#005 · 14th July 2023

Issue 5. Already. Whaaaat!? Didn’t I just start writing this thing yesterday?

Here I am again on Sunday evening. Finally, there is silence in the house as the small people that live here are asleep. I have extremely tempting baked goods in front of me thanks to my lovely neighbour, my heart is full after meeting my close friend’s (very fresh outta the womb) baby bundle and the allotment haul is slightly overwhelmingly plentiful… marrows as long as my arms! Good Sunday vibes all round then. I hope your own Sunday has been good to you too.

BUT will it still be Sunday when I finish writing this? Unlikely, but my upcoming schedule surely hopes so!

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing about Threads* in this issue. I am not an authority on social media by any stretch of the imagination. So if you want a nice, balanced non-aggro take on Threads, I recommend this podcast episode from wonderful brains over at The Over Thinkers. As for me; I’ve signed up, yet to start a “thread”, I’m in observing mode (as I often am in most social channels)… But I am starting to think about the implications for healthcare communications:

• Will it be a friendly place for DOLs in healthcare to refind their voice after the toxicity of Twitter?

• With existing friends right there with you from the start, does this mean patient communities have already started to form?

• And how can Healthcare brands join in, rather than shoehorn their way into the threads of growing patient and healthcare professional communities?

*If you are still in the dark about Threads, aka Twitter Killer, it is Meta’s new text-based conversation app.

That’s Threads out of the way, so shall we get into the rest?

Remember, the links are in pink!

Every now and again, a campaign crops up that reminds me why I decided to start this newsletter, and this is it (spoken like I’ve been doing this for years, not weeks… oops). And it also means I get to start this section with a favourite phrase:

Category is… GPP Realness.

GPP is a rare and hard-to-diagnose variant of psoriasis, characterised by severe, recurrent and widely distributed inflammation and skin erythema. And it’s life-threatening.

Last year, Boehringer Ingelheim partnered with the internationally renowned artist and fashion designer Bart Hess (remember Lady Gaga’s infamous slime dress – that’s him). For the partnership, Hess created a collection of unwearable high-couture pieces that use art to powerfully portray the experience of living GPP. From the pain of thousands of paper cuts to the physical and mental separation.

And now, the next piece of the collection had been released: Trapped by Uncertainty which depicts the mindset of GPP patients between flares, which is just as suffocating an experience, yet often overlooked. The piece manipulates layers of tulle and mesh to create the image of smoke billowing around the individual to represent uncertainty.

In this latest work, BI and Hess have collaborated with students from the Fashion Institute of Technology DTech Lab. The full collection will be on display at FIT’s Art and Design Gallery later this year.

There’s an app for that! Really… I did the test myself, and to be honest with the amount of misinformation out there, I’m pretty surprised I got 16/16 (proof below). I like to think I have good critical thinking skills – phew. But was I sceptical enough!? Argh!

My score aside, misinformation is one of the biggest challenges we face in a digital age… and it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And that’s why the University of Cambridge has developed this study:

The YouGov article goes in-depth into the study of over 1,500 Americans and found that the majority can classify real and fake headlines correctly. However, it is younger Americans that are less skilled in this area, yet unsurprisingly are spending more time online, with social media being a key source of information for news.

As I am writing this, I am thinking ARE there really any surprises here. Maybe not. But seeing as the healthcare industry itself faces masses of misinformation online, what more can be done by companies in healthcare to build education in online literacy, scepticism and critical thinking? More big questions to ponder.

For a big win in women+ health this month year (we don’t get many!!), Flo Health, a popular period and ovulation tracker and pregnancy app has made its anonymous mode open source to encourage industry-wide privacy protection for women+.

Flo Health’s anonymous mode basically enables people to utilise the full features of the application without having their personal identifiers linked to their health data. And at a time when the world seems to be going backwards for reproductive rights, being able to track without concern should be a right of every woman no matter where they are in the world.

And as a brand if you stand for something, you stand for it regardless of competition or profit. Flo are literally giving away their IP to make a real-world impact.

There’s no denying Botox’s absolute dominance in the aesthetics market. But 2023 could be the year that changes as Revance launches Daxxify into the category. Like Botox, Daxxify is an injected neuromodulator, but it will be the first based on peptide exchange technology. With that comes some pretty impressive longer-lasting data and that’s what the brand is leveraging in the new campaign, Break Up With Botox, to start a relationship that’s gonna be long-lasting.

The campaign is super fun and cheeky (a pleasant reminder of how far we can push things in the aesthetic space) and goes all in on the theme of the relationships: a break-up song, integration with ChatGPT to help craft some cheesy break-up lines… and the most on-point call to action that wouldn’t look out of place on a dating app: A long-lasting relationship is just a click away - meet your new boo.

Can I do it? Can I really write about Pokemon in my healthcare newsletter? I’m doing it, I’m doing it.

For those that don’t play the games or watch the anime or don’t have kids that do, this article might read like Latin. So let me break it down quickly. Back on Pokémon Day in February (yes that’s a thing), the company announced a new product called Pokémon Sleep launching at the end of July this year. As that date draws closer, it’s gaining more traction in the media as journalists are getting to try it out for the first time.

As the name might suggest, this product is a sleep-tracking app. It does everything you’d expect from a sleep tracker – records the length of your sleep, records sound from your sleep, monitors any disturbances to your sleep and plays it all back to you in the morning. And the free version of the app keeps up to 30 days’ worth of sleep data. But what makes the app unique is that it gamifies your sleep in a whole new way. And in true Pokémon style, you gotta catch ‘em all. Yes, the aim of the app is to complete your Pokédex, with good and improved sleep being rewarded with new Pokémon visitors who might want to stay and become part of your slumber party.

It's cute, I can really see my boys enjoying this one, and it might even be a good tactic at getting them up to bed on time (in the same way the teeth brushing app did). This mum can hope.

I’m gonna leave you with a few questions I am thinking about:

• Does game-play belong in health monitoring?

• Should health tech players be doing more to create unique entertainment experiences in-app features?

• When it’s health tech what really comes first the health need or the user experience?

• Where do we draw the line in health and entertainment? Do we need to?

• Is game-play the answer to making tracking data more useful? And does it give people a reason to come back and not forget you exist when the tracking habit fails?

• And am I going to download the app in a couple of weeks? (I think you already know the answer… but if not, the Pikachu tattoo I am getting next month might give you a clue)

Thanks for indulging me on that one. As a reward, here are four bonus reads that have got me thinking this past couple of weeks:

🤖 Google is testing a medical AI chatbot in hospitals

🥤 Calls for PRIME energy drink to be reviewed by the FDA

👶 Pandemic babies are behind in communication

🥵 The hottest day ever recorded happened on 4th July,so here are some tips on how to handle the heat

And that’s your lot. Until next time ✌️