Health marketing

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Health Marketing is a discipline that employs traditional marketing techniques and research-driven strategies to protect and promote the health of diverse communities. This multidisciplinary field blends elements from public health promotion, marketing, and communications to deliver vital health information to the public. When employed by the public sector, it promotes public awareness of preventive measures, health promotion initiatives, and health protection services. When used by the private sector, health marketing can increase market awareness of a new treatment or therapy, both at the provider and consumer levels. [1]

Contents

Health marketing helps health-focused organizations and services gain visibility and reach for their initiatives, such as new medical advancements, health insurance plans, or community health programs. It uses the classic marketing mix's "4Ps"—product, place, promotion, and price—in a health context. [2] [3] In the context of health marketing the 4P's would correspond to:[ citation needed ]

Despite its critical role, the term "Health Marketing" is less commonly used within the field of public health. Alternatives like "Social Marketing" or "Integrated Marketing Communication" are more prevalent, referring to the use of marketing principles to craft effective health communication strategies. [4]

Medical marketing in the private sector

Health Marketing or Medical Marketing is a specialized branch of marketing. Marketing consists of many broad categories of services and target demographics. Health Marketing may more frequently be a B2C (Business-to-Consumer) form of marketing, as it encompasses wellness, general health strategies and supporting therapies. Medical Marketing may more frequently refer to B2B (Business-to-Business) or B2G (Business-to-Government) targeted platforms, such as the sale of diagnostic imagery devices to hospitals. [5]

Medical marketing is typically used to market to consumers however, is increasingly being used to communicate important message to healthcare professionals (HCPs).[ citation needed ]

Generation Z represents an emerging major target-demographic for supplementary private health services. According to a Forbes survey, 85% of Generation Z individuals said they are open to alternative healthcare options that combine offline and online experiences like telemedicine, dispatch services and membership-based services. [6]

Regulations

Advertising of medical procedures is regulated in many countries, especially in aesthetics and plastic surgery. For instance, showing before and after pictures or referring to someone's body type can be considered harmful.[ citation needed ]

In Singapore, the Ministry of Health provides detailed regulations for the advertising of private hospitals and medical clinics. These regulations provide guidance on what can and cannot be included in such advertisements. [7]

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires companies to support their advertising claims with solid proof, especially for businesses that market food, over-the-counter drugs, dietary supplements, contact lenses, and other health-related products. Companies must have appropriate substantiation to back up claims for health-related products. This requirement ensures that marketing claims are not misleading and that they are based on scientific evidence. [8]

Also within the United States, the "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act" (HIPAA) establishes the "HIPAA Privacy Rule", which provides important controls over whether and how protected health information is used and disclosed for marketing purposes. The Privacy Rule requires written authorization from individuals before their protected health information can be used or disclosed for marketing, with limited exceptions. The Rule also distinguishes marketing communications from those communications about goods and services that are essential for quality health care. [9]

The Privacy Rule defines "marketing" as a communication about a product or service that encourages recipients to purchase or use the product or service, and it requires an individual's authorization for these communications to occur. This definition also includes an arrangement where a covered entity discloses protected health information to another entity in exchange for direct or indirect remuneration for the other entity to make a communication about its own product or service. [9]

However, the Privacy Rule also establishes exceptions to the definition of marketing, which include communications about a health-related product or service provided by the covered entity making the communication, communications for the treatment of the individual, and communications for case management or care coordination for the individual. These exceptions allow for necessary communications essential for healthcare delivery and operations, while still protecting the individual's privacy rights. [9]

"Ad Standards" - a Canadian NGO, has published a set of guidelines clarifying the Canadian regulatory landscape regarding consumer-directed medical advertising, with a specific focus on "reasonable claims" and how medical information should be presented to laypeople. [10]

Medical marketing in the public sector

Public sector medical marketing encompasses efforts by healthcare providers, research institutions, nonprofits, and patient advocacy groups to influence public health policy and resource allocation. These entities use healthcare marketing to shape public opinion, inform policy, and influence decision-making among governmental bodies. The strategies used often hinge on providing compelling, evidence-based arguments about the benefits of certain health policies or services. For instance, a nonprofit organization might use data to illustrate the impact of a particular disease and the effectiveness of their programs in combating it. They would then communicate this information to the public and policymakers, with the aim of securing more funding or legislative support. [11]

The specific strategies used in public sector medical marketing can be multifaceted and varied. They often include traditional lobbying efforts, such as direct communication with lawmakers, as well as more broad-based public relations campaigns. Public health campaigns, op-eds, white papers, and funding patient advocacy groups are all common tools. The shared goal across these strategies is to make a compelling case for the importance of particular health policies or resources and to rally support for them among both the general public and policymakers. [12]

Risks and Concerns

While medical marketing can play a beneficial role in raising awareness about health conditions and treatments, there are significant risks and concerns when it comes to its potential misuse. An example of this is the opioid crisis, which vividly demonstrates the harmful consequences when marketing strategies are used irresponsibly, or when profit motives supersede patient outcomes. [13]

Aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies has been widely implicated in the rise of opioid addiction. Companies used strategies that downplayed the risk of addiction and exaggerated the benefits of their drugs, leading to over-prescription and misuse. [13]

As a result, there have been calls for increased regulation of healthcare marketing, principally in restricting and codifying interactions between sales representatives and medical providers, greater oversight of marketing materials, and more liability exposure to entities found negligent in their marketing methodologies harm-reduction design. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

Consumer privacy is information privacy as it relates to the consumers of products and services.

Medical privacy, or health privacy, is the practice of maintaining the security and confidentiality of patient records. It involves both the conversational discretion of health care providers and the security of medical records. The terms can also refer to the physical privacy of patients from other patients and providers while in a medical facility, and to modesty in medical settings. Modern concerns include the degree of disclosure to insurance companies, employers, and other third parties. The advent of electronic medical records (EMR) and patient care management systems (PCMS) have raised new concerns about privacy, balanced with efforts to reduce duplication of services and medical errors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act</span> United States federal law concerning health information

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1996. It aimed to alter the transfer of healthcare information, stipulated the guidelines by which personally identifiable information maintained by the healthcare and healthcare insurance industries should be protected from fraud and theft, and addressed some limitations on healthcare insurance coverage. It generally prohibits healthcare providers and businesses called covered entities from disclosing protected information to anyone other than a patient and the patient's authorized representatives without their consent. The bill does not restrict patients from receiving information about themselves. Furthermore, it does not prohibit patients from voluntarily sharing their health information however they choose, nor does it require confidentiality where a patient discloses medical information to family members, friends or other individuals not employees of a covered entity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Community health</span> Field of public health

Community health refers to simple health services that are delivered by laymen outside hospitals and clinics. Community health is also the subset of public health that is taught to and practiced by clinicians as part of their normal duties. Community health volunteers and community health workers work with primary care providers to facilitate entry into, exit from and utilization of the formal health system by community members.

In marketing, promotion refers to any type of marketing communication used to inform target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or issue, persuasively. It helps marketers to create a distinctive place in customers' mind, it can be either a cognitive or emotional route. The aim of promotion is to increase brand awareness, create interest, generate sales or create brand loyalty. It is one of the basic elements of the market mix, which includes the four Ps, i.e., product, price, place, and promotion.

Social marketing is a marketing approach which focuses on influencing behavior with the primary goal of achieving "common good". It utilizes the elements of commercial marketing and applies them to social concepts. However, to see social marketing as only the use of standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals is an oversimplified view. Social marketing has existed for some time, but has only started becoming a common term in recent decades. It was originally done using newspapers and billboards and has adapted to the modern world in many of the same ways commercial marketing has. The most common use of social marketing in today's society is through social media.

A personal health record (PHR) is a health record where health data and other information related to the care of a patient is maintained by the patient. This stands in contrast to the more widely used electronic medical record, which is operated by institutions and contains data entered by clinicians to support insurance claims. The intention of a PHR is to provide a complete and accurate summary of an individual's medical history which is accessible online. The health data on a PHR might include patient-reported outcome data, lab results, and data from devices such as wireless electronic weighing scales or from a smartphone.

Health technology is defined by the World Health Organization as the "application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of lives". This includes pharmaceuticals, devices, procedures, and organizational systems used in the healthcare industry, as well as computer-supported information systems. In the United States, these technologies involve standardized physical objects, as well as traditional and designed social means and methods to treat or care for patients.

Protected health information (PHI) under U.S. law is any information about health status, provision of health care, or payment for health care that is created or collected by a Covered Entity, and can be linked to a specific individual. This is interpreted rather broadly and includes any part of a patient's medical record or payment history.

Advertising to children refers to the act of advertising products or services to children as defined by national laws and advertising standards.

Health communication is the study and practice of communicating promotional health information, such as in public health campaigns, health education, and between doctor and patient. The purpose of disseminating health information is to influence personal health choices by improving health literacy. Health communication is a unique niche in healthcare that allows professionals to use communication strategies to inform and influence decisions and actions of the public to improve health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">De-identification</span> Preventing personal identity from being revealed

De-identification is the process used to prevent someone's personal identity from being revealed. For example, data produced during human subject research might be de-identified to preserve the privacy of research participants. Biological data may be de-identified in order to comply with HIPAA regulations that define and stipulate patient privacy laws.

Health blogs are niche blogs that cover health topics, events and/or related content of the health industry and the general community.

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, abbreviated the HITECH Act, was enacted under Title XIII of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Under the HITECH Act, the United States Department of Health and Human Services resolved to spend $25.9 billion to promote and expand the adoption of health information technology. The Washington Post reported the inclusion of "as much as $36.5 billion in spending to create a nationwide network of electronic health records." At the time it was enacted, it was considered "the most important piece of health care legislation to be passed in the last 20 to 30 years" and the "foundation for health care reform."

Digital health is a discipline that includes digital care programs, technologies with health, healthcare, living, and society to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery and to make medicine more personalized and precise. It uses information and communication technologies to facilitate understanding of health problems and challenges faced by people receiving medical treatment and social prescribing in more personalised and precise ways. The definitions of digital health and its remits overlap in many ways with those of health and medical informatics.

Healthcare CRM, also known as Healthcare Relationship Management, is a broadly used term for a Customer relationship management system, or CRM, used in healthcare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhetoric of health and medicine</span>

The rhetoric of health and medicine is an academic discipline concerning language and symbols in health and medicine. Rhetoric most commonly refers to the persuasive element in human interactions and is often best studied in the specific situations in which it occurs. As a subfield of rhetoric, medical rhetoric specifically analyzes and evaluates the structure, delivery, and intention of communications messages in medicine- and health-related contexts. Primary topics of focus includes patient-physician communication, health literacy, language that constructs disease knowledge, and pharmaceutical advertising. The general research areas are described below. Medical rhetoric is a more focused subfield of the rhetoric of science.

Health care analytics is the health care analysis activities that can be undertaken as a result of data collected from four areas within healthcare; claims and cost data, pharmaceutical and research and development (R&D) data, clinical data, and patient behavior and sentiment data (patient behaviors and preferences,. Health care analytics is a growing industry in the United States, expected to grow to more than $31 billion by 2022. The industry focuses on the areas of clinical analysis, financial analysis, supply chain analysis, as well as marketing, fraud and HR analysis.

Health data is any data "related to health conditions, reproductive outcomes, causes of death, and quality of life" for an individual or population. Health data includes clinical metrics along with environmental, socioeconomic, and behavioral information pertinent to health and wellness. A plurality of health data are collected and used when individuals interact with health care systems. This data, collected by health care providers, typically includes a record of services received, conditions of those services, and clinical outcomes or information concerning those services. Historically, most health data has been sourced from this framework. The advent of eHealth and advances in health information technology, however, have expanded the collection and use of health data—but have also engendered new security, privacy, and ethical concerns. The increasing collection and use of health data by patients is a major component of digital health.

Federal and state governments, insurance companies and other large medical institutions are heavily promoting the adoption of electronic health records. The US Congress included a formula of both incentives and penalties for EMR/EHR adoption versus continued use of paper records as part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

References

  1. ↑ "What is Health Marketing? | Gateway to Health Communication | CDC". www.cdc.gov. 2017-02-23. Retrieved 2017-11-20.
  2. ↑ Bitner, M.J., "The Evolution of the Services Marketing Mix and its Relationship to Service Quality," in Service Quality: Multidisciplinary and Multinational Perspectives, Brown, S.W., Gummeson, E., Edvardson, B. and Gustavsson, B. (eds), Lexington, Canada, 1991, pp. 23-37.
  3. ↑ "Mastering the 6 Ps of marketing in the health tech industry". Highland Marketing. Retrieved October 7, 2023.
  4. ↑ Bernhardt, Jay (2006). "Improving Health Through Health Marketing". Preventing Chronic Disease. Vol. 3, no. 3. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. pp. A73. PMC   1636721 . PMID   16776874.
  5. ↑ "Influence of Online Marketing Strategies on the Sales Success of B2B Companies (PDF)" (PDF). Modul University Vienna. Retrieved June 29, 2023.
  6. ↑ Ghanadan, Hamid (2019). "Three Things Health Marketers Need To Understand About Gen Z". forbes.com. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  7. ↑ "EXPLANATORY GUIDANCE TO THE PRIVATE HOSPITALS AND MEDICAL CLINICS (ADVERTISEMENT) REGULATIONS 2019 (PDF)" (PDF). Singapore Ministry of Health. Retrieved June 29, 2023.
  8. ↑ "Health Claims". Federal Trade Commission. Retrieved June 29, 2023.
  9. 1 2 3 "Marketing". U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved June 29, 2023.
  10. ↑ "Guidelines for Consumer Advertising of Health Products (PDF)" (PDF). Ad Standards NGO. Retrieved June 29, 2023.
  11. ↑ Compagni, Amelia; Cavalli, Laura; Jommi, Claudio (2008). "Pharmaceutical companies and Italian Regional Governments: Managing relationships in an increasing institutional complexity". Health Policy. 87 (3): 333–341. doi:10.1016/j.healthpol.2008.02.010. PMID   18384907 . Retrieved June 29, 2023.
  12. ↑ Jacob, Nilan T. (2018). "Drug promotion practices: A review". British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. 84 (8): 1659–1667. doi:10.1111/bcp.13513. PMC   6046507 . PMID   29349812.
  13. 1 2 Van Zee A (February 2009). "The promotion and marketing of oxycontin: commercial triumph, public health tragedy". American Journal of Public Health. 99 (2): 221–7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2007.131714. PMC   2622774 . PMID   18799767.
  14. ↑ Uppal, Nishant; Anderson, Timothy S. (2021). "Learning from the Opioid Epidemic: Preventing the Next Healthcare Marketing Crisis". Journal of General Internal Medicine. 36 (11): 3553–3556. doi:10.1007/s11606-021-06799-1. PMC   8606381 . PMID   33904038.
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