Like our conference, these digital marketing webinars and case studies were created to educate leaders in the healthcare industry on emerging Internet technologies and to provide an environment in which healthcare marketers, Web leaders, IT professionals and strategists can learn from the other attendees and presenters.
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This article was written for Greystone.Net by Jessica Levco, a freelance healthcare writer and event strategist.
So many sessions! So many speakers! So much information!
It was hard to keep track of everything we learned at #HCIC25 in Las Vegas. That’s why we asked a few attendees to take notes. Here’s what they said.
Buying new software? Invite everyone to the table
“Too often, marketing or IT evaluates and selects tools in isolation, leading to poor implementation and low adoption,” says Joel Cessna, founder and principal of Cessna Sales Solutions. “By inviting all parties to the table to make the decision together, it will give a clearer picture of the impact it will have on other departments.”
AI. Is. Everywhere.
“The next pivotal healthcare tech isn’t some shiny AI model,” says Adam Otey, vice president of growth at Huge. “It’s the person who finally masters the art of getting archaic systems to exchange a single, coherent patient summary without invoking a national IT crisis. That tedious, yet monumental task is the only metric that matters.”
Ryan Johnson, chief product officer at CallRail, says that using AI at your hospital’s contact center is a competitive advantage. “With proper training and QA, voice assistants are replacing voicemail, answering services and making it easier for your hospital contact center staff to focus on more complex calls.”
Jean Hitchcock, president of Hitchcock Marketing & Communications, reminds us that, “AI is omnipresent, but so is the call to be human in our approach.”
Your employer brand matters
“Your employee experience becomes your consumer experience,” says Cynthia Newton, president and founder of Cynthia Newton Consulting. “If your workforce is disengaged, your patients feel it first. The smartest health systems are closing the gap by partnering closely with HR to align culture, reputation and organizational goals. Make employer brand a system-wide priority, not a side project.”
Schema Markup is a must
“Schema Markup is essential for your content to be understood by search and AI and results in AI visibility,” says Martha van Berkel, CEO and founder of Schema App by Hunch Manifest. “Optimize your pages and define how they relate to one another to bring context to machines, and enable inferencing.”
An EPIC FYI
Jose Miguel Santana, director of healthcare strategy at Corporate Insight, attended a session on EPIC by Jenny Bristow, CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp. “Health system marketers should request a copy of the Epic Executive Packet from their CIO, which includes a report on their organization’s current implementation of EPIC,” Santana says. “Specifically, the report’s Patient page compares their system’s usage of functionality with that of other groups, including areas for improvement. Also, marketers should request the MyChart Diamonds Report, which is a usability benchmark of the system’s experience to the average consumer expectation, agnostic of just the EPIC healthcare clients.”
Improve the RFP process
Ben Cash, co-founder and CEO of Reason One, spoke on an RFP panel with the shared goal of making them “suck less together.” Here’s his tip for healthcare systems: Share realistic budgets, don’t get caught up in rigid deliverables and create space for dialogues. Agencies, here’s an easy thing you can do: Be transparent about pricing.
Site search should be viewed as a product
Kalee Hildreth, executive director of marketing operations at the University of Chicago Medicine, said that site search isn’t a feature, but a product. “Their team built a governance model that treats it that way, with regular tuning, test-and-learn relevance adjustments and integration with clinical priorities,” says Chris Pace, vice president of the healthcare industry for SearchStax. “It’s a great example of using data to quickly adapt, close gaps in access and reduce friction across the care journey.”
Get into reinvention mode
You’ve probably heard this a lot at #HCIC25: Patient expectations are rising. Tech is accelerating. New competitors keep popping up. But are you ready for it? Stephen Moegling, founder of Band of Misfits, says that staying the same is the fastest path to irrelevance. “The leaders I spoke with at #HCIC25 are re-examining their value propositions, reshaping how they show up in the market and finding new ways to create value so they can win in the next era of healthcare.”
PS: In 2026, we’re brainstorming new ways to keep our community active all-year round. Fireside chats, mentor/mentee opportunities, blog writing and more — are you interested? If so, send an email to Kathy Divis.
