<< All Blog Posts

National Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit to Address Industry Challenges

Ritz Carlton in Orlando

This coming weekend in sunny Orlando, Florida, while thousand of kids chase “Pirates of the Caribbean,” fly “Space Mountain,” and take pictures with Mickey Mouse, I’ll be sharing modern marketing strategies and best practices with executives from hospitals, medical centers, healthcare systems, and medical group practices.

The National Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit starts this Sunday at the Orlando Ritz Carlton and Six Feet Up was kind enough to invite me to join with several members of their brain trust, speaking with attendees at the Six Feet Up exhibitor booth.

New Challenges in Healthcare

The healthcare industry is in a period of rapid disruption. Nobody can say with certainty what impact the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”) will have, especially with key provisions being reviewed right now by the Supreme Court.

Additionally, healthcare providers are beginning to shift away from “fee-for-service” to a value-based system in an effort to contain out-of-control costs. Huge carrots and sticks have been put in place to strongly encourage the implementation of electronic medical record (EMR) systems, with the goals of reducing costs and increasing efficiencies.

How to Communicate?

In periods of transition, it is especially important for organizations to reevaluate their communications. Healthcare marketers wonder how they can deepen relationships with patients and practitioners, and how they can communicate more clearly, rapidly, and transparently, improving the overall patient experience.

The Role of Technology

Technology plays an enormous role in facilitating this transition. We’ll discuss with healthcare CMOs, Strategists, and Marketing Communication Executives, how web technology can disrupt healthcare as it did music, news, entertainment, finance, and so many other industries. We’ll demonstrate several technical platforms (such as open source technologies like the Plone Content Management System and the KARL Knowledge Management System) and how marketers can use these technologies to their advantage.

Several of the “Sixies” (that’s what we call Six Feet Up employees) will be available to show technology demonstrations at our conference booth, and for those that don’t have time during the conference, we’ll have an easy way of registering for a future demo.

The Conversation Continues

SharePoint is a widely used platform for collaboration, especially in Microsoft-centric environments. Microsoft says SharePoint “makes it easier for people to work together.” But, every time Six Feet Up attends a technology conference, a ton of people complain that it’s a bear – that it’s hard to work with and not user-friendly. They seem relieved and excited to learn that there are real alternatives.

To meet this strong demand, Six Feet Up will be offering a free webinar on May 16 at 2pm called “SharePoint Alternatives.” Six Feet Up CTO Calvin Hendryx-Parker will present several legitimate SharePoint replacements, including Plone, KARL, and Alfresco.

Healthcare marketers are particularly encouraged to attend the webinar, as the content will be especially relevant for them. Of course, we will be heavily promoting the webinar at the conference.

You can register for it here.

The Conference Goes Mobile

HCMS AppFinally, Six Feet Up did something super cool for the conference – they created the official conference mobile app!


Thanks for filling out the form! A Six Feet Up representative will be in contact with you soon.

Connect with us