9 Core Shifts Shaping Health Solutions and Communications
HLTH 2025
HLTH 2025 made one thing crystal clear: the next medical breakthrough will also be a communication breakthrough.
Across sessions and conversations, leaders explored how health innovation only matters if people can understand it, act on it, and feel empowered by it. From human-centered design and data transparency to caregiver support and empathetic organizational change, the conference spotlighted a simple truth—algorithms alone won’t drive the future of healthcare; empathy, design, and meaningful human connection will.
1. Tech for Tech’s Sake Won’t Fly — ROI or Rejection
Inspired by: Multiple AI Discussions, including “Revealing Houston Methodist’s Intelligent Health Care System of Future Bets”
The Challenge: Healthcare is flooded with “AI” and tech pilots that promise disruption but don’t deliver measurable outcomes. Systems now demand proof of ROI — dollars saved, hours freed, or errors reduced. As one exec put it, “If it doesn’t save 30% or more on an admin task, it’s shelfware.” Clinicians are fatigued by tech that adds steps, not relief.
The Opportunity / Need: The winners will be tools — and stories — that tie technology to time restored to care. Creative and media teams can translate efficiency metrics into human value: more face-to-face time, fewer denials, fewer drop-offs. ROI must become a storytelling genre.
PH Role: “Prove it. Humanize it. Scale it.”
Our tech and tool interventions must imply the human benefit: the time a nurse gets back, the anxiety avoided by a faster prior authorization, the physician who goes home on time. Watch-out: Avoid the trap of “innovation theater” — shiny launches that don’t link to measurable or meaningful change. Build the ROI case in the creative brief itself.
2. Design for Humans, Not for Tech Systems
Inspired by: “From Pilots to Superintelligence” and “Designing the Future of People-Centered Healthcare”
The Challenge: Healthcare’s digital overload is real: patients juggle portals, payers, apps, and bots. Clinicians toggle between eight systems per patient visit. “Every new tool becomes one more password,” said one CIO. New interventions — even well-intentioned — often fail because they create new work instead of removing it. As Tim White, GSK CD&TO, cautioned, “How we metabolize tech has an impact. If all tech stopped today, it would take 5 to 10 years to catch up.”
The Opportunity / Need: The future belongs to teams that design with humans, not for them, and build technology that actually removes friction. As leaders emphasized, integration, data quality, and partnership matter more than novelty. People don’t want another portal — they want fewer clicks, clearer choices, and tools that free their focus.
PH Role: “Simplify the system. Amplify the person.”
Creative and media teams can make simplification visible — showing friction falling away. Campaigns that dramatize seamlessness (“It just works”) resonate more than feature lists. When showcasing new technologies and interventions — from AI tools to discussion guides to benefits verification pop-ups — build narrative proof that tech reduces effort, not adds it. Watch-out: Avoid overhyping AI or complexity. The creative bar is usability, not novelty. Integration — not invention — is what earns trust.
3. Empowered Data, Empowered People
Inspired by: “Reimaging Healthcare for Patients”
The Challenge: Patients and providers sit on mountains of health data they can’t easily use. Records are trapped in EHRs, unreadable PDFs, or systems that don’t talk. Bias is compounded by missing data for women, older adults, minorities. As Amy Gleason, a panel speaker, said of her daughter Morgan: “Her life could’ve changed years earlier if we’d had her full record.”
The Opportunity / Need: Data access is shifting from compliance to empowerment. The creative challenge: help patients and caregivers understand their right to own, request, and act on their data — to ask better questions and demand better care. Drive discovery around: “What’s in my health record?” “How do I share it?” “What does it mean?”
PH Role: “Turn ownership into agency.”
Campaigns should make “data” feel personal — like holding your own X-ray for the first time. Create storytelling around data literacy and bias transparency. The ability to see your whole data story becomes the way to navigate your whole health story – things like doctor discussion guides and clinical trial opportunities are anchored by understood personal data. Watch-out: Don’t overwhelm with technical jargon or privacy panic. Make empowerment feel simple, safe, and human. When in doubt, fewer dashboards, more dialogue.
4. Caregiving Is the Hidden Health System
Inspired by: Care-economy discussions
The Challenge: 63 million Americans are unpaid caregivers. They navigate complexity, emotional labor, and financial strain — often invisible to care models or brand comms. Caregivers control adherence: whether prescriptions are refilled, appointments kept, or side effects monitored. Yet few communications speak to them.
The Opportunity / Need: This is a massive white space for empathy-driven media. Support caregivers as the connective tissue of care — not side characters. Pharma and health brands can position themselves as partners in sustaining caregivers’ wellbeing, simplifying their lives, and validating their emotional experience.
PH Role: “See the person behind the patient.”
Communication (creative & media) can reposition caregivers as essential health partners, both in marketing and patient support service deliveries. Create content & campaigns for the caregiver,focusing on energy restoration, emotional validation, and micro-support (“a 3-minute breather”). Then create audience definitions to reach them. Watch-out: Avoid romanticizing resilience; design for relief, not heroism.
5. Humanizing the Culture of Change
Inspired by: “Thoughtful Change Management”
The Challenge: The barrier to innovation isn’t ignorance — it’s inertia. Clinicians and staff resist change because new tech threatens competence and workflow safety. “People aren’t afraid of AI. They’re afraid of being bad at their jobs,” said one CMIO. Every friction point — training, login, audit fear — becomes a “pebble in their shoes” that stops momentum.
The Opportunity / Need: Adoption requires emotional safety, not just training decks. Comms and experience design can normalize experimentation, celebrate iteration, and de-risk failure. Change needs storytellers who make trying feel safe.
PH Role: “Make change feel human.”
When introducing new behaviors (discussion guides, adherence tools, benefits verification pop-ups), creative should model adoption, not just announce availability. Use testimonial formats, peer-to-peer narratives, and simple rituals (“First 30 Days”) to make learning feel social and supported. Watch-out: Don’t just promote new tools — demonstrate how people’s behavior or experiences changed because of them.
6. Co-Create to Earn Credibility
Inspired by: Multiple panels focused on “Patient Voice & Impact” programming
The Challenge: Most innovation is still built by healthy people for healthy people. Tech and creative often miss the lived realities of underrepresented, neurodiverse, or low-literacy audiences. Without co-design, interventions fail to resonate, and “diversity” becomes a checkbox.
The Opportunity / Need: Co-creation is not just ethics — it’s strategy. Inclusion multiplies accuracy, empathy, and adoption. Real-world validation (“this was built with us”) drives engagement far better than aspirational messaging.
PH Role: “Design with, not for.”
Bring patients, caregivers, and clinicians into the creative process early — not as focus groups, but as co-authors (look to leverage our patient advocacy practice). Feature their fingerprints in the final storytelling: faces, language, decisions. Watch-out: Inclusion isn’t about tokenism; it’s about shared ownership of design and narrative.
7. Rebuilding Trust — Radical Transparency & Value Clarity
Inspired by: “How Not to Accept the Status Quo: A Conversation with Marc Cuban”
The Challenge: Public trust in pharma and healthcare has eroded. Patients are cynical about pricing, payers, and motives. Cuban’s challenge — “Patients are getting ripped off” — encapsulates the moment. Lack of transparency fuels disengagement and misinformation.
The Opportunity / Need: There’s white space in honesty. Brands that demystify cost, process, and outcomes can rebuild credibility faster than any campaign promise. Transparency itself becomes a differentiator — and a creative canvas.
PH Role: “Speak the truth.”
As a critical new tenor and message platform in DTC, lean into the movement and speak with transparency. Show what care costs and who benefits. Beyond pricing, use plain language and interactive breakdowns to rebuild fairness and trust. Watch-out: Authenticity requires courage — simplification without condescension, candor without cynicism.
8. Longevity = Quality + Meaning
Inspired by: “Longevity Reimagined: The AI Powered Personalized Health Moonshot”
The Challenge: Longevity science is shifting from lifespan (years lived) to health-span (years lived well). Yet culture still defines “health” as disease avoidance. Without a richer narrative, wellness can feel inaccessible — disconnected from meaning or belonging.
The Opportunity / Need: The next health movement unites medicine, psychology, and daily life. Storytelling can reframe health as sustained energy, clarity, and participation — being able to do what matters most, for longer.
PH Role: “Make living with purpose the measurable outcome.”
Creative and media work can translate scientific measures (HRV, mobility, cognition) into human moments — walking with ease, laughing with friends, feeling present. Express vitality through tone and language rather than lifestyle imagery. Watch-out: Ground every story in evidence and possibility, not perfection.
9. Trials as Transformation Stories
Inspired by: “Cancer Changes Lives, Clinical Trials Change Cancer”
The Challenge: Most patients still see clinical trials as a last resort. Misconceptions about placebos, fears of “being experimented on,” and logistical burdens (travel, time, eligibility) keep enrollment below 7 % of U.S. patients. Yet many late-stage trials now provide better oversight, earlier access, and a higher quality of life.
The Opportunity / Need: Reframe trials as an empowered choice — not a desperate one. Highlight real stories like Alicia Delario’s: 4.5 years NED on a trial, manageable side effects, deep monitoring, and community support. Humanize the experience and make “Ask about trials early” a cultural reflex.
PH Role: “Ask Early. Ask Often.”
Creative, media, and med-comms (think p-value) teams can turn participation into a symbol of agency and connection — not risk. Pair plain-language myth-busting with authentic faces of trial participants and caregivers. Design tools and triggers that make the question visible across touchpoints — from EHR nudges to waiting-room prompts to search content. Watch-out: Avoid glorifying survival stories or overselling outcomes — focus on dignity, transparency, and choice.
Questions, comments? Please contact me! daphne.dodson@publicishealth.com