Developing strong PR campaigns in health tech – a sector that spans everything from digital health platforms and telemedicine to wearables and digital therapeutics – requires more than just a ‘copy and paste’ of the approach you’d use in any other area of tech PR. Whether you’re an in house consultant moving into health tech from another sector of technology communications, or a health tech founder looking to dip your toe into PR for the first time, here are some unique factors to consider.
Regulatory challenges and stakeholders
Executing PR strategies for health tech companies comes with its own challenges and quirks. Firstly, it means having a thorough understanding of what is a very complex regulatory environment, from FDA, to HIPAA and various region-specific regulations. Founders will undoubtedly have this information already, but they’ll need to communicate this to any non-specialist consultants coming into the business.
To add to this, your messaging needs to target a varied and complex set of stakeholders, including healthcare providers and clinicians, patients and advocacy groups, administrators, insurance providers, investors, and regulatory bodies. This sets health tech apart from other tech businesses, where the pool of stakeholders can be much smaller.
The media environment
Beyond getting to grips with the tech you’re working with, delivering PR for health tech companies (whether that’s VCs or startups) involves navigating a new media environment. If you’re an in-house consultant or CMO that has previously worked primarily with tech media, the nature of life sciences and healthcare media might come as a surprise. While tech media moves at a million miles per hour, often in response to quick product iterations and updates, and exclusives are gold dust; the healthcare media is often slower and more methodical, led by research publication timelines and industry conferences rather than rapid product updates.
The healthcare media wants to hear a different story to the angle many tech journalists will be looking for. In the tech world, business impact is everything – bonus points if you can combine this with messaging and proofpoints around user experience. But in the healthcare industry, patient outcomes are the key metric. It’s not enough to simply offer up an introductory briefing with your company (unless they’ve got something truly novel to offer) – instead, journalists want to hear about how your company promotes a patient-centric and clinical problem-centric approach.
Trust is also essential for all players in the health tech ecosystem. Across other areas of tech, some businesses have historically gotten away with a ‘move fast and break things’ approach, but delivering exceptional health tech PR results means establishing deep credibility. Spokespeople need to use every media interaction to continually prove their own credibility and expertise. Ultimately, payors and hospitals need to trust the healthcare solutions they are investing in, especially when it comes to cultivating this trust among patients.
Measuring success
In other areas of tech, success is often measured by volume of coverage or brand awareness. But often when we speak to health tech clients, their priority isn’t a huge spread of tier 2 and 3 coverage or a huge share of voice among competitors – it’s high quality pieces that influence key opinion leaders and have an impact on clinical adoption.
Writing a new playbook
To succeed in health tech PR, communicators need to evolve beyond traditional tech approaches and develop specialised expertise, recognising the need for a more nuanced approach. Health tech is an expansive, complex ecosystem: PR consultants and communications teams that can successfully bridge the communication gap between innovators, clinicians, investors, and patients can prove themselves to be invaluable strategic partners.