Health IT Marketing Minutes – May 2026

TOPICS:

Posted By: Carol Flagg May 30, 2026

What makes marketing in the health IT space unique? Who are the movers and shakers? What’s working, what’s trending? Where can you learn more? This monthly roundup post will focus in on all things health IT when it comes to marketing.

To Listen

ICYMI – On this episode I talked to Lea Chatham, Head of U.S. Marketing for Heidi Health. She joins the show to talk about how Heidi Health is winning both Mindshare and Marketshare in AI scribe healthcare technology.

To Read

Unlock Health
Reporting isn’t enough: How healthcare marketing analytics drives enterprise value – Ben Fuqua, Analytics Executive at Unlock Health says, I’ve spent much of my career learning how systems work, identifying the levers that make them perform differently, and tweaking them to learn the combinations of investments, operational rules, and structure that improve business results. I’ve done this for airlines, retail, manufacturing, restaurants, beverages, and healthcare. (Hint: beverages were the most fun!). Ten years ago, I started working in healthcare in a full-time capacity. My emphasis was on leveraging healthcare data and systems to improve health system performance, with marketing, CRM, and patient experience systems as the levers to bring those strategies to reality.

Swaay.Health
Dropping Egos, Ditching Fluff, and Finding Strong Ground at Swaay.Health LIVE 2026 – Colin Hung writes, Navigating today’s healthcare marketing challenges requires more than just reading another trend report. True innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. Sometimes, you have to step entirely out of the daily grind and into a room where egos are explicitly checked at the door. In an industry obsessed with new tools, our strongest asset is still real, unfiltered human connection.

anthonyBarnum
The New AI Launch Playbook: PR Strategies for Compressed Timelines – Melissa Anthony at anthonyBarnum writes, PR is pivotal to a successful AI launch. Media placements build third-party credibility, fuel GEO search visibility, and communicate key messages and differentiation to decision-making and market-shaping audiences. Momentum matters. Yet launch timelines are compressing as companies race to establish leadership positions and claim first-mover advantage. Not every marketing and PR launch will benefit from a traditional 90-day runway. Companies are working with 45-, 30-, or even shorter timelines.

Matter Communications
From Press Hit to Pipeline: Connecting PR to Revenue – Grace Torrance & Melody Curran at Matter Communications write, When you’re in PR, you get very used to “the big question:” How does any of this boost revenue? It’s a fair question. The relationship is not as direct as any of us, even PR pros, would like. The fact remains that no single placement closes a sale on its own. An interview doesn’t add an email to the mailing list. Connecting the dots between brand awareness to pipeline demand is something our team is always exploring.

KNB Communications
Content marketing 3.0: engaging healthcare decision makers – Laura Hill, Senior Growth Manager  at KNB Communications writes, Healthcare content marketing is evolving, fast. What worked even two years ago, keyword-stuffed blogs, gated PDFs, generic thought leadership, is no longer enough to influence today’s healthcare decision makers. Welcome to Content Marketing 3.0: a smarter, more strategic approach built for AI-driven discovery, longer buying cycles, and highly discerning audiences. If you’re targeting health system executives, clinical leaders, or enterprise buyers, this isn’t just a shift, it’s a reset.

Brafton
Is AI Making Marketing More Human? Insights from the 2026 Global Workplace Survey – Chad Hetherington, Writer & Content Marketing Specialist at Brafton says, It’s easy to assume that as AI usage increases, so too might everyday independence. But a new report shows that the opposite may actually be true; that “AI power users”, those who use AI tools regularly at work and in their personal lives, are less likely to work alone, and more likely to collaborate and socialize with their coworkers than “late adopters.”

Agency News

Supreme Group Tops O’Dwyer’s PR Agency 2026 Ranking for Growth and Climbs to 4 in Healthcare
O’Dwyer’s has released its 2026 PR Firm Rankings, and Supreme Group has posted one of the most significant climbs in the chart’s history. The firm ranked 1 out of 140 firms for growth, with net fees up over 140 percent year-on-year. It also climbed from 9th to 4th on the PR Firms Healthcare Agencies list, and from 16th to 11th on the overall PR Firms Ranking list.

PRWeek
Agency Business Report Spotlight 2026: Finn Partners – The values-led independent firm continues to make its mark with standout work and innovative technology.

Envision Health
Envision Health featured on California Business Journal: Times Are Changing For Healthcare and Healthcare IT Marketing – Envision Health was recently featured in a California Business Journal article exploring how healthcare and health IT marketing are evolving in today’s rapidly changing landscape. The piece brings together insights sparked by conversations at the Swaay.Health conference, where industry leaders gathered to discuss what’s next.

Matter Communications
DeepIntent Becomes First Healthcare DSP to Integrate OptimizeRx’s Authenticated EHR Network – OptimizeRx Corp., a provider of healthcare technology solutions helping life sciences companies reach and engage healthcare providers (HCPs) and patients at the most important decision points, announced that DeepIntent, the leading healthcare demand-side platform (DSP), will be the first DSP to integrate OptimizeRx’s proprietary electronic health record (EHR) network into its healthcare advertising platform.

Marketing Hires & Now Hiring

Openings for:

  • Behavioral Health Growth Marketing Director

  • Market Development Director (Payer – Bridge)

Events & Communities - Swaay.Health LIVE Takeaways

Swaay Awards to Healthcare NOW Radio Network Shows
The Swaay Podcast of the Year awards are part of the annual Swaay.Health Awards, a national recognition program that celebrates excellence in healthcare marketing, communications, PR, patient experience, and health IT storytelling. These awards are presented each year at the Swaay.Health LIVE conference, most recently held in April this year. Special shout outs and congratulations to 2 Healthcare NOW Radio Network shows – Health Stealth Radio and The Healthtech Marketing Show.

And don’t miss everyone’s commentary on this year’s Swaay.Health Live at their LinkedIn Hashtag #SwaayHealth

After Swaay.Health LIVE: a few shifts I can’t stop thinking about – By Lorraine McMeekin
It took some time, but now that I’ve absorbed everything from SWAAY Health Live, a few ideas have really stayed with me.

My main takeaway: healthcare B2B marketing is at an inflection point because the way buyers research, compare, and form opinions is changing quickly. AI is part of that shift, but so is the broader reality that buyers are gathering information from far more sources, much earlier in the decision process.

More Listening

The Healthtech Marketing Show

Marketing to healthcare is hard. We can all use a little help. Join host Adam Turinas for the Healthtech Marketing Show to learn from the experts. Each episode features an experienced healthcare technology marketing leader, who shares tips, insights, and how to’s on a specific topic. Episodes include B2B marketing, HIT Marketing trends, ABM, brand strategy, digital, and content marketing and more.

Resources

Elevate Your Rare Disease Marketing – MERGE life science industry experts created this guide to provide a new perspective towards three tried-and-true tenets of rare disease marketing. You can expect to learn how modern solutions to age-old challenges can make a real difference for your company and the community.

Urgent Care Marketing 101 – free, online marketing eBook from Experity (@ExperityHealth)
An urgent care clinic, like any business, is only profitable if patients continue to use its services over time. Unfortunately, many urgent care facilities have a restricted marketing budget, which can severely limit new business volume and community engagement. According to Andrew Ibbotson, Vice President of the National Research Corp. in Nebraska, “Urgent care traffic is driven more by online search results, geography, wait times, and availability than traditional healthcare delivery.” These added complications make identifying the most effective marketing strategies for your walk-in clinic even more essential to success.