Our Health Care is the Worst Consumer Product on the Market
By Steve Smith
That's what Kirsty Whelan, VP of Strategy for Imre Health, says in her recent Ad Age article: Why Empathy is Good Medicine for Marketers.
Whelan says it's confounding that the point-of-care experience is so underwhelming given how seamlessly our lives are integrated with health information. "The watch I wear on my wrist knows how fast my heart is beating. I carry a supercomputer in my back pocket that gives me access to exponentially more information than 'Gray's Anatomy.' Yet somehow, instead of improving the consumer experience, this proliferation of technology has made our providers colder and our care more costly."
This piece is a must-read for anybody who thinks health care could really pick up its game in the user experience category. And that, I guess, is everybody.
She says that only by forging a path to empathy can brands and institutions hope to add value to the health care consumer experience, and cites some interesting innovations by companies that are "leading with empathy" they include Cochlear, Merck, Philips and others.
