What's More Personal Than One's Health?

Personalization is a hot topic in the health industry right now. After all, what is more personal than one’s health? Imagine the impact if we could drive customer interactions, based not on demographic segments, personas, or even demonstrated interested, but using individual vital signs, patient information, and quantitative data.

There is huge potential in individual-level health-tracking technology. In one extremely innovative example, Google is developing a pill that would detect cancer earlier through nanoparticles in a person’s bloodstream that alert a wearable device when a malignant growth is identified. More immediately, wearables have become a huge industry. Did you know there are over 1,300 health tracking applications just on iTunes, creating a $238 million market in 2013 and that more than 20 health care companies plan to support Apple Health Kit? The integration of technology and personal health tracking will become increasingly useful and commonplace in society.

The advent of personalization and digital targeting creates an ideal landscape for healthcare marketers. The orphan drug market is growing at more than twice the overall prescription market and is projected to represent 19% of total prescription drug sales by 2020. Once considered too niche to justify marketing spend, these can now be advertised directly to the people who need them.

Programmatic media is disrupting the traditional media structure, linking TV viewership and anonymous prescription purchase data so marketers can buy and measure advertising more efficiently. And with the early-adopting segment of 18-34 year-old set now claiming the largest share of US population, usage of technology-based healthcare solutions is poised to skyrocket.

So how can healthcare marketers use this opportunity to provide a better experience for patients while increasing their ROI?

They must tie individual-level customer data to relevant content, and deliver it across channels and devices in a seamless manner through advanced marketing technology. This is called an addressable customer experience.

Watch the first video in our Personalized Health Marketing series, “One Step Closer to Personalized Health Marketing,” to learn more about this opportunity and how to take advantage of it through addressable customer experiences.