Future Healthcare Trends for 2023

Dec 13, 2022 1:30 PM2:30 PM EST

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Key Discussion Takeaways

The pandemic has created lasting change in healthcare. Telehealth or traditional house calls made up less than 1% of healthcare before 2020. In 2022, that number has increased to 50%. The incredible shift raises imperative questions about the future of healthcare. How can professionals treat their patients effectively from afar?

One important consideration is AI. The use of chatbots is growing outdated and in its wake are more sophisticated AI systems that provide a better experience for patients. Healthcare providers must develop holistic and omnichannel approaches to utilize these systems effectively. Currently, there is still plenty of work to be done and features to be refined.

In today’s virtual event, Thomas Swanson of Adobe, Al Zinkand of Baylor Scott & White, Chris Hemphill of Woebot Health, and Tom Hileman of the Hileman Group sit down with Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson to discuss what the future holds for healthcare in 2023. They talk about the current state of telehealth, health equity, machine learning, and omnichannel engagement. They also touch on the overlap between retail and healthcare and how to balance both incentives.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • The silver lining in healthcare after 2020
  • Developing a holistic approach to healthcare 
  • How public perception of telehealth has changed
  • Strategies for improving health equity 
  • The integration of retail and healthcare processes
  • Prioritizing patient and customer perspectives 
  • What does the future hold for AI and machine learning? 
  • The value of patient transparency in AI 
  • How to leverage omnichannel engagement to connect with patients where they are
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Event Partners

Global Prairie

Global Prairie delivers transformational branding, marketing and digital solutions through the lens of an organization’s unique purpose. Bringing together industry leading strategy, creativity and technology expertise, we generate measurable business and social impact for our clients, their stakeholders and the world.

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Adobe

Adobe Experience Cloud is the most comprehensive suite of customer experience management tools on the market. With solutions for data, content delivery, commerce, personalization, and more, this marketing stack is created with the world’s first platform designed specifically to create engaging customer experiences. Each product has built-in artificial intelligence and works seamlessly with other Adobe products. And they integrate with your existing technology and future innovations, so you can consistently deliver the right experience every time.

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Guest Speakers

Thomas Swanson LinkedIn

Head of Industry Strategy & Marketing - Health & Life Sciences, Adobe

Thomas Swanson is the Head of Industry Strategy & Marketing for Health & Life Sciences at Adobe. As a healthcare expert and executive, he has over 20 years of experience in digital ecosystems. Before Adobe, he was the Senior Manager of Marketing Technology Platforms at Medtronic and the Director of Business Development for New Products at Media New Group Interactive.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson LinkedIn

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect

BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

Al Zinkand LinkedIn

Director at Baylor Scott & White Health

Al Zinkand is the Director of the Operational Excellence Portfolio at Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH), the largest not-for-profit healthcare system in Texas. Al has two missions at BSWH: personalizing omnichannel journeys to make customers feel known and letting clinicians prioritize patient care by outsourcing administrative tasks to a digital workforce. He has served four out of the nation’s five largest healthcare provider organizations and previously worked as a Manager at Deloitte.

Chris Hemphill LinkedIn

Sr. Director, Commercial Intelligence at Woebot Health

Chris Hemphill is the Senior Director of Commercial Intelligence at Woebot Health. In their role, they focus on helping health systems make data-driven decisions and evaluate data products. Chris held various roles at Actium Health, including VP of Applied AI and Growth and held a number of roles at Influence Health, including Director of Sales and Learning Enablement and Sales Operations Manager.

Tom Hileman LinkedIn

Managing Partner, Digital at Global Prairie

Tom Hileman is the Managing Partner of Digital at Global Prairie, an award-winning digital marketing agency that delivers high-touch, data-driven marketing solutions for leading healthcare organizations nationwide. With more than 25 years of multi-industry experience, he leverages strategic insights, measurable engagement tactics and technology to drive business growth and success. Tom has spoken at HCIC, HMPS, World Congress, SHSMD, Adobe, and other healthcare and technology events.

Event Moderator

Thomas Swanson LinkedIn

Head of Industry Strategy & Marketing - Health & Life Sciences, Adobe

Thomas Swanson is the Head of Industry Strategy & Marketing for Health & Life Sciences at Adobe. As a healthcare expert and executive, he has over 20 years of experience in digital ecosystems. Before Adobe, he was the Senior Manager of Marketing Technology Platforms at Medtronic and the Director of Business Development for New Products at Media New Group Interactive.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson LinkedIn

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect

BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

Al Zinkand LinkedIn

Director at Baylor Scott & White Health

Al Zinkand is the Director of the Operational Excellence Portfolio at Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH), the largest not-for-profit healthcare system in Texas. Al has two missions at BSWH: personalizing omnichannel journeys to make customers feel known and letting clinicians prioritize patient care by outsourcing administrative tasks to a digital workforce. He has served four out of the nation’s five largest healthcare provider organizations and previously worked as a Manager at Deloitte.

Chris Hemphill LinkedIn

Sr. Director, Commercial Intelligence at Woebot Health

Chris Hemphill is the Senior Director of Commercial Intelligence at Woebot Health. In their role, they focus on helping health systems make data-driven decisions and evaluate data products. Chris held various roles at Actium Health, including VP of Applied AI and Growth and held a number of roles at Influence Health, including Director of Sales and Learning Enablement and Sales Operations Manager.

Tom Hileman LinkedIn

Managing Partner, Digital at Global Prairie

Tom Hileman is the Managing Partner of Digital at Global Prairie, an award-winning digital marketing agency that delivers high-touch, data-driven marketing solutions for leading healthcare organizations nationwide. With more than 25 years of multi-industry experience, he leverages strategic insights, measurable engagement tactics and technology to drive business growth and success. Tom has spoken at HCIC, HMPS, World Congress, SHSMD, Adobe, and other healthcare and technology events.

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Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect


BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution.

Senior Digital Strategist Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson runs the group & connects with dozens of brand executives every week, always for free.


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Discussion Transcription

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  0:18  

Happy Tuesday everyone I am Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson, a digital strategist for BWG Connect, and we are a network of knowledge sharing group, we stay on top, the latest trends challenges whatever is going on in the digital landscape we want to talk about annually we do about 500 virtual events each year due to the increase in demand to better understand everything in the digital space. And we do at least 100 in person dinners. So if you happen to be in a tier one city throughout the country, always feel free to reach out, we will send you an invite if we happen to be in that city, the dinners are typically 15 to 20 people having a discussion around a specific digital topic. And it's always a really fun time. We spend a lot of our time here talking to different brands and software service providers. To understand all the different challenges and trends going on in the industry would love to have a conversation with you. So you can feel free to drop me a line at Tiffany tiffany@bwgconnect.com. And we can get some time on the calendar. It's from these conversations, we generate the topic ideas we know people want to learn about. And it's also where we gain our resident experts such as heileman, and Adobe, and special guests who are here today. So anybody that we asked to teach the collective network has come highly recommended from multiple brands throughout our network. So if you ever need any recommendations within the digital space, feel free to reach out we have a short list of the best of the best and we'd be happy to provide that information for you. So a few housekeeping items, we started about three, four minutes after the hour, we will wrap up at least five minutes before the end to give you time to get to your next destination. And with that, I think we're ready to roll. So let's talk about the future of healthcare trends in 2023. I cannot believe it's 2023 already, this is just amazing. The team at Hileman and Adobe have been awesome partners and friends in the networks. I'm going to kick it out to the panelists. If you could give introductions on yourself. That would be fantastic. And we will dive into the conversation. Thank you so much.

 

Tom Hileman  2:21  

I'll start off Tom Hileman with Hileman Group. We're a digital marketing agency focused in the world of healthcare, helping our customers connect with patients and providers as well as clinicians in the space. So happy to be here. And looking forward to our conversation. Thomas Swanson, I'll hand it to you.

 

Tom Swanson  2:39  

Thank you, Tom. Tom Swanson, I'm with Adobe. I'm the head of healthcare strategy and marketing, here at Adobe. Now, I'm sure all of you are kind of aware of the creative side of Adobe, many of you may not be aware of the kind of digital marketing and digital experience side of the Adobe. And that's the business unit that I represent. And so thank you, once again, BWG, for giving me the opportunity to kind of talk about the things that we're seeing in the industry, you know, and how we, as an industry can address those opportunities as a result of the change. I'm gonna hand it off to Chris.

 

Chris Hemphill  3:26  

Well, thank you. And it's a pleasure to be on and I'm loving seeing that this this pool of people fill up as well. I'm Chris Hemphill, I'm with Woebot Health. Woebot Health is a digital mental health app that allows people to have a conversation in their moment of need, and deliver the the appropriate cognitive behavioral therapy CBT to help with issues such as grief, anxiety, depression, and various mental health issues that come about. folks might be wondering, well, what was the marketing background here? I actually started at wobei in May and had previously spent 10 years in the healthcare, marketing data science and analytics side of things. So I'm hoping to have some some good conversation about the relationship between chatbots and I think that that's become a very hot topic lately, which would chat GPT so basically, the relationship with AI and healthcare consumers.

 

Al Zinkand  4:36  

Well, my name is Al Zinkand, I lead the digital health team at Baylor Scott & White. And I also very excited to talk about some of the trends things like consumer centricity, personalization, and all those things that providers are being forced to catch up to other industries. And finally

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  4:52  

antastic thank you all for joining me today. And for the participants. This is really a conversation for you all. So If you have questions, comments, please feel free to put them into the q&a or the chat bar. Both are enabled. If you feel more comfortable, you can always email them. So email me, Tiffany@BWGconnect.com. And we will be sure to get to them. So with that, let's dive right in and just look at, obviously, this year past year, the ups and downs on health care with the pandemic. To say that, yes, there is a new normal. And there's a lot of disruptors in that and thinking about financial forecasting challenges, staffing shortages, a consumer that the expectation keeps growing and growing on what they want, and expect. And so I think if we maybe start with you Al of looking at, you know, the big changes in trends and opportunities, obviously, we want to look at in 2023, what's going to happen, but just have a moment of reflection of what has happened in 2022. And what to think about as well as we move into the new year. Yeah, absolutely.

 

Al Zinkand  6:06  

You know, it's funny, COVID COVID happened in 2020. Right, but we're still very much feeling the impacts COVID for all of the horribleness that have caused had a couple of really good things. I think it it honestly forced healthcare companies to realize that they are going to be held to the same consumer expectations that other industries are. So when we look at things like where searches start right back in the olden days, you would get a referral, nobody really knows what that word means. out unless you work in the healthcare industry. For patients, it's just telling me where I need to go next. So by by kind of spotlighting some of the or I should say by accelerating the pace at which people needed care and access to care. COVID did us all a favor and force us to wake up. So I'm very much excited to see how healthcare systems will respond to that. And I think you'll get a couple of different groups of respondents, some of them will be, you know, probably not very many, but it will be head in the sand the ostrich method, we've this is the way we've done things this way, we're going to continue to do things and consumers can adapt. But the ones who hopefully are a little more progressive and thinking will probably start to find ways to focus on customer centricity. And you're already seeing in a lot of places, right, the amount of money that's gone into digital health vendors that are serving healthcare companies, most of them are focused on bringing consumer great experiences to healthcare. So as we as we look forward to 2023, I think you're gonna see, like I said, a lot of systems start to put the customer at the center, they will focus on things like personalization, but it's not just going to be names and emails, I think all of us could go back to roughly Black Friday, and see no less than 100 emails that are addressed to us personally. But that doesn't really mean anything. As healthcare companies are going forward, we're going to need to learn to focus on personalization to the person's emotional state. If you have cancer, you're terrified. So having a referral to an oncologist that may or may not be within 50 miles of us not overly helpful. Having a guided journey where people can tell you, here's the prognosis that you have here are your honest odds. And here are the things that you need to do taking care of yourselves. That's a much more customer friendly trend. And I think systems that embrace that

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  8:17  

approach will be rewarded. That's awesome. Anything else interject? A Tom? Chris Tom?

 

Tom Swanson  8:25  

Um, you know, I completely agree with everything that l just said. Right. And I think the the the fundamental, or the fundamentally exciting thing, right, that we're seeing in the industry right now, is this notion of consumerization. Right, is placing the health care consumer, which is all of us, right? Kind of in the driver's seat for the very first time, right? Because, as consumers in all other industries, right, we have built expectations as to what digital experiences look and feel like, right? And what degrees of personalization, we expect as a result of that data, right, that we know, the companies that we're engaging with online are collecting on us, right? And so as healthcare consumers, we're finally bringing those expectations right to the table. As far as you know, I know you've got data, use it to better serve me, right and to better understand me as a patient or a plan member or an HCP. Right. It doesn't matter who your target audience is, right? Because they're all people. They're all consumers and they all come to the table freighted with expectations of what personalization is going to look and feel like. And like I said, from a consumer perspective, that's incredibly exciting. From a provider perspective, right? That is terrifying in the sense that you are now being able, you're being asked to compete in a in an arena, and in channels, right where you've never had to compete before. Right. And I think the lessons that we can learn from other industries are only going to help us get to those consumer expectations faster and more efficiently.

 

Chris Hemphill  10:31  

And I just want to add that I, Al, like your use of the term, force us to wake up, because there's a lot of things that we've been sleeping on, not just as patients, not just as healthcare consumers. But as people in general, I feel like, like, I'm coming from from the angle of being in the behavioral health space. But there's a big over the past few years, we had to acknowledge the strain that various things have on our mental on our mental well being. And as a result, there's been a, there is a growing D stigmatization around things like mental health issues, mental health issues in minority communities like the like the one that I come from substance abuse issues and things like that. And as that D, stigmatization happens up, we were starting to see more and more effort into how we look at our our whole human Whole Health Perspectives, looking at the relationship between mental health and behavioral health outcomes, and other physical health outcomes now down the line, such as like the relationship between depression, and like, well, how lowering incidence of depression, decreases insulin resistance, and like what we're starting to look at, and acknowledge those connections. And I'm hoping that we're looking at ourselves even beyond, like when I when I think about consumerism, and other industries, I do think about the experiences that I have on Black Friday, or that that Amazon is trying to promote, they're looking at me from a lifetime value perspective. They want me to consume and purchase and repeat as much as possible. But there's a new in healthcare, I think that that by looking at us as whole people, rather than just like people with with lifetime value, I by looking at that whole person's perspective, it starts changing the incentive and changing what we're aiming for, instead of getting people to purchase as many services as possible. It's about like, looking at how the financial chassis is changing, looking at value based care opportunities to start addressing as whole health and addressing these upstream issues that cause health care challenges, versus just being completely mired in like, lifetime value and consumerism.

 

Tom Hileman  12:48  

Yeah, I guess I'd piggyback on that. So I think al pointed out expectations have risen dramatically, right. And the world, I would also argue that patients have changed dramatically, the use of telehealth, for instance, that was always there, people just didn't really choose to use it very much, right. So most most major health systems had, if I had some level of telehealth, they're not nearly what you would need during the pandemic. So I think there's a sea change of expectations, I also think there's a sea change of the ability for us all to change, right, and the beauty of being in healthcare. So there are a lot of challenges. And the industry hasn't always been on the leading edge, right. But now our opportunity to catch up, there's been a heck of a lot of acceleration the last couple of years in the health systems that we work with. So there's certainly opportunity there. But no one knows more. No one has more data about their consumer patient really prefer to use the healthcare system, right? Literally a health care system knows as much about us as individuals as almost anyone to us, right? Amazon would love one of the reasons they're getting into health care. We love to have that much more information about us, right? retail banks, all these other of these other industries, who have who have utilized their data extremely well. Don't have nearly what we have, right. So I think at the end of the day, it comes back to where I was going as personalized journeys. Like what's important to me at this moment, in terms of content access, then guiding them along that as as opposed to the welcome Hello, Tom kind of things that are there. And we have tremendous ninja beauty of what we have today is with our EMR systems, if our CRM or marketing automation platforms, we can sew that together, first party and third party data in really producing tremendous experiences, which should drive loyalty, retention, and hopefully market share for all for all of the systems in those spaces. So while there's a lot of challenges is fraught with opportunity right now. It's a great it's a great day to be a healthcare marketer. Just there's just so much in front of us.

 

Al Zinkand  14:48  

And, Tom, it's awesome that you went to telehealth. That's another thing that has completely reshaped the playing field. Two years ago, Mayo was not a competitor. They're a competitor now because telehealth is available in Texas to people who want to get it from Mayo providers. And the traditional people that we've looked at as our friends like the CVS 's of the world, are starting to try to disintermediate us, right? They're, they're doing their minute clinics and things like that they're starting to take a meaningful chunk out of provider care of primary care. So we've got to figure out two things. I think it's systems one is how to be very intelligent about the areas we choose to compete. We're, you know, if you're, if you're gonna go out there and try and build a an EMR from scratch, well, you're competing with other people trying to get into the industry and epics already exist. So you need to be very intelligent on what products you bring to market, folks like Amazon can bring $56 billion cash on hand, that's really tough for health system to compete with.

 

Tom Hileman  15:37  

Right, but we have health systems also have some things that those large organizations don't have right relationships. So if you look at all the data, I know, Chris, we spoke about this before the relationships between the between your providers, I'm using that word broadly, because it could be nurse practitioners, physicians, clinicians in general and the consumer, the patient is paramount, like people remember their doctor's name, right or the or who they're working with. That's a little different than a telehealth. A telehealth for bronchitis. Right. That's more of a transaction. So I think the health systems have relationships, caregivers that we can lean into, and provide a personalized and empathetic experience that other folks can but yeah, it's a big challenge. Right. So there's big money and large data, but we also have with lean into our into what health systems have a specialty care and in high touch

 

Tom Swanson  16:33  

clinicians? Well, I would, I would argue, you know, the trust factor, right is something that legacy healthcare companies or legacy healthcare providers have now. Yes, right. Like when Tiffany teed up this question, she was talking about the disruptors, right, that are no doubt entering the industry. Right. And most of those disruptors are not burdened with kind of a legacy, thinking, right? They are digital first, right when it comes to channel orientation and technological orientation. But right, those disruptors don't enjoy the trust that the legacy providers have. Right. So I think what we're looking at right is an opportunity exists for the legacy healthcare companies to kind of leverage that trust and kind of jump into the technological pool, right, in order to meet the health care consumer, in the channels where they choose to be met, right at the time and the place that they choose to be engaged. But that window of opportunity is no doubt a brief one, right, because ultimately, those disruptors will eventually earn the trust that the legacy systems have. And so it's really important, you know, for for systems like Baylor Scott and White or mayo or, you know, the local and regional providers as well, to kind of leverage right, you know, the the technological advances, that it will enable them to compete in these arenas, with the disruptors.

 

Chris Hemphill  18:24  

And when we think about disruptors, too, there's a like an extremely broad space, a diverse space of different different organizations, different companies, different funding models, competing for, like various aspects of the healthcare of the healthcare dollar. Not all disruptors have to remain disruptors, not all disruptors can even survive alone without partnerships with with healthcare systems. So another big part of that opportunity is to start thinking about like looking at where consumers are engaging, how they're thinking, how they're how they're engaging in information seeking activities, for example, and figure out which disruptors might have a good potential and in terms of amplifying your own efforts.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  19:11  

Okay, we do have a comment from the audience and friendly reminder, anybody has comments, questions, put them in the q&a in the chat, or feel free to email me. But this is interesting comment. I'd love your guys's perspective on this. We were talking about trust and legacy healthcare companies and that it's there. This attendee is saying I would argue that legacy healthcare companies do not necessarily have a lot of trust, especially among minority populations.

 

Al Zinkand  19:41  

Yeah, health equity is an ever present topic and it's definitely a thing I think we're gonna get forced to, to wake up to and honestly, it's kind of funny we, our doctors have trust the systems often do not you trust it's a little bit like Congress, right? You like your representative but you don't necessarily like Congress and So the two things that I think we're going to have to do to restore trust are like Tom Swanson mentioned, personalization showing, you know, somebody's meaning them in their emotional state through technology, things like Marketo. Tom, I'm going to plug Adobe for free Adobe CDP. They all give you the ability to create those digital twins so that you know who you're dealing with. And you can not just market but engage them appropriately. And the second thing, we're gonna have to stop telling people that their next available appointment is a month out. That's, that's just as an industry that's not going to fly, I can go to Amazon and get something delivered to my house and prime in 48 hours, why can I get a doctor in a similar timeline? And we have two things that I think we have to overcome. One is just a national labor shortage. That's kind of a fact of life. We're short 2.1 million nurses. But companies like woebot, are solving another problem, which is things like behavioral health, and how can we offload those two kind of a, either a low or medium touch but a high tech solution?

 

Chris Hemphill  21:00  

Yeah, and to beat on to that, like, just I'm personally someone who historically has not had a lot of trust in overall healthcare systems, even when it when it comes down to the question of, Do I put my race ethnicity and things like that on on a forum, because just historically, I just assumed that that's information that can be misused, or used against me in some kind of way. So I think that not just on a technological level, but at a, like at an employee level, when at a lot like how we engage our own, like not just thinking about our patient population, but our employee populations, how do we make sure that we're like setting up the type of environment where people now are nurturing and caring to people of all

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  21:46  

different backgrounds? Now I go back to Tom, you had set in the beginning about looking at different industries. And I think that's such an interesting turning point, because like I said, we do a lot of events with a lot of different topics and a lot of different industries. And it used to be like, healthcare is over here, retails over here. But really now it's a very holistic conversation. This CDP personalized journey, conversation is exactly what the retailers are talking about in the brands. And now the same with healthcare. So I'm wondering before we go into talking about more of AI, and Chris's background, and definitely want to go there because talk about disruptors and like trends of 2023, how can we talk a little bit about the tech stack? Like what does that integrated tech stack look like in theory, if you want to get that personalized journey, which everybody wants, but that customer or that patient might not want to devolve? Like we were saying that data that they need to get that journey that you want? Yeah, Tiffany,

 

Tom Swanson  22:54  

I love the fact that you kind of tied healthcare and retail together, right? Because the blending of those industries, right, is absolutely occurring. Right. And it's something that owl referenced earlier, right, where he said that CVS is who used to be very friendly, right to kind of the legacy healthcare providers are now competitors. And one of the questions or comments that was made in the chat pod is, you know, in response to when Al said, you know, we can no longer say, well, your next appointment is three, four weeks out, right? Because you have options now, right? You can go to urgent care, you can, you can go to a Minute Clinic in a CVS, right, and the way that I look at those, right is those are simply alternative channels, right of care, right? Just like telehealth is an alternative channel, right? And healthcare consumers, like consumers in other industries are looking for kind of fundamental value drivers, right, that are no different than the other industries, right? It's convenience, it's access, it's price transparency, right? It's the the end, you're going to make a decision on kind of where you go to seek care based on those, right? And then of course, you've got relationship with a doctor. That's another factor. Right? But if those other value drivers like access, convenience and price transparency are more important than the relationship with your primary care physician, you're going to be more inclined to go to these other places. Right. So I think things like CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart, you know, health, those organizations, right that kind of sit at that cost Some of healthcare and retail, right, they represent I think right now the most interesting application of the tech stack, right that that was the foundation of your question of how do you use, like a CDP in order to combine behavioral data, right, which is typically retail data with clinical data, right, which now these, you know, these retail pharmacies, the minute clinics, right, they have access to that clinical data as well. Right, in that, and now how do you marry those things, right into a true kind of 360 degree view of your customer or your patient? And do it right, in a compliant way? Right, because that's one of the issues of Al I know, you can probably talk at length about this, right is, while data is available, right? And you have that clinical data, the perception has always been, well, we really can't use that right? When it comes to communicating with our patients or marketing to our patients, right, because of the legal and regulatory compliance issues around the use of that data. When you begin to combine clinical data with retail data, or behavioral data, right, and if you can get consent right from the patient to enable you to use the combination of of those datasets, right, I think that's where we start to approach this idea of, you know, being able to serve the customer, how the customer wants to be served, and in the channels where they serve. And it requires consent in order to do that. And I think one of the most interesting things that we at Adobe are seeing is the willingness of patients right or consumers to share, right, that clinical or what we would consider protected or sensitive data with their providers or their pharmacies, or what are their insurance companies. Right with? It's like, use that data to serve me, right? Because I'm giving you permission. It's no longer like creepy or weird, right? Because I know you have that data. Anyway. So it's management of identity, right via the tech stack and management of consent via the test tech stack and then being able to apply that identity management and consent management to the CDP, right, where you're combining behavioral with clinical data. Sorry, guys, I started to soapbox a little bit. Let me give us an opportunity.

 

Tom Hileman  27:55  

Then, Tom, you got me you got it. Right, right. So you have the fundamental the identity management, right? So anything about tech spec, the CDP is the kind of the aggregator of all that data aggregation, segmentation pieces of that. And then typically, you'll have a marketing automation platform. That's your kind of orchestration and communication. And then you may also have a CRM that pulls in other aspects of the relationship of that with that specific customer. So our acronym soup gets that, well, we'll stick with three of them right there. But so there's quite a few pieces that tech stack depending on how sophisticated you want to get. I would argue though, there's two words that I dislike in healthcare the most one is access, and two is orders. So physician orders. So if you think about the words that we use, no other industry uses the word access least none that I know of. Right. So if you're you may have an appointment to see someone. But no one else talks about access. So I think it would behoove us what we all know what that means in this virtual room, is the thing about our patients really don't want to hear about access, right? They don't want to access they want an appointment. Right? I think someone in the chat may have even mentioned that. So I think sometimes in healthcare we get in our own way a little bit by not using consumer words that are that our patients consumers would understand accesses, is certainly one of them orders is another one, in terms of ordering people to do things, I think, I think an empathetic journey, and helping them along the way is a lot more important than ordering them to get their labs and things. But that's a, that's just a pejorative thing. I think that it gets stuck in us. At the end of the day, they're all going to vote with their dollars, right? So they're going to want, as Tony pointed out, they want convenience. They want price transparency, they want to be able to schedule an appointment in and take care of their health, right. And so that's where I think we have to focus our energies that and where we can do where we can where we can make value, right? And I think that's the part that we have to think about as in healthcare marketing is where do we create the value in their minds and how to and how do we apply it because we can do a lot Like we literally not necessarily the folks in this screen, but folks that we represent can save lives. Right. So, that and the research that a lot of the large health systems have, which gives them a lot of credibility, and being arbiters of truth in the world that we live where truth is sometimes not always as clear as it might seem, should be. Those are things that we have to be able to leverage so we can take that tack, and we can deliver that brand message and pay it off with outstanding service. And, and, and a personalized experience that gets me what I want at this moment of my healthcare journey.

 

Chris Hemphill  30:36  

Awesome. Just wanted to throw into that, like we were talking about heard about CDP earlier. And there's another CD word I want to acronym own throats CTO, the Chief Digital Officer. And the reason that I wanted to throw that one out is just because I was listening to a podcast, I believe it was Sarah Vaizey, who's the Chief Digital Officer of Providence up in Washington. And the interesting thing was, she was talking about a Mulu of digital health technologies that and approaches that they use and kind of their their rigor in evaluating these these digital health approaches and being certain that it's having the light having an impact that their healthcare consumers and patients want. And what was stunning to me about that was that it just sounded like she was speaking the same language in terms of she literally said, patient acquisition and retention. And knowing that that that the CDO role, like it's historically tied very closely to the IT side of the house and strategy side of the house. And I just thought it was interesting that if there's backing from the the Chief Digital Officers officer perspective, for some of the same metrics that we're looking for in the marketing side, then that opens up a bridge to start looking at, well, what digital health solutions are going to lead to that that retention that that we're thinking about.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  32:08  

Some end for reference CDP, because yeah, we use a lot of acronyms, customer database platform, for those that may not be familiar. So Chris is going to shift to you because you work in a very exciting world that is disrupting and progressing very fast. Let's talk about AI and machine learning. And where is it going in 2023? Do you believe?

 

Chris Hemphill  32:34  

So, I think that a lot of us might have, like might have seen a big uptick in AI related news lately. That's where the chat GB GPT system that the open AI open AI has just released. And for those not necessarily familiar with, like chat bots and things like that, and even chat bots of this nature have been out for a very long time conversation answering since all the way back from the 70s with Eliza. But this one feels a little bit different. It's trained on an extremely vast amounts of data. And by using this newer architecture called a transformer, what that's really a fancy way of saying that, whereas like your previous and like but before 2018 But or before 2015 A lot of the associations with words like if an algorithm is like looking at a sentence, it can only like think about think it can only think about like four or five words at a time. This is this is able to look at context from hundreds of 1000s and millions of documents. And like when you're interacting with it, and I would just Google Chat GPT sign up and start asking it questions, ask it to write you a press release, ask it to ask it to do almost anything. The results seem a lot more plausible. So it opens up questions like like, I think chatbots were a pariah a few years ago that there's a uptick in marketing about how people about how people could interact with these things that we jumped on, and it was typically really underwhelming experience. But over time, what's happening is that there are advancements in the ability for these things to to detect intent of what of what people are saying to them, and then tailor tailor solutions more closely to what their interests are. I think the chat GPT conversation is interesting, but it opens up a conversation about what some of the more recent advancements in natural language processing are that actually have an impact today. We actually at my company, we conducted a study to measure the measure whether or not people patients consumers could form a bond With a relational agent with with an agent that they're having a back and forth conversation with. And what we found was that within two to three days, like it, of course, depends on on the system. But using, using a measure of therapeutic, it here, it's called the working alliance inventory. That's a metric that is designed to measure the bond that someone has, with a therapist, by applying by using that same set of standards and metrics on an AI platform, we found that people were forming similar human life bonds with, with the AI that they're talking to you within within two to three days. So it opens up a powerful question on understanding Well, if we have the opportunity to opportunity for that bond, what are we using it for? How are we communicating in a way that that is going to help people with with the issues and challenges that they're having? And that that like, like, there's, there's a whole lot of startups out there digital health, digital health companies out there, that will, you know, purport to have the to have a strong impact and things like that. But what, like, knowing that, like, I think it's a very beautiful power and a very dangerous power people can can form bond with the system. So it falls on us as healthcare leaders to understand what's like, what can we do with this bond? What what what are we like? Are we delivering something that that that leaves a lasting impact for our patients? And not only are we making their experiences consumers better, but are we now delivering them to better outcomes?

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  36:41  

And did these patients understand that it is an AI system

 

Chris Hemphill  36:47  

is that on another very important part of it, there's more news that came came out back in, I think this was a little bit earlier this year, but Google had released this chatbot system called lambda that a, an employee there, interacted with the system, and then reported out to the, to the news that, hey, we, this system has the IQ of a seven year old child, and it's sentient being and I think that it shouldn't be shut off. That's an example of AI Gone Wild hype Gone Wild, if you're not interacting with your consumer population and ethical way. So that becomes the question that you just asked, like, Do people understand whether or not they're interacting with an AI, that becomes very important to like, as we're evaluating these different types of systems is to is to understand how they're approaching AI in a trustworthy, responsible and safe way. So it's understanding that, like, how, like, how does this system remind you of what his actual capabilities are? And then whether or not it's human and things like that, that have had there been safety protocols that put that into place? If people are communicating, like information that might indicate self harm or harm to others and things like that, what protocols are in place? And how effective is that system at detecting it? These are the types of questions that like because what's happening, if we're purchasing chatbots, and relational agents and things like that, then that relationship I consider a relationship brand to be a relationship to be part of the brand. And you're extending the brand to an area where it's not an employee on the phone who has direct control, there's, it's there's a little bit of, there's some unknowns in there and on how that communication is going to flow out. So it becomes very important in evaluating these these systems, that becomes very important to the brand to understand the types of relationships and like how effective these things are, understand the science that they put these things through, to make sure that they're effective and safe for our healthcare consumers.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  39:03  

And the consumers. I was looking on your site with the white papers has been testing with postpartum depression, substance abuse, depression in general. So going back like yeah, that is, you know, obviously desperately needed areas where we need clinical help, and it's only grown out exasperated from the pandemic, but have that transparency, so whomever is on that end, really understands who they're talking to. His key?

 

Chris Hemphill  39:35  

Yeah. Yeah, major point. And I just as a point of advice to like, honestly, the way that chat GPT and those kinds of technologies, what they're doing is they're generating text based on associations based on probabilities that they see, like if I if somebody says this word, and this word probably comes next, and that's happening over and over again on a massive scale. So while that sounds cool, it's still Leaving the conversation up to chance. So not to, like I will put a prediction line in the sand that not today, will we have a patient facing application of GE? Well, a safe patient facing application of a technology like that. Not not in 2023, I mean that that could be something further down the line. But I do want to just put out the reminder that, hey, these things are chance based systems, whereas the types of systems that we want to evaluate would would would have, like standards and a source of truth behind them and things like that.

 

Tom Hileman  40:33  

So random walk, right, Chris, you know, so even though people think it can pass the Turing test, then it's not so much, right. It's really mimicking with probabilistic intent. So, but it's great mean things, it's really cool. And if anyone on here, really should check out the chat, GPT stuff and all the GPT actually, with the writing of the GPT. And all the different applications, I mean, it's really come a long way.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  40:56  

Very different than a chatbot. So don't get them confused. For sure, as a friendly reminder to put in questions, comments into the chat q&a, and we will get to them. So, Tom, we're gonna go back to you. And talking about the disruptors, the genies out of the bottle, right? So change is a common it is here. And just looking at what the enterprise solutions we had talked about the healthcare digital experiences, anything else to expand on that, that you're seeing from an Adobe lens? In the coming year?

 

Tom Swanson  41:37  

Um, well, I love the phrase, the genie is out of the bottle, right? Because even though telehealth, right, we talked about how the telehealth has, you know, that technology has been around for more than a decade, but it really was not widely embraced by the providers, right, you know, for a variety of reasons. And then, you know, as such, right, it wasn't used by the patients, right? Or the the consumers? Well, the pandemic changed all that, right, because it completely blew up the the face to face model, right. And once consumers realized, right, that for day to day kind of routine care. telehealth provided a level of convenience, right, or essentially, like the return of the house call, right where the doctor was coming to you at a time and a place that was convenient for you, versus you having to go see the doctor. Even though right, that has kind of fallen back a little bit, right to where it represents about 50% of doctor patient touches right now, compared to the 80 or 85%, at the height of the pandemic, that still 50% Right, were pre pandemic, it was less than 1%. Right? So I think this idea, right of, you know, the the health care system, the payer or the provider, my health care ecosystem should meet me, right where I already am, as opposed to requiring me to go to them is something that we're going to see continue to accelerate and redefine kind of how we as healthcare consumers engage with our healthcare ecosystems, right. So from the Adobe perspective, we expect this notion of kind of omni channel engagement to become a bigger and bigger thing in healthcare. Right. So it's, you know, not only telehealth or, you know, a provider's website, it's applications, it's being able to access via social media, it's being able to, you know, all of the all of the different channels where consumers are already engaged. Those are places that the legacy healthcare companies or the legacy kind of healthcare ecosystem are going to have to learn to play. You know, and, you know, per Chris's, you know, the points that Chris made, right, whether it's chatbots or AI, or those are just additional channels, right? Where engagement with consumers takes place, right? So the need to kind of orchestrate, journeys, right or orchestrate engagements across multiple channels, right, both physical and digital, to me is going to be the big challenge right? For as as we roll into 23, it's like how do you take, right? What occurs in a physical engagement, right face to face with a doctor or face to face with a pharmacist, perhaps with a call center nurse, right? And translate that data into something that helps guide digital journeys? And vice versa, right? How do you make the data available to a doctor that shows you know that your patient is engaged through these digital channels, right in the two weeks leading up to their, you know, their face to face appointment? Right. So the kind of the matching up of the physical and the digital and making the movement between physical and digital channels seamless for the customer? is kind of what we see right as the next big horizon in the space. Yeah,

 

Chris Hemphill  45:57  

that's a great point. Well, great point that we marry it, I saw a comment around the challenges of Omni omni channel engagement being because systems have a hard time talking to each other. Once we look, I'm just thinking about like the endpoints that you were discussing, those become various areas to start acquiring more context. So if we, if we're losing that if we're losing that to the fact that systems systems can't talk to each other, we're not building like building out the CDP type infrastructure in the in the background, then it's a big missed opportunity, if the if the right hand doesn't know what the other 25 hands are doing.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  46:41  

Definitely, definitely. And I make that time I was reading your white paper, and one stat that really resonated with me was younger generations. So millennial Gen Z, well, being is top of mind, which iPhone, being a Gen X, or like, I wasn't thinking about my benefits at 25 years old. But it was stated in there that if they had to choose between higher salary, or benefits, they're choosing their benefits, like health care is just such a big part of their budgets, their well being everything around it. So knowing that and know how they shop and navigate online, gives you a very good insight on where infrastructurally digitally, organizations need to be to take care of those patients.

 

Tom Swanson  47:35  

Well, and it goes, it goes back to something that I think Chris said earlier, which is this, you know, another silver lining that came out of the pandemic is this notion of treating the person as a whole. Right as, as opposed to kind of transactional sick care, right, which is kind of what we've all become conditioned to accept, right through our interactions with the health care system is, you know, I only enter into my health care ecosystem when I or a loved 1am not feeling well, right, or have symptoms or something, and then you go through the process, and then you drop out until next time, right, and and what I love about what Chris kind of brought to the discussion is this idea of overall wellbeing, right, and management of wellness, as opposed to episodic instances of sick care, right. And I think Tiffany, that goes to what the younger demographics or the younger demographic, the younger generations are, basically indicating, right is that they expect to be treated as a whole person and be able to manage their wellness, as opposed to just, you know, being able to go to a doctor when they get sick. It's like provide me lifestyle information, provide me dietary information, provide me mental health resources, right, help me stay well, so that I don't have to go to the doctor. Right. And I think that that's actually a huge opportunity in our industry, right, not only to help with the kind of the burdens that owl was talking about, regarding kind of the employee shortage that we have in the system, but also to help drive down costs, right? Because if you can actually help people stay well, right, that's going to cost significantly less than having to deal with somebody who's already sick. Absolutely.

 

Chris Hemphill  49:43  

Just a little bit on that, that I saw that will that I've been seeing recently is I was at the health conference in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. And I just saw a huge number of a much larger number of organizations that were talking about how equity, health equity issues and social determinants of care. And, like, of course, there's always the desire to do good in the world. But I think that a lot of that interest is driven from now, companies understanding that if you're in a value based care scenario, or if you're in some sort of capitated model, then by addressing these upstream issues, such as behavioral health and things like food, food availability, and things like that, they're seeing measurable shifts in the cost curve. So it's the equity aspects, but there's also a major financial justification that that folks are starting to see under these newer models.

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  50:45  

Excellent. Well, Tom Heilemann, let's take it home here, what do you see it in? 2023?

 

Tom Hileman  50:52  

No, I mean, I think we've we've all had the trends, and I'll start us out on the personalization in the customer journey, right patient journey, I think that certainly is where we're gonna go. And I also think that we have an opportunity. As healthcare marketers to expand our role in the organization, one of the things that we're getting pulled into a lot more is some of the operational communications and some of the also the recruiting because that's a big concern elements in the 2.1 million nurses that were short in the US, we've heard from many of our clients that they want our help helping to find, attract, and get them to you into their system, right. So I think marketers can also kind of take their wares into some of the other organizational departments that aren't necessarily typically where we play, and provide value to the organization to helping with the recruiting side, helping with the b2b side of the business. So we still have a whole bunch of providers who influence a lot of folks, right. And these private practices and the the affiliate networks and the ACOs, and all that channel as well. So I think we'll see, obviously, marketing's role grow across the enterprise. Because I think no one's more well positioned to understand the voice of the customer. The marketers are, because we're the ones that typically tasked to speak with them every day. So I think 23 should be a year of to get our tech stack in order. Let's put it all together and get the pieces right. Let's let's take pay that data off, so that we can leverage it with with private and important customer journeys. And let's, let's take our marketing wares across the enterprise and help and help lift the enterprise where we have where we can

 

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  52:23  

get about any final thoughts. Well, Chris and Tom, I could go on for the time. Yeah. Great conversation about this. Well, awesome, thank you all so much. It was fantastic content. Thank you all for joining today. We definitely encourage follow up conversations with these partners. As always helmet Adobe have been long term partners with the network. We greatly appreciate you and your friendship and everything you do for us. So with that, so now have a great day. Happy holidays. Stay safe and hope to see you in another event. Take care y'all.

 

Al Zinkand  52:59  

Bye. Thanks. Thanks, everyone

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