First there was Dr. Google. Now there’s Dr. AI.

Patients no longer start their healthcare journey on your website. They start with ChatGPT, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, and AI searches. And AI doesn’t just give them generic answers. It offers them ostensibly personalized answers and advice! Trying to ignore or even fight this trend is futile. But you can strategize how you’re going to optimize it.

Here are four key strategies to begin implementing today.

1. Personalize Everything
Why? Because Dr. AI knows me. It remembers my symptoms and history. If you’re still serving up the same homepage, emails and ads to everyone, not only will you be weakening your differentiation, you’ll be threatening their trust. It’s critical that you create content that’s specifically targeted to reflect their conditions as well as their stage of care. 

2. Be Everywhere They Are
You’ll say, “but we’re on Meta and YouTube”…well that’s not enough anymore. Consumers and patients are on TikTok and Reddit and even text and DMs. They expect your brand to show up where they are. Remember if Dr. AI answers everywhere, you need to also! But when you connect through each of these different channels, acknowledge the environment you’re in, then reinforce your expertise by guiding them how to evaluate the information they’re being served up. 

3. Create More Micro-Education Content
I don’t mean a 2- to 3-minute video, I mean 15-30-second video shorts that are quick, easy to understand and teach me something I didn’t know. Condition explainers, “is this normal?” symptom videos, wellness tips, shorts, reels and TikToks are the new exam rooms. Remember, if you aren’t educating patients, Dr. AI is…and your clinicians would much rather their patients come in informed by your expert guidance, than just ChatGPT’s standardized responses.

4. Train Your Employees on How to Treat AI-Informed Patients
Your employees also need guidance on how to deal with patients who come in informed, as well as mis-informed, by all these online pre-consultations. Offer them short video modules as well on how to respond to likely questions, assertions, and challenges in a way that feels reassuring and helpful—rather than defensive and dismissive.

We’d love to help you strategize actionable steps you can take now to optimize the experience for your patients— as well as the trust in your brand — in this new age of AI-assisted healthcare consultations. Please feel free to contact me directly at reem.nouh@adamsknight.com or (860) 676-2300, x 116.

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