Healthcare Technology Trends
How We Overestimate Tech’s Short-Term Impact and Underestimate Its Long-Term Impact

During the next few weeks, you’ll be seeing lots of articles listing the most important stories of 2018 and predictions for 2019 healthcare trends. Here’s our prediction: There will be very little difference between last year’s and this year’s predictions.

Why? Trends don’t happen in predictable blocks of time. Usually the things we think are speeding past us are actually moving quite slow. A technology trend can take decades—20 years, some experts say—to mature into something that’s viable, usable or real. (Has anyone yet to see a self-driving car on the street in your town?)

All parts of the marketing mix have their strengths: Data informs. Advertising connects. Content—done well—activates your audience. Engaging customers can be a worthy goal for content marketing. When it comes to lead generation content, though, you want to create action. Those actions are more likely to occur when you take a sound process and approach to content, instead of merely tossing out content into the wide blue web.

There’s one thing all midterm election voters can agree on: We’re glad it’s over. But whenever there’s a massive investment in marketing and advertising a product (or, in this case, a candidate), those of us who are healthcare marketers need to pause and ask, “Is there a lesson we can learn here?”

By: John Lavey | Hammock President/COO

At Hammock, we are fortunate to be in a field at the crossroads of two technologies that impact the way we live and work:

By: John Lavey | Hammock President/COO

I started working in media in the early 1990s. In those days, the content we created was driven to someone’s house in the early morning and tossed on the driveway. Today, the content we create can be consumed by someone on her mobile device as she flies to Europe.

By: John Lavey | Hammock President/COO

With all the divisive news out of Washington lately, you might be tempted to think that no other institution has lost more trust in the eyes of Americans than the U.S. Congress. You’d be wrong. There is an institution seen as even less reliable: our medical system.

By Steve Sullivan, National Sales Director

I recently attended a meeting in which chief technology officers (CTOs) were discussing their buying processes and how they handle marketers or sales professionals who are eager to pitch to them.

Hearing insights from across the table is always enlightening and provides a few important reminders for marketers. Here are a few that stood out:

By John Lavey | Hammock President/COO

How can content be used to support account-based marketing (ABM)? We defined ABM in an earlier Idea Email this year, and as the concept has gained traction, we thought it deserved a closer look.

By John Lavey | Hammock President/COO

I had dinner with an old friend last night. As we caught up, we swapped stories about lots of things, including the health of our parents. We both have parents with heart issues who were treated in the same hospital—Inova Fairfax Hospital—near where we grew up.

This morning, my friend sent me an article about Inova Fairfax. It’s a beautiful story about two teenagers who received heart transplants in the same hospital on the same day, then years later, fell in love.

By John Lavey | Hammock President/COO

A colleague recently decided to replace a rotting windowsill. He didn’t want to hire someone, so he researched what he needed to do, talked to friends who had experience, then did it himself.

As soon as he finished the windowsill, he noticed he needed to paint the window frame. As soon as he painted the window, he noticed the other windows in the house needed to be painted. And so on and so on. Success became about making the entire house look as good as possible.