‘Consumer-first marketing slowly making its way into healthcare’

The third edition of the e4m Health Communication Conference brought together some of the most esteemed thought leaders and experts from the healthcare sector to deliberate on the dynamics and the evolving face of health and wellness marketing. 

With the online shift that took place in the wake of the pandemic, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have percolated to almost every aspect of healthcare today. Keeping this as the central theme of discussion, the conference saw an engaging session on ‘Health tech’. 

The panel was headed by Harbinder Narula, CEO, BW Healthcare World & BW Wellbeing World. The others on the panel included Ashish Bajaj, Head of Marketing. MediBuddy; Anuja Agarwal, Head of Marketing, Sanofi Pasteur; Preetam Alex, Head of Marketing Communications, Apollo Proton Cancer Center and Sajeev Nair, Chairman & Founder, Vieroots Wellness Solutions. 

Narula kicked off the conversation with how technology has changed the way most people look at healthcare and consumers are more informed about their choices as a result of technological innovations. He asked the panellists to share their views on how technology has enabled healthcare to evolve to a point where diagnosis and care to a large extent are brought to a patient’s doorstep today.

Addressing the question, Bajaj replied, “The healthcare industry over the decades has been into a different orbit and to move it into consumer centricity/the patient centricity - it had to happen.” He opined on how consumer first marketing has been slowly making its way into the healthcare sector. He further added, “That movement was supposed to happen but in the last two years it has been a great shift.” To this Agarwal added, “Technology has enabled far more advancement and awareness amongst consumers at their doorstep. Secondly, there is a huge and exciting ecosystem of healthcare startups and tech startups in India who’ve enabled the consumer to have healthcare at their doorsteps.” She opined that with a boom in healthcare, this has enabled consumers to be in control of their own healthcare. She concluded by saying that healthcare solutions are far more available in metros and mini metros but “access is the next step for health tech”. 

According to Sajeev Nair, the growth in preventive health and wellness has happened primarily because of the backup of technology. “There has been a lack of medium or methods to reach out to consumers for products or services that are actually targeted towards preventive health.” Technology, artificial intelligence, online media and social media has empowered people to take charge of their health. He also said that technology was primarily responsible for major advancements in preventive health.

Answering the same question, Alex said hospitals and tele-medicine have made their way into online delivery services. He also spoke about the importance of mobile phones and applications, “Mobile Phones are our closest buddy for this evolution.” 

The need for homecare services came into the forefront due to the pandemic. Keeping this as the premise, Narula directed his next question to Bajaj - is there a role that marketing communication has played in growing this acceptance (among consumers)? To this Bajaj replied, “Marketing has played a great role in providing the right kind of information for the consumer to be looking out.”

The Session Chair directed his next question to the Head of Marketing Communications of Apollo Proton Cancer Centre. He was asked what marketers should do to overcome the challenge of lack of trust among healthcare seekers or do you see this as an opportunity for new-age healthcare providers who are providing direct-to-consumer or patient services. How are you seeing this as an advantage for your organization? Alex spoke about the emphasis on creating awareness that brings out the services and technologies and the best of treatment required for the consumers. He said that he sees this as an opportunity more than a challenge, an opportunity to enhance and promote their best and what is best needed for the consumers. 

Asked how Vieroots Wellness Solutions was using technology to add quality of life to humans, Nair said: “Since 2000, we have been seeing a lot of nutrition supplement companies, fitness centres, meditation centres, yoga studios coming up. At the same time, medical practitioners have been sceptical of the growth of wellness products. In 2018, we started working on the project of epigenetic lifestyle modification based on genomic and metabolic assessment. We created 250 health condition assessments. We created a user-friendly mobile application and then we brought in machine learning to correlate these 250 genomic conditions with 70 metabolic conditions and now what we are coming out with is a highly personalized lifestyle modification plan.”

Nair also stated that it lets people know about the high-risk diseases that they are carrying, and the factor which causes this and it helps the consumers to make informed decisions and choices so as to reduce the possibility of such disease. He further said that content and marketing are leading the consumers to such value-added services. 

Narula asked Agarwal about the future of healthcare in the smaller towns, keeping in mind that tech could replace the gap quicker than the infrastructure development. “I think the challenge continues to remain around one trustworthy information and how to have access to the right facilities. The innovation that we try to do is on languages, we try to do as vernacular as possible and that’s a step for us to be heard far better in smaller geographies,” Agarwal said.

“Access to information is not a challenge anymore. I think it’s more about being customized to them and then giving them access to the services.” 

Narula took the discussion ahead on brands keeping their communication and messaging relevant. Agarwal shed some light on the innovative counselling kits and tools that Sanofi Pasteur had come up with.

Bajaj shared more insights on how the user acquisition game has changed in the last three years, from content to discount-led communication. “But the change that is required right now is to build for the consumer first,” he added. 

Agarwal also said that they look at consumers at the centre and who are their influencers.

Sharing more on the issue, Nair said: “Marketing communication is the key to reach out to the people and educate them.”

Agarwal also shared, “The biggest game changer for us is going to be personalisation both for doctors and consumers.”

Concluding the session, Narula said there was a need to look at data, personalize communication, engage with people and focus on local languages so that there is better communication and understanding.