The Weekly Hash: 04/04/2021
Brandon Edwards
Seasoned healthcare executive in marketing and managed care services
They say that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts — and the healthcare industry seems to agree.
Investors backed digital health brands with $4.1 billion in Q1 alone, B. Well strikes a partnership with MasterCard, and TikTok opens its doors to healthcare marketers.
What’s on our minds this week:
INDUSTRY TRENDS
The first quarter is officially over, and investors have put $4.1 billion to work in healthcare, with an emphasis on new care models, biotech solutions, and digital health technologies. This write-up on the top 10 money raisers spans all of those categories, but we noted something interesting: the theme of in-home care.
Take Ro. After starting with a focus on virtual men's health needs, they're now venturing into pharmacy solutions and home-based care. And DispatchHealth: the company that combined mobile technologies with old-school house calls is using new funding to expand into 100 markets. Once you add in Forward, Cityblock Health, and many others on this list, one thing becomes clear: In the future, in-person care won't automatically mean in-clinic care.
— Shannon Hooper, Chief Growth Officer
HEALTH SYSTEMS
Cross-sector partnerships are springing up around COVID-19 and vaccination efforts, including B.well Connected Health and MasterCard. B.well is a healthcare data aggregator platform focused on supporting population health management. Amid conversations about vaccine passports, B. well is already thinking about how to add vaccination data to its platform and best protect that data—which is where MasterCard comes in.
Tapping into MasterCard’s identity verification solution will provide an added layer of protection for consumers and an easy way for health systems and plans to quickly confirm an individual’s identity without having to look at physical documents like a driver’s license. The partnership highlights the ongoing challenge of balancing critical data collection with privacy concerns as we continue to navigate the pandemic.
— Sarah Natoli, Director, Content Strategy
HEALTH SYSTEMS
When Nina Luker, head of Shutterstock's North American partnerships, was abruptly diagnosed with Stage 4 DLBCL, she looked to her favorite social media platform, TikTok, for support. Luker used TikTok as her "cancer lifeline," posting at every stage of her cancer journey.
Luker's experience shows that TikTok can be great for sharing healthcare's heart-wrenchingly human stories. This humanity makes the app an excellent community-building tool for health systems. But to truly grow a community through TikTok, your content must be made specifically for TikTok, as users will see through lukewarm attempts to get their attention. This growing importance of tailoring content to a platform can be seen across industries, specifically as well-known toy brand, Nerf, plans to hire a Chief TikTok Officer.
— Regan McFarland, Multimedia journalist
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