Healthcare Trends
Healthcare marketing developments 2023: healthcare being marked by digitalisation
In 2022, there was a noticeable shift towards more data-driven client enquiries, campaigns and projects in the health sector. This is highly likely due to the era of the pandemic, war in Ukraine and subsequent energy crisis, with clients simply trying to get the maximum out of their budgets after the years of coronavirus. The focus was, and still is, clearly on efficient marketing and on an understanding of the digital journeys of healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients. Furthermore, the healthcare companies concentrated on providing solutions to make their product and service information available online and in digital applications and e-leaflets.
The percentage of consumers buying medicine online remained stable after the Covid-19 era.1
End consumers not giving up their digital habits after the pandemic
Last year, we were able to see that end consumers who had gotten used to using digital services kept using them after the pandemic as well. Many have come to appreciate the benefits of online platforms and apps through which information can be retrieved or products bought in a straightforward way. They do not want to go without these platforms and apps. Telemedicine, online medicine shopping and the use of digital health apps are now widespread in healthcare.Health apps gaining ground
Consumers increasingly also have access to health technologies that help them track and improve their mental and physical well-being. They are willing to spend money on them, too.
19 per cent of German consumers have spent money on health apps in the last 12 months. Of these applications, nutrition apps are at the top of the consumer charts with a share of 49 per cent2.
Some of the health apps in Germany that are approved by the country’s medicine regulator3 are, for example, Deprexis, an interactive, online-based self-help program to support therapy for patients with depression and depressive moods, and Selfapy, which offers depression sufferers an individual online course underpinned by evidence-based theories and techniques used in cognitive behavioural therapy. Elevida is a digital health app for people with multiple sclerosis, while Kalmeda is a digital health app which offers patients suffering from chronic tinnitus guideline-based cognitive behavioural therapy complemented with instructions for relaxing, soothing natural and background sounds and a knowledge section.
Health a sure-fire sales success
Even Amazon has been pitting on health as a sure-fire sales success. In late July 2022, the company bought the American health platform One Medical to expand its e-commerce business with medicines, including in Europe. Apple has also radically improved its health app and Apple Watch devices to offer even more health tracking for users. Products such as Apple Watch have really grown into wearable medical centres for patients, and that makes them valuable clinical research instruments.Still too many paper tigers in the healthcare market
The digital transformation is under way in various fields for HCPs, too. For instance, digital services such as patient and appointment management or online CME courses can produce significant time savings for them. Despite that, many electronic health services in Germany had not yet fully matured in 2022, which meant that affected HCPs often had to struggle with manual procedures in their daily routines – and still do. While network infrastructures do exist, there is still no digital data exchange between hospitals and doctors in private practice. The majority of healthcare communication between physicians in private practice and hospitals is still done on paper. There are multiple reasons for this, and one of them is the security of health data in digital environments. It is clear that relevant solutions need to be found as soon as possible. 2023 is about patient experiences and patient loyalty Healthcare will continue to be marked by digitalisation in 2023. The use of artificial intelligence (AI), the application of robotics, the internet of things (IoT)4, telemedicine and virtual care – all these trends will continue to develop steadily this year and over the coming years. Social health factors will gain a stronger focus in 2023, too. Medicine is becoming increasingly personalised, precise and value-based. This is backed up by things such as value-based care models, stronger consideration of individual psychological needs and the response to the challenges of an ageing population. For healthcare businesses, it means banking on patient loyalty to a greater degree – and creating genuine experiences for patients. How? By personalising the patient journey even more, making navigation simpler and reducing the hurdles. AI – the magic word for personalisation The use of AI in particular will be necessary for personalising the patient journey, and relevant content can be generated with it. However, tracked health data can also be used to create AI-based diagnoses free of charge. Obviously it should be borne in mind that patients as well as HCPs still have quite some bias against artificial intelligence, however, it can make a key contribution to improving patient care and rationalising work processes in the healthcare system. To reduce workloads and take over a range of tasks, robotics are increasingly being used in the health sector as well. Similarly, the internet will continuously improve the efficiency of healthcare. This applies in particular to countries and cities facing a shortage of doctors – even if Germany cannot keep up with the US or China on the latest trends due to legal and financial obstacles.
End consumers and HCPs were well connected digitally even before and during the pandemic, so why not use the advantages of telemedicine and virtual care? Especially in countries like Germany where the doctor–patient relationship does not seem to be particularly close, telemedicine can often shorten waiting times and generally improve access to healthcare.
Infrastructure and skilled labour – key factors in the health sector
2023 will be a year where patient data and its security are the centre. While there are already efforts under way to create the corresponding conditions for it, there really will need to be a focus on training skilled professionals and expanding corresponding infrastructure this year, especially in the field of digital services. This is the only way we will be able to achieve further progress over the coming years. New questions and approaches in media planning The post-pandemic years are showing that healthcare businesses are more and more looking for data-driven solutions and offerings. The behaviours of end consumers and HCPs changed in times of lockdowns and working from home. Because of this, we are now asked in all media briefings for data-driven solutions that can achieve the desired results. What we have seen in recent months is that an increasing number of brands are concentrating on the build-up of first-party data through their (specialist) portals. There are media campaigns aimed at gaining opt-ins on the portals, and media activations are optimised accordingly. However, this requires anonymous data exchange between the client and the agency, in compliance with the GDPR and healthcare advertising laws, and we at Healthy Programmatic can ensure this. The providers of healthcare brands are for the first time asking themselves how to add value for users so that they can get their data in return. Or, how to make them trust that their data is safe at the respective company. Businesses are wondering if they are missing out on an opportunity to generate important data in their existing business. These are all questions that are being asked more frequently these days when compared with pre-pandemic times.
Stories and personalised messages for different audiences
A larger number of story ads, especially sequential ones, as well as personalised messages for different target audiences and remessaging for already active target audiences were created for various brands over the last year. Using our programmatic advertising, we were able to find out what relevance the messages had among the respective target audiences. After this feedback loop, it was possible to adapt the various topics and content items in real time in close collaboration between creation and media buying teams. With additional A/B testing on the motives, the campaigns were able to be optimised accordingly based on the findings from earlier flights. It will be exciting to see how the urgent questions in the healthcare sector – personalisation of the offerings, patient data security, labour shortages and the expansion of digital service infrastructure – will be solved by businesses and governments.1Statista Global Consumer Survey, The German Consumer, November 2022: recoded based on ‘Where have you bought medication in the past 12 months (prescription/over the counter)?’; multi pick; base: n=5,524 all respondents (split sample: health, finance, insurance)
2Statista Global Consumer Survey, The German Consumer, November 2022: ‘Have you spent money on health apps (e.g. medication reminders, symptom checkers, nutrition apps) in the past 12 months?’; single pick; base: n=5,524 all respondents (split sample: health, finance, insurance); ‘Which types of health apps have you spent money on in the past 12 months?’; multi pick; base: n=1,022 respondents which spent money on health apps on downloads, on a subscription or on in-app purchases
3DiGA: prescribed digital health applications
4 Internet of things (IoT) is the term for a network of physical objects (‘things’) which are equipped with sensors, software and other technology to connect with other devices and systems via the internet and exchange data between the objects. https://www.oracle.com/de/internet-of-things/what-is-iot/#:~:text=Das%20Internet%20of%20Things%20(IoT) %20ist%20die%20Bezeichnung%20f%C3%BCr%20 das,Objekten%20Daten%20ausgetauscht%20werden %20k%C3%B6nnen, retrieved: 6 January 2023