Healthcare IT Marketing Is Needed – #HITMC

The past 3 days, I’ve been deep in the thralls of the Healthcare IT Marketing and PR Conference (HITMC). It brings together a few hundred of the leading healthcare IT marketing and PR professionals. This year we have quite a few healthcare (not IT) marketing and PR professionals as well. I think at HITMC 2018 we’re going to have to expand the conference to include all healthcare marketers as well. Regardless, I’m extremely proud of being part of such a great community.

Yes, I said community, because that’s what HITMC really is…it’s a community of healthcare IT marketing and PR professionals. It’s something special and I think those in attendance at the conference feel it when they attend the event. Those who attend, care for each other and want to see the rest of the community be successful. At this year’s event we’ve also incorporated a number of outside perspectives to try and make sure we’re not just an echo chamber of the same people saying the same things. That’s a challenge that we’ll continue to battle.

What’s been amazing to me about this community is how much they want to improve healthcare. Certainly there are a few outliers that are only in this for the money. However, the large majority of marketing and PR professionals do the work they do because they believe they can impact healthcare in a good way. They believe that the products and services their company offers can make healthcare better. That’s a powerful idea and I assure you that most of them have this as their goal. They could probably make more money pedaling nail polish or other consumer product, but they chose healthcare because of the unique mission healthcare offers.

At last year’s event I had this epiphany when I realized that the work we do with the Healthcare IT Marketing and PR community is important not just for the individuals who attend the conference and not for the companies whom they represent, but for healthcare as a whole. Many of the marketing and PR professionals in the HITMC community work for companies that can make healthcare better. Many doctors, nurses, front desk staff, etc are suffering needlessly because they don’t know that there’s a solution to their problems out there. That’s where marketing and PR professionals come in. If they’re not doing their job, then many people suffer in ignorance.

As I mentioned, there are some rotten apples out there that are only in it for the money. They aren’t trying to market something of value, they’re just trying to line the coffers of their company. However, my experience is that these people are more the exception than the rule.

This conference is exhausting to organize. Especially for my wife who bears the largest burden as I’m busy working on the conference. However, when I think about the importance of the work we do, it makes me proud to be a small part of the extraordinary HITMC (Health IT Marketing and PR Community).

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

3 Comments

  • John,

    Looked like a wonderful conference and great work. I am fresh off #NatCon17 where I heard the Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, speak. He talked about the need for health communicators to get out the most accurate information about health and mental health to the public. Several of the health communicators tweeted/cheered about how their communications degrees were not a waste :). In this context some of the #HITmc tweets got me thinking about who the “customer” is and this may include the general public as well? Not sure if this is one of “beyond the echo chamber” goals you were talking about or does this go beyond the scope of Health IT marketing? As a blogger I found some of the #HITmc tweets helpful and did not know this was ongoing community. I will stay tuned for some more tips and tricks. Thanks ,
    Sean

  • Sean,
    Thanks for following along on the #HITMC hashtag. The community is really great and one I’m sure you’d enjoy. We’ll be going east next year, so it might be close enough where you could join us. Either way, the online community will be vibrant.

  • Will stay tuned #HITmc. I will be happy to make an east coast conference and perhaps share stories about our care management program switching from good old Microsoft word to an actual EHR. Also will be trying to sample more EHR’s to share on my blog 🙂

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