Matures (continued)

3D printing is more than just a novelty. It has the potential to shake up traditional models in the same way downloadable mp3s shook up the music industry. To truly take advantage of the space, pharma marketers need to understand the capabilities and limitations of the technology. But more than that, new models require new ways of thinking that can't be learned overnight.

In the same way NASA was able to email a wrench to space, innovations like the Open Hand Project have evolved the prosthetics industry while making it affordable to more people. Companies like Hershey are experimenting using 3D printers with food production. Bio-printing and cell augmentation are some of the highly anticipated applications of 3D printing not far over the horizon.

Unstoppable Mobile Adoption

There is so much going on in this space, we could write only about the many facets of mobile marketing alone. According to eMarketer, mobile is the #1 place marketers plan to increase spending in 2015.

So what's driving this? Starting with social, consumers are far more likely to check their favorite social platform from a mobile device. Mobile search is also tipping past desktop despite the difficulty in calculating true ROI (ie, what's the value of reading a review while standing in an aisle?). Mobile ROI is being bolstered by location-aware technologies such as near field communication, geofencing, and iBeacons. Combine this with apps, feeds, podcasts, and videos in media and the general multiscreen engagement, personal nature of the device, sophisticated segmentation, and contextual messaging, and we're well positioned for a marketing gold rush in mobile advertising.

Unstoppable Mobile Adoption(continued)

Smartphones are ubiquitous. Tablets are in a majority of physicians' routines and in many patients' homes. The old display-advertising model is changing rapidly from point-of-sale to an always-on, always-available, multiscreen ecosystem of connected experiences. As a result, we need to expose users to brands on any device in any location or mode of engagement.

Just a few years ago only a small percentage of Fortune 500 companies had a mobile experience on their website. Today, most have at least a mobile-specific experience, and many even have a responsive design. In healthcare, that number has remained low, but it's given us the opportunity to leapfrog the multiyear learning process, skipping right to great experiences.

On the app side, there are lots of “over-the-counter apps” out there to help manage our health from a wellness perspective, but this year also saw the first prescription-only app, BlueStar, which helps people with type 2 diabetes. Looking forward, though, to do the things we need to do to make real change in healthcare, we're going to have to bite the bullet and get some more apps approved by the FDA.

It's All About the (Social) Network

Social is a feral animal to healthcare marketers: mired in mystery, draped in risk, and difficult to justify the investment for pharmaceutical brands. With Facebook installed on almost 80% of smartphones and Twitter offering brands a more controlled advertising platform, healthcare needs to recognize social media as another channel and must command it as a powerful communication medium.

Social networking is here. It is established, mature, and, depending on which blog you read, already an over-the-hill medium. For many pharmaceutical brands, having a two-way, unmoderated conversation is not a practical option because of regulation and liability. Recent FDA guidelines, though, are opening new opportunities for pharma to allow real-time one-to-one communications and to correct the misinformation that is observed within social networks. So where do pharmaceutical marketers go with social?

It's All About the (Social) Network(continued)

In 2015, healthcare brands will begin to adapt to a trend already adopted and proven by packaged and consumer good manufacturers: customer support via social networks. For regulated industries, this presents several challenges, but patients and caregivers are already taking to social media to seek support and identify the best source for care. Not being present in this space will leave large gaps in communication and open an opportunity for competitors.

Summary

Technology continues to change the healthcare treatment-and-engagement landscape at a rapid pace. Where in the past the healthcare industry could be described as regulation-focused, doctor-led, and predictable, today the pool of influencers and participants has expanded, bringing about new approaches to healthcare.

With technology showing no slow down, barriers to healthcare will continue to fall as patients take more and more control of their health and collaborate with organizations and specialists of all kinds for health insights and management. The future of healthcare is technology-dependent, experiential, personal, connected, and open. As patient and doctor behaviors and expectations evolve, pharma marketers will need to adopt a collaborative, test-and-learn mentality to maintain relevance.