Built Different: Using AI to Humanize the Healthcare Experience

The next era of healthcare will be won by those who use data most meaningfully by integrating AI into how they work and expanding how they think about the patient. This was the heartbeat throughout MERGE’s Built 2025 event, where brilliant minds across health and lifestyle industries came together to reimagine personalization and engagement in healthcare's digital world.

It wasn't a conference; it was an immersive experience grounded in honest thinking, fresh ideas, and real connections. Everyone came with a shared goal: to dive deep into these challenges and explore innovative solutions to empower healthier, happier lives.

We live in a time of relentless noise, being bombarded with messaging and influences that create chaos. Recognizing the need to "calm the chaos," I am more inspired and encouraged than ever.This optimism stems from the transformative potential of AI. Yet, healthcare’s next differentiator doesn’t lie solely in using AI for efficiency. It’s how deeply organizations personalize trust and use AI, safely and securely, to scale this trust. By prioritizing integrity and a consumer-centric approach (considering both patients and members), we can achieve the highly individualized care, experience, and engagement that healthcare is capable of delivering.

When seeking healthcare, we are all customers–because we have choice–only becoming patients once we begin receiving care. This raises a crucial question: If organizations viewed patients more as customers who can choose their brand or another, would they treat them differently? I firmly believe the answer is yes. Yes, we would treat them differently, and yes, we need to treat them differently.

As HLTH approaches, I'm eager to continue these types of discussions with healthcare leaders. For much of my career, I viewed patient engagement solely through a technological lens.

However, since joining MERGE, I've recognized that true personalized patient and consumer engagement thrives at the intersection of marketing and technology.

At Built 2025, speakers and attendees provided valuable insights into enhancing healthcare organizations' marketing strategies and patient engagement initiatives. For example, infinite individualism emphasizes leveraging AI to understand individual patient needs, preferences, and circumstances. This facilitates hyper-personalized communication, appropriate proactive outreach, and truly customized care, ultimately improving the patient experience and health outcomes.

Another critical theme was data-driven decision-making, focusing on using advanced analytics to predict patient touchpoints throughout their healthcare journey. From a marketing and engagement standpoint, this enables a shift from generalized campaigns to targeted, data-backed initiatives, optimizing resource allocation and maximizing the impact of patient interactions. Again, to improve the patient experience and health outcomes.

This is MERGE’s inaugural year at HLTH, and if you’re wondering why an agency is attending a tech conference, let me tell you. The answer is simple: MERGE is Built Different. Healthcare is personal, and the patient and their family and loved ones deserve to be seen and treated as whole people with unique needs and desires.

The future of healthcare is about reaching each person more meaningfully through whole human marketing. Allow me to demonstrate how.

Let’s connect. You can find us at Booth #4150.