PRx Blog

Spotlight: Schwartz Communications & Healthcare IT

Following are a few notable updates from Schwartz Communications’ Healthcare IT practice. We intend to bring you these updates – which spotlight representative clients in our practice group – on a periodic basis going forward.

First up, a big congrats to Online Care provider American Well, who were awarded Gold in the “Innovative Services: Health, Wellness & Safety” category at the annual Edison Awards gala in New York City.  Presented by the Discovery Channel, the Edison Awards recognizes innovation and excellence in the development, marketing and launch of new products and services.  Gold winners in other categories include Apple’s iPad and the Chevy Volt electric car. Not bad company!

Kudos are also in order for WellDoc, who were named a Silver finalist for the 2011 SABRE awards, presented by The Holmes Report, the leading publication for the PR industry. The campaign “WellDoc and mHealth are Here to Stay” was submitted by the Schwartz team for this prestigious national awards competition, which will be presented on May 10 at New York’s Cipriani 42nd Street.

Schwartz had another successful HIMSS show, which attracted roughly 31,000 healthcare IT professionals to Orlando. Highlights included the launch of a Schwartz YouTube channel featuring on-site interviews, daily show recaps and spotlight videos on many of our attending clients, including NaviNet, Phytel, DiagnosisOne and Omincell.

With literally hundreds of EMR vendors in the HCIT space - and more emerging each year - it’s tough for marketers and public relations pros to differentiate a company’s Electronic Medical Record (EMR) offering from any of the others. But some do, including Schwartz client NaviNet. The healthcare communications company launched an EMR and Practice Management (PM) solution in late 2010 and Schwartz used HIMSS as a venue to brief nearly a dozen reporters on NaviNet EMR, NaviNet PM and other mobile clinical product offerings. Steve Campbell of EMR Daily News wrote a great piece titled “Is NaviNet Poised to Become a Player in the EMR Space?,” concluding that “Having 50% of the physicians in the country already using and trusting NaviNet to interact with insurance companies on a daily basis will certainly simplify the process of introducing these new products and services.”

DiagnosisOne used HIMSS to demo their suite of products, including order sets, clinical decision support, analytics, and public health reporting. Check out CEO Mansoor Khan’s byline on tying compensation to physician performance in Executive Insight magazine and the company’s new white paper “Clinical IT requirements for ACOs: Enabling Effective Patient & Population Management.” The topic is especially timely as new ACO rules were recently announced.  DiagnosisOne is delighted CMS has gotten many things right in the rules. See what Mansoor has to say about them and what’s ahead for ACOS in the company’s blog.

Omnicell, Inc., leading provider of medication and supply chain management solutions to healthcare facilities, demonstrated its interoperable, standards-based solutions at the HIMSS11 Interoperability Showcase. This was the first time automated dispensing cabinets was featured in the pharmacy domain area of the Showcase. 

The GE Healthcare team also had another successful year at HIMSS, briefing 40+ media outlets and securing more than 60 articles featuring GE Healthcare innovations. The Schwartz team hosted a “tweetup” at the show, encouraging use of the “GEtweetup” hashtag, which resulted in 61 tweets reaching more than 128,000 followers. The team also used HIMSS to launch two mobile applications, securing on-message coverage tied to the larger industry discussion about the adoption of mobile apps and their benefits to physicians and patients. Coverage appeared in Healthcare Informatics, EMR and EHR, Executive Insight, and FierceHealthIT among many others.

Finally, Schwartz welcomed iNTERFACEWARE, a provider of software that allows companies to easily manage the exchange of electronic healthcare data, and Circadence, which develops solutions that improve the performance of company computer networks as new Healthcare IT clients.  We look forward to bringing you more updates on our Healthcare IT practice! 

Posted by Doug Russell on April 14, 2011 at 9:41 AM