Healthcare Matters

The annual MM&M Awards (Medical Marketing & Media) recognize excellence in smartphone healthcare apps targeting healthcare professionals. The scope of the apps covered included medical reference libraries, tools for aiding diagnosis and prescription, promotional apps, patient record resources, med-ed apps and various programs that turn smartphones into diagnostic tools or devices.

At this year’s awards recently held in New York, Infuse Medical, a provider of mobile apps and content for the medical device market, received both Gold and Silver Awards. It is the only agency to win both Gold and Silver in any category at the show. “We are very pleased to be recognized by MM&M for our mobile app development,” said Jordan Erickson, President of Infuse Medical.  ”Both Boston Scientific and C.R. Bard have seen great results from their mobile apps.  These awards validate the hard work of our teams and their commitment to making effective apps that empower the healthcare professional and enhance the way that they present their technology, technique and clinical data.”

Boston Scientific deployed an Infuse Medical iPad App as part of their Charger balloon catheter product launch.  C.R. Bard implemented an Infuse Medical iPad App as a clinical training tool that enables users to conduct virtual procedures with the Sapiens TCS Product.

• GOLD AWARD

  Infuse Media Group and Boston Scientific

  Charger App

Charger is a 0.035” percutaneous transluminal angioplasty balloon catheter designed for a wide range of peripheral angioplasty procedures. It was the third new peripheral balloon catheter introduced by Boston Scientific in 2011.

“There are numerous competitors with multiple products each,” the agency said, “and no impactful way to summarize all of this information. The challenge was to take a huge amount of information and make it simple to access and present quickly, but without ‘dumbing down’ the content.” The resulting app lets sales reps quickly access a vast amount of information. Organization is intuitive and mimics sales-call discussion. Reps can easily navigate between less detailed and more detailed views of information depending upon customer questions.

“Creative and effective,” said one judge. According to the agency, sales reps cite the app as the most useful collateral they had for the product launch and noted that its basic design is now the gold standard for their iPad apps.

“The iPad app has been a critical part of educating customers and generating the enthusiasm needed to get hospital approval quickly to bring in the product for evaluation,” said a Boston Scientific representative. “As a result, our market share in the 0.035” category has increased from 16% to >30% in only nine months since launch. BSC hasn’t had category share this high since about 2005.”

• SILVER AWARD

  Infuse Media Group and C.R. Bard

  Sapiens TCS App

The marketing challenge was to rapidly teach users about Bard Access Systems’ peripherally inserted central catheter system, Sapiens TCS, which consisted of a new technology, new capital equipment, and new procedure. The award winning iPad app is an outstanding clinical training tool that enables users to actually conduct a virtual procedure. The training received through the app contributed to a very high conversion rate to the new system.

Sources: Medical Marketing & Media, Infuse Medical, PRNewswire

—Tom Finn