Summing up the SXSWi held in Austin, TX from March 12-15th I’d have to say ‘opportunity’ and ‘uncertainty’ were the two words that came up the most following the Social Health sessions at this event.

Opportunity lies ahead for mHealth application development and healthcare IT, as pointed out by Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media, considered to be a thought leader in emerging technology trends.   At the end of his keynote interview he turned to the audience and encouraged all the entrepreneurs to seriously consider Healthcare IT for start-up opportunities there.

And on the mHealth app development front John Pettengill at Razorfish rightly pointed out, mHealth apps need to be patient focused not technology focused, especially when dealing with chronic conditions.  Just because coders can pull out lots of charts and graphs from the data doesn’t mean that it will be useful or attractive to paitents.  As for healthcare IT, the best sessions dealing with Health 2.0, EHRs and the huge gray area of how this uncertain market will develop were the #health2dev session moderated by Indu Subaiya and following session on health apps with BJ Fogg from Stanford University.

At one point Professor Fogg asked how many gamers/app developers were in the audience and one lone guy raised his hand in a room of 100+ people.  I’ll be interested to see how many more gamers will make their into this audience next year.  I think there will be many more.

In a recent white paper I co-authored with Tom Scearce (@TLOTL) on Lead Generation, see blog posting below dated March 16, 2010, we highlighted the trend that many Primary Care (PC) organizations (think small private practices) are selling their practices to Acute Care (AC) organizations (think hospitals and health systems) due to many factors.  The New York Times article below captures the reasons quite nicely.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/health/policy/26docs.html

But it’s got me thinking more about the importance this shift will have on Medical Marketers plans for the not-too-distant future.  If the purchasing decision maker is now part of the corporate office instead of the practice office then your message needs to target the right audience with the kind of information they are seeking.

I’m not saying that the physician is removed from the purchasing equation, but I am saying that the purchasing agent is added to this equation.  Where formerly in the ‘old’ PC model there was usually the physician, maybe the nurse and potentially the office manager as the decision maker(s) for a new product purchase, with the transition to AC owned practices expect added focus on workflow efficiency gains, product volume discounts, etc.

So keep that in mind when you’re reviewing your launch plans for that next medical device product.  Don’t assume the world is the same as it was as recently as 2005 because it isn’t.

Tom Scearce, aka The Lord of the Leads, is a respected colleague & expert on all things involving Lead Generation.  He runs his own consultancy business focused exclusively on this important area of business development.  After working together recently on an engagement in the medical device segment, we decided to collaborate on a white paper to share some fresh ideas with Medical Device Marketers.  Because it’s all about making your life easier, right?

Here’s the link to this new white paper: “How to increase demand for medical devices in today’s changing and challenging market”

I’d certainly appreciate your comments on this topic.  Feel free to share with those you believe may benefit from this information.

Last week I was invited to the Jesse Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University as a guest lecturer for a group of MBA students.  Professor Siddharth Singh asked me to share from my experience of almost 20 years, about launching new products in a variety of industries around the world.

So here’s the list I came up with after thinking about the best & worst new product launches I’ve been involved in and what I’ve learned from them.

1) Ask yourself: How is marketing viewed within the organization?  As a function, like HR or Facilities Management or as a business leader and decision maker.
2) No navel gazing. Always look for new information & opinions outside your organization/team/corporation.

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