This article was written for Greystone.Net by Jessica Levco, a freelance healthcare writer and event strategist.

Healthcare marketers are in the middle of a tough balancing act: using AI to work smarter and faster, but still trying to figure out how to maintain the human connection that patients need when making healthcare decisions. 

Luckily, at our Healthcare Interactive Conference in Las Vegas, we had a session about how to tackle that challenge.

“AI-Powered Performance Marketing and Advanced Analytics: What Matters Most for Healthcare Marketers” featured Tim Jones, Service Line Director at Capital Health Cancer Center; Jane Crosby, Executive Vice President, Strategy & Business Development at True North; and Eric Silberman, President and CEO at True North.

Here are a few highlights from their presentation:

The Analytics Advantage

Silberman polled session attendees to find out what excites them most about AI. The majority chose analytics and planning support as their top priority. Healthcare marketers have a lot of data at their fingertips, but it can be hard to decide what to do with it.

That’s where AI comes in Jones says that even though there’s a lot of fear and anxiety about AI, it’s one of the best ways to generate ideas and double-check your hospital’s marketing strategy.

“Even little decisions I’m thinking about, I’ll plug it into ChatGPT and ask, ‘Is there something I missed here?’” Jones says. “It’s not going to solve every problem I have, but I’ve seen how helpful it is, especially for event planning and strategic planning discussions.”

Crosby says that AI’s impact will affect how healthcare marketers work with agencies.

“You’ll be able to separate the good agencies from the mediocre ones more easily,” Crosby says. “Automation tools are making it easier to run campaigns at scale, so the real value comes from combining those tools with strategic human oversight.”

How Your Hospital Website Will Change

The trio also discussed the change from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

In the session poll, 79% of attendees said they have specific goals around AI citations and how they want their hospital to show up in AI overviews.

Silberman shared results from their client, Lumexa Imaging. It has driven a 459% increase in keywords that are showing up across answer engines, year-after-year.

“You can’t pay your way into AI overviews,” Silberman says. “Success requires strategic organic optimization focused on expertise, authority, experience and trustworthiness.”

Besides paying attention to AI overviews, Crosby says hospital marketers need to re-think their websites. That’s because the type of content consumers will turn to for hospitals will change.

“Large content aggregators and community forums, like Reddit, are dominating the SERP for top of funnel content,” Crosby says. “This means that hospital marketers have the opportunity to capture site traffic and drive engagement that’s more focused on specific topics directly related to healthcare services.”

The Compliance Conundrum

For healthcare organizations, AI adoption is centered around navigating conservative legal and compliance teams. These groups tend to approach new technology with caution. That’s why Jones put together an AI evaluation committee for Capital Health Cancer Center and made sure that marketing had a seat at the table.

“It’s headed by a physician, who is our medical director of clinical informatics, but it also includes legal, compliance and other IT leaders,” Jones says. “But it’s really important to have someone from the marketing side to represent the patient perspective. Legal, compliance and IT each have their own requirements to meet, but marketing makes sure we’re consistently grounding decisions in what makes the most sense for patients.”

How Marketing Can Promote AI for Clinical Applications

Beyond marketing, Jones shared how Capital Health Care Center is using AI to improve patient outcomes. For example, Azure AI reads radiology reports to flag patients who need follow-up care.

“In the last year, we’ve had about 2,500 patients who have been flagged,” Jones says. “Of those, 48 patients were brought in for treatment that otherwise could have slipped through the cracks.”

The organization is also piloting AI scribes to combat physician burnout.

“One of the big complaints that they have is that they’re up until 10 p.m. doing notes,” Jones says. “Recruiting physicians and physician burnout is real. So, any of these tools that we can use to make their lives easier is a huge win for us.”

Jones says that marketing can help play a role in helping hospital staff and leadership feel more comfortable with AI.

“By sharing use cases, success stories and addressing concerns, marketing can help shift AI from something abstract to a trusted tool that supports clinical and operational excellence,” Jones says. “AI adoption is about enhancing patient care. It’s not about replacing the human expertise at the heart of the organization.”