The Apple Watch and healthcare marketing might sound incongruous when you envision the common uses for Apple's latest invention. Yet, as with all mobile devices, it's the perfect device to capture patient attention as consumers use smartphones and tablets to find quick information. Perhaps you've heard skeptics say that wearables will stay relegated to monitoring our heart rates or blood pressure while doing cardio exercise. Nobody said it should stop there, and the potential for wearables in healthcare marketing is an open book, including for plastic surgeons.
Everything is already in place on the Apple Watch to compellingly market your plastic surgery practice to new or existing patients. At the same time, you also have a new device for easier communication with new or current patients to help provide what they typically search for in cosmetic surgery.
What elements of the Apple Watch could help you connect better with your prospective or future patients? As many tools as there are, you still have to think of the screen width and how well viewers view your marketing content.
The Role of Apps on the Apple Watch
Using apps on the Apple Watch is a common activity as much as on smartphones. While you do have a smaller screen on the Apple Watch, many people track their health on specialized apps. However, how many apps have you seen on the device that provide inside information on different conditions?
The potentials here of medical practices creating apps that track or provide educative information is very eye-opening. Creating an app for your own plastic surgery practice has the same kind potential in providing information and revealing what patients want.
In this instance, you could create a tracker that monitors what people prefer in the way of plastic surgery procedures. By accumulating this information, you have a real-time way of determining what types of procedures are the most popular and what kind of results patients demand.
You also should provide information in your app about each procedure and what's involved. As with all apps, the simpler you make its use, the better. This could happen through an easy search box letting people find what they want done (in laymen terms) that leads them to a video or quick summary about what's involved.
Better Connectivity with Patients
The Apple Watch already has a tool called HealthKit (also integrates with Apple's ResearchKit) that allows the sharing of information on health apps to your local health provider. While most of these functions are for people with chronic illnesses, don't eliminate other possibilities. It's important to stay connected with your current patients as much as you can for updates on new plastic surgery procedures you offer, or information on new techniques.
By providing an option in having a patient's health information automatically sent to you from an app, it helps you serve your patients better. Consider this a new form of creating customer personas where you gather existing data to form the perfect picture of the patient you need to cater to.
Since some health issues require plastic surgery, the app you created above could send you information on how a particular plastic surgery procedure would help the patient in question. As a result, your prospective patient would realize the value of HealthKit in sharing information, even if everyone needs an opt out option.
Sharing Information for Better Research
USA Today recently mentioned how developers are working on apps that automatically send health information to medical organizations for intention of improved medical research. While the health information above can help your patients immediately, let your patients know the information you collect helps you on research as well.
When you understand what patients need, you can work toward researching new techniques that would enable innovations you otherwise wouldn't achieve without more detailed data.
