Understanding healthcare patients as consumers

Adobe Professional Services’ Valerie Groneman talks about patients as the new consumers and what brands can do to stand out and get their attention in a competitive environment.

Traditionally, the healthcare sector has lagged behind other industries when it comes to digital transformation. It’s been slow to adopt the tools that retail, travel, or hospitality companies have used for years to power meaningful customer experiences.

But the COVID-19 pandemic changed the trajectory for digital transformation in healthcare and propelled the industry forward overnight. The requirement for virtual services via telehealth rapidly moved care online and in July 2021 was found by McKinsey to have stabilized to levels 38x higher than before the pandemic.

Two years later, the expectation for personalized online experiences has strengthened and Healthcare companies must continue to invest in the people, process, and technology needed to usher in the digital-first era of healthcare.

Understanding patients as consumers

More power is in the hands of the patient than ever before when it comes to making healthcare choices. From picking a doctor to comparing costs for shoppable procedures to researching a treatment recommended by a doctor, each of these moments represents an opportunity to deliver a personalized experience.

Using personalization to evolve and improve the healthcare customer experience is a necessary step for any organization to keep pace.

To get personalization right in healthcare, there are two important starting places:

• Put the patient experience first.
  Tap into the same patient-centered mindset used throughout healthcare when designing personalized experiences. Understand the patient persona and the reason for engaging with the brand.
• Be willing to test and learn.
  Adobe Professional Services healthcare experts look across industries to draw on trends they can replicate in the healthcare space. Healthcare organizations must be willing to try new experiences to gather insights and refine the experience. This can be hard in a regulated industry that is used to a more proven approach. The benefit of Adobe Experience Cloud is the ability to quickly launch new experiences and sunset those experiences if they don’t work.

Personalization in a world of data standards

The cornerstone for personalization is data. But naturally, healthcare organizations need to guarantee data is being used as sensitively and compliantly as possible. How exactly is data used in personalization? How is it collected? How is it handled in the most appropriate way?

As a professional services team, we are not new to these questions, and we’ve built our tools around them. Our tools are constantly growing and shaping to meet the specific regulations of the healthcare industry like meeting HIPAA, PII, and PHI requirements.

A new beginning in spring

Adobe Experience Cloud for Healthcare is launching in the next few months, and that’s going to play a big part in data conversations. With the new platform, we’re taking our expertise from working with brands in less regulated sectors and pairing it with the added layers of protection needed in this industry. We’re also bringing brands the power of AI to help automate and streamline processes, and we’ll be able to offer protected data and tailored agreements in our systems to guarantee client data is used most effectively to provide the best customer experiences. This is going to be a game-changer.

Perhaps due to their delayed start in digital transformation, healthcare companies have a great opportunity to get this right now. Many brands in the healthcare industry are building their customer experience infrastructures for the first time. Starting from scratch now means you can build data foundations with the help of Adobe’s professional services. We know our tools and we know healthcare, so it’s the perfect time to come together and help you create a personalized marketing function that will get you in front of the competition today.

Learn more about how Adobe Professional Services is helping healthcare customers accelerate their personalization journey.