Why Audience, Geography, and Integrity matter in the future of healthcare.
When connecting with an audience, the advice is always to ‘tell a story’ or more accurately, “tell your story.”
I’ve been creating and researching digital strategies in the health field for over two decades as new technologies replace the old. As the digital native generations – those born into a world post Google and smartphones – emerge, the role of stories are becoming increasingly important. This is what got me wondering: what is my story?
Looking back over the span of programs and research I’ve had the opportunity to develop, I realized my story starts and ends with change. Change IS the paradigm – not something we are shifting from or to, but something we are living. The power of change with the digital native generations has become a passion for me over the years – understanding how ‘change’ is influencing and even predicting the future of heathcare.
Digging through some really old papers, I recently showed my daughter (a digital native) the original letter that was attached to my resume for my first ‘real job’. She remarked: Wow, I didn’t know they had typewriter font on computers back then! “Back then?” I thought…and then informed her that the typewriter ‘font’ was from an actual typewriter. ‘You did that on a typewriter!?’ What a concept! But it got me thinking about what I have been doing since ‘back then’ and the changes in technology I’ve experienced, incorporated into my digital strategies work, and and am building for the digital native consumer. What struck me is how constant some important factors are as the technologies we use or invent continue to evolve. In health research, or any emerging field in health technology, the keys for trying to figure out whether to take a leap, to decide if an idea really ‘has it’, or take the risk on a vision rests on three key components: Audience, Geography and Integrity.
We all start with passion, and this is a critical ingredient, but it is just what gets the engines running. It makes the long days and sometimes longer nights seem reasonable. It gets us through the downs, the negative outcomes and the failures on the road to success. But passion will get us only so far.
Invest in your Audience
Of all the important stakeholders who will be involved in your product, my story starts with the consumer – the end user, the participant. And today’s consumer is no longer just a consumer, but a feedback loop. They will be more honest and care more about what you produce than any other contributor. They are – arguably – the only stakeholder which is singularly invested in your product working. As developers, designers and researchers we think we understand this – it is taught in business school, marketing programs, and tech development courses. The consumer is not just the buyer, but part of the process. In health research, they are the participant or study subject and without them there is no trial or research study. In product development they are the beta tester. Yet, sometimes we forget how important their perspective is to our success. Consider this: if consumers don’t like how something tastes (for example, a new beverage), or makes them feel (a new medication), they will not buy it and they will not use it. We can’t wait until we are at the tail end of a process to wonder if our product will meet the consumers needs or preferences. In research we study symptoms, side effects and biophysical reactions. It is far too rare that we ask not only how they felt about the experience but what they expected from the experience in the beginning. More and more attention is (appropriately) paid to patient reported outcomes (or PROs) in research, but even this approach can occur late in the research life cycle. Bringing the consumer, participant, or end user into the process in the beginning of a study or product development process may fundamentally change where you end up.
Understand the Lay of the Land
Consumers are your most honest ally, but knowing the circumstances into which your product or study is going to be released is equally essential. Learning what a consumer audience loves or hates about something we care deeply about is valuable, but if we fail to understand the context in which it is going to be delivered, it may never make it out of a trial, or pilot or prototype. Many entrepreneurial stories talk about ‘the right timing’, or ‘part good fortune’ or ‘the right circumstances’. This may be a contributing factor, but the story underneath that stroke of luck is someone who had the foresight to understand the context in which they were developing their product. If researchers are testing an intervention to be delivered through in-patient clinics, but do not consider changes in the health care delivery system that may be occurring, they may miss shifts that could impact how the intervention can be delivered when the study is over. Technological advancements are providing opportunities to move treatments from in-patient to out-patient, and out-patient to home (or handheld device!). These changes and the speed at which they occur, will impact how a tool, treatment or device will be delivered and paid for. Missing these shifts in the healthcare geography can derail even the best idea. I was at a technology conference where the panel was discussing how quickly technological advancements were evolving in the health science sector. While much of the discussion was around policy and regulatory barriers, I wondered aloud – what if the technology is moving faster than the regulations? What if the consumer demands a product for which there is no well-defined regulation? It was clear in the ensuing discussion that the answer was an uncomfortable truth: companies who understand these contextual factors will create products that directly meet the demand of the consumer even in the absence of regulatory steps to inform the development process. Development will not wait, but instead will force change in the regulatory process. This is not a discussion of the importance or value of the regulatory process, it is just one illustration of how knowing the lay of the land can impact the way a study is developed or a product is brought to market. Context matters.
A Word about Integrity
In health research, scientific evidence and scientific integrity reign supreme. Collecting and analyzing data based on validated and established methods is also an essential component of good product development. We tend to love what we love (favorite beer, brand of vitamin, styles for our home etc). What we don’t love is to find out we loved these things and yet they were (fill in the blank here: killing us, making us sick, poor quality, unsafe) – in a word: faulty. We owe it to ourselves and our consumers to do our best to understand what failures are possible, probable, or unlikely. Once we understand this, we are obligated to share what risks we are asking our end users to take so that they can make an informed choice. In a research context, it is incumbent upon researchers to fundamentally protect study participants in the search for better treatments, better quality and improved cost/benefit. There are many processes in place to ensure that these protections are paramount in research, and the risks are conveyed in language that the participant can understand. Yet even these well established practices are being revised, as a result of technology advancements, to ensure that the integrity of data gathering and analysis remains current with new ways of capturing it. This is also true for products developed for the healthcare market. The emerging digital native generations no longer just assume a product has been adequately vetted prior to launch. But, they have the tools to find out…and the social media presence to share what they learn with the world. A development process based on quality and integrity is the third essential component to improve chances of success when introducing new technologies or new research. Consumers expect more than ‘believing’ that something has value – they seek evidence that it has value, and that is when they can believe in it too.
Reflecting back on my typewriter days, I realized that my story is about change and how change must always rely on the audience, the geography and integrity. It matters less that I typed my resume on a typewriter…it mattered that the content had value, that I was sharing it with a group that was hiring, and that the material presented was true and verifiable. These three elements were what allowed me to be successful in that job search so that 30 years later I can continue to tell my story. My daughter will create her resume on a laptop, or mobile device, or will create a virtual resume on technology not yet invented. She will embrace the power of the social impact culture and will engage in new ways I can’t yet imagine. When change becomes the paradigm, the fundamentals to support that change will remain constant – she will need to make sure her content is valuable, that she directs it to the appropriate audience, and that what she presents is true. This is true as she starts to tell her story, and is true for the stories we create every day as we impact the future of healthcare.