Navigating Healthcare with Content Strategy
Designing for healthcare is difficult enough without the added complexity of internal politics, governance, and issues of content ownership. Yet many healthcare organizations deal with exactly that: a tangled maze of landmines and other surprises. Luckily, UX Booth’s Marli Mesibov has been in the trenches, and she’s returned to share her lessons learned.
As a practicing content strategist and user experience professional, UX Booth’s own editorial director Marli Mesibov has been through the ringer. And coming up in Las Vegas on Thursday, April 6th at the Health IT Marketing & PR Conference (HITMC), she’s excited to share some of her lessons-learned during a redesign of the Harvard Pilgrim website.
For those practicing content strategy, it probably comes as no surprise that people are usually at the heart of organizational content struggles. Whether it’s a battle of territory or opinions, developing and executing a sustainable content strategy often comes down to negotiating the right buy-in and empowering the right people in the right places.
When Marli’s team dove in and discovered the vast amounts of content hidden beneath the surface of their client, Harvard Pilgrim, they knew they had a great big hill to climb. Marli’s talk, titled Finally Answering: Who Owns the Website?, will walk through this process:
When my team set out to redesign the Harvard Pilgrim website, we knew a content audit and new IA would be a significant part of determining the design choices. What we didn’t expect was the magnitude of the content we would discover, and the internal politics we would navigate right up to launch. As a content strategist and UX practitioner, I learned more over the course of this project than I have on any other, and along the way determined a new process for blending content marketing with governance and organizational change.
While Marli’s talk is totally enough to convince you to attend, there are even MORE benefits that content- and UX-minded folks can get out of this conference. Here are just a few other talks at HITMC, and they sound pretty awesome:
Healthcare isn’t Funny – Saying Screw You to the Status Quo, by Burt Rosen and Lindsay Yale
We hate health care. So why are we here? To help drive change, and to help people figure out a system that seems designed to work against them. We want to be the champion for people and challenge the industry every step of the way.
And that’s how we operate our marketing efforts. From hosting real patient panels at industry conferences, to creating a first-of-its kind health care shopping trends report that was inspired more from AirBnB and Charity:Water than from traditional white papers, to our #WhatTheHealthCare social-based platform collecting the WTF/OMG health care stories from people (now 700 tweets strong), we have talked to real people, and helped the broader industry understand what real people need.
How Cape Cod Healthcare became New England’s first digital publisher of health news and information, by Jim Ylisela
Launched in August 2015, CapeCodhealthnews.com has attracted thousands of loyal readers, with content that focuses less on promoting the institution and more on showcasing the people its serves—and the experts who provide the care.
In this presentation, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the birth of this dynamic, online brand publishing news site from Jim Ylisela, a longtime journalist and veteran consultant who worked with Cape Cod Healthcare on this project.
Words Matter – How ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) Quality Checks Written Content for Clarity, by Lindsay Dudbridge and Fergal McGovern
Patients, family members and caregivers need accurate health information that is accessible and understandable. The American Society of Clinical Oncology has adopted an automated approach to help with the challenges of providing the right cancer-related information to a large (>24m visits in 2015) online audience on Cancer.net.
This case study shows in very practical ways how a content heavy organisation like ASCO has adopted technology to drive clearer, more consistent communication. Ultimately this benefits their readers, both caregivers, family members and patients alike.
And Lots More
These are just a few of the interesting, relevant sessions for those of us working in content—not to mention those of us working in content and healthcare. Check out the full program for the 2017 Heath IT Marketing & PR Conference, taking place April 5-7. You can find registration information on the conference website. And if you decide to go, be sure to let Marli know (on Twitter or IRL)!
