Beaucoup Healthcare Advertising Includes Surgical Centers, Medical Tech.

I was at a Houston Wellness Association luncheon, sitting with Geri Konigsberg – she kindly asked me about my medical experience. At first I thought she was inquiring about my cardiological adventures, plumbing and electrical. She was actually checking out my credentials with healthcare and medical marketing. I froze up. It’s been so long since someone asked, my script didn’t default to “Auto.”

So in advance of the seminar tomorrow at Rice, perhaps I ought to refresh myself – and you.

My track record with marketing and advertising healthcare-related products and services falls into four broad categories. Together, they stretch back a considerable length of time.

The patient side of the profession: Medical and dental. That would be clients like St Michael’s Center for Surgery and SurgiCare, freestanding surgical facilities. The Brown Hand Centers. The Barrett Foot & Ankle Centers. Cancer prevention outreach programs for University of Texas/MD Anderson Cancer Center. A retail dental practice for Active Life. MedPlus (a medical clinic system before the name got picked up for an HIS vendor). Some programs are still vigorous and growing. Some are gone. That’s the nature of things.

For employees, I have worked on HR benefits programs for BP and Baker Hughes – I’m grateful for the chance to work on this kind of business ‘cause it opens up a completely different (but quite crucial) part of the healthcare equation.

I have crafted brand communications for medical hardware and software, from digitized mammography to cardiac pacemakers to bioinformatics software. My client list includes Unisys, Intermedics, Medtronics, Global HCA, LifeFormulae.

And there are the building blocks – components of medical systems from Exxon Chemical and DuPont, Abbot Laboratories and 3M (really proud of the flex-circuit ads like the one on the left).

With this kind of rehearsal, maybe I won’t blank again. It’s too rich a record to leave to chance. And thank you, Geri, for your patience.

PS: Feel free (really) to ask for the Richard Laurence Baron Healthcare Experience Sheet – I’ll send it posthaste.