As marketing and communications director at digital health prescribing platform Xealth, Heather Caouette is on the front lines of getting the message about the latest developments in healthcare technology out to consumers.

"People are familiar with telehealth visits, especially since the pandemic and mobile apps, but digital health is actually a lot more, including patient education, videos, sometimes transportation or meal delivery services," Caouette says.

Xealth, she says, operates across the whole landscape of healthcare stakeholders—from hospital systems to individual patients. "From the patient's side," Caouette tells Simon, "it's bringing it to their smartphone, to their email, or whatever medium they're using to have those resources there, they can refer back, share as desired, just trying to bring healthcare to where the patient is."

The company uses a variety of methods to tell its story to customers. One strategy is to "put together some customer forums and also use cases so that our customers know what other customers are doing. And it's not just Xealth that's putting those together, we bring the customers together so that they're hearing it straight from another hospital system."

Caouette talks about how organizations can bring out their customers' voices. "It's very important to work closely with our customers, not just to make sure that they're successful, but then also part of that is knowing what the programs are, what the goals of those programs are, and what resources are being put towards making that a reality."

The accelerating pace of change in the healthcare sector and how those changes affect communications is another topic of discussion. Among the changes Caouette predicts: "We're going to see advancements in interoperability. Artificial intelligence is breaking a lot of ground. And so, I think that there are a lot of exciting milestones still ahead of us that are going to improve healthcare in ways that we can't even imagine yet."

Successful communications in the midst of these changes takes professionals who excel at "thinking on their feet and being quick to adapt, not just to the changing media landscape, but being open to learning new areas for healthcare."

"Digital health is just such a new area that we can all learn so much from each other," she says. "And just looking at different mediums and different ways to get those stories out for success is great."

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D S Simon Media helps clients get their stories on television through satellite media tours and by producing and distributing content to the media. The company also produces live social media events.