Health Tech vs. Dot-Com Era: Why Communications Matter More than Ever

In some ways, the current excitement around all things “health tech” bears similarities to the dot-com era of the 1990s and early 2000s.

This month, a new report by Venrock showed that industry insiders believe the number of healthcare IT companies will increase over the next few years. At the same time, there is concern around the ability of talent and funding to drive the innovation engine around healthcare tech. Many feel they are still waiting for artificial intelligence to make a difference in healthcare. Regarding technologies like blockchain, even more feel it is still struggling to find its role in the industry.

An effective communications strategy is perenially important across all industries, giving you credibility, precision and the ability to develop personal relationships with your stakeholders. At the same time, the health tech world presents unique opportunities of its own.

In looking at the companies that survived the dot-com bubble as well as lessons from the biopharmaceutical and biotech sectors, there are four key communications tenets that will serve the health technology industry well.

1. Do not innovate for innovation’s sake. While many may place value on a consumer tech product with a trendy factor—almost everyone has their own wish list of “cool tech” they’d like to buy—the true measure of the value in health tech is its ability to improve the health and well-being of a patient. By making this the focus of any communications, we can effectively put into perspective the incremental but vital benefit that the technology brings.
2. Manage expectations around what your tech will do for healthcare. There have been several casualties to date and they will unfortunately be joined by others in time to come. Progress in the health tech world does not mirror the trajectory seen in the “traditional” tech sector, and the onus is on us to educate the public about this.
3. First, do no harm. While technology is generally warmly embraced by an increasingly tech-savvy world, concerns around privacy, integrity, discrimination and data mismanagement have grown louder. Just like how doctors entering the profession are taught “primum non nocere,” it is crucial to be open about the risk-benefit trade-off that any piece of health technology will bring so that informed decisions on its adoption can be made.
4. The more high tech you are, the more human you need to be. No amount of technology will ever replace the care and human touch that doctors, nurses and family members bring to patients. Critically, technology should always be the tool to improve the work of healthcare professionals, not to replace them. Understanding this will certainly facilitate communications with the professional community, where the level of adoption of technology still varies widely across specialties and generations.

All this ultimately leads us to the concept of responsible technology. The world as we knew it was permanently transformed after the dot-com era—generally for the better.

We have the opportunity to be a part of the history around how the health tech community will take the high road in improving the way we manage our health.

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Jacelyn Seng brings together two of her greatest passions—healthcare and technology—in her work in integrated communications. Her career of nearly two decades began with Fortune 500 technology companies in software, hardware, e-commerce and consulting. Her healthcare expertise spans multiple therapeutic areas, from the most common and well-researched conditions to some of the rarest diseases across genders, ages and races.