PSFK Conference NYC (Part 2): Building Healthy Brands With Heart
On April 2nd I attended the PSFK Conference NYC. This is a multi-post series where I share some of the highlights.
PANEL: Building Healthy Brands With Heart featuring Richard Fine (Help Remedies), Sean Khozin & Jay Parkinson (Hello Health)
There’s a number of flaws with the current Healthcare model. According to iamweather.com,
“Both Help Remedies and HelloHealth have identified the shortcomings of a medical system that has placed the continued success of the medical business machine ahead of the care of patients. Medications are developed to satisfy marketing departments and product schedules and don’t have any connection to actually making you feel better.”
- One of the 1st statistics the panel pointed out was that we’ve doubled our life expectancy since 1900, but its flattened over the past several years.It costs $10,000 to treat asthma, but $3,000 to cure it
- The current customers of Doctors aren’t the patients – it’s the Insurance companies that pay Doctors
- The Insurance companies end up increasing the Doctors’ overhead (and raising our costs)
HELP REMEDIES:
- Richard said he launched Help Remedies to simplify medication from ingredients to packaging.
- He also said that we need to get innovation around the Doctor/Patient relationship instead of around who can sell the cheapest insurance
- Rich said we should check out the Yellow Tail wine case study to get a better idea of how Help Remedies has structured their marketing and their business (Yellow Tail took a category that was confusing to most people – wine – and simplified it in a way that made people comfortable purchasing it).
Jinal Shah has some interesting thoughts on her Constant Beta blog about Re-inventing Healthcare.
HELLO HEALTH
- Jay gave us a great Clay Shirky quote: “When we change the way we communicate, we change society.”
- The Hello Health guys went on to talk about how they wanted to make simplify Healthcare the way companies like Etsy, Amazon, and ZipCar have simplified their industries.
- Hello Health helps you connect w/ your doctor online: Doctors have online profiles to humanize them.
- Any Dr. in the US can sign up.
- You can use videochat w/ your Doctor and the chat functions like a blog post so you can keep track of your discussions (be honest – do you remember everything your Doctor tells you?)
- Hello Health also acts as a social network for Doctors – it’s a platform just like Facebook (they’re going to open up API) – it’s about removing the middleman
- Sean added that “(technology) should not be a barrier between patient and Doctor.”
LINK: Jay on Tumblr - Jay Parkinson + MD + MPH
SUMMARY: The main idea here is that the Healthcare industry (along with music, newspaper, auto, etc.) has been operating on an outdated business model for far too long. It’s time to get back to basics. Life is complicated enough – healthcare should be simple.
BREAK: Open Source Education
We were introduced to some interesting things going on in the world of education, including:
LINKS:
iamtheweather.com- PSFK Conference NYC
Constant Beta – Highlights from the PSFK Conference 2009
The Barbarian Group – Interactive Advertising and Media Placement Companies Don’t Mix
The Barbarian Group – Hello Health Marketing Campaign
Photos from PSFK Conference NYC 09
Gareth Kay – Looking Back at PSFK New York
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment or re-tweet it. Oh, and if you’re looking for a Junior Planner/Strategist in NYC (or know someone who is) -email me at DennisDemori [at] Gmail [dot] com.
