Author: Editor

Healthcare communication has long relied on an implicit bargain with digital platforms: that credible, responsibly framed information would reach the audiences it was intended for. That bargain is being rewritten—and the consequences are not evenly distributed.

In my latest Substack essay, I’ve written about what the decline of “organic reach” really means for healthcare—why credibility no longer determines visibility, how attention is being redistributed, and what this means for trust, equity, and professional responsibility.

You can read it here

For much of modern medical history, health communication followed a familiar path: information moved from clinicians to patients, supplemented by family narratives, pamphlets, and the occasional media report.

The expansion of the Internet — and particularly the rise of social media — disrupted this model not simply by increasing access to information, but by changing the social and emotional dynamics through which people engage with illness.

A 2017 study examining Iranian online health forums provides a useful lens for understanding this shift. Its insights, though modest in scale, highlight a pattern that resonates beyond a single national context. What emerges is not merely a description of digital information-seeking but a portrait of how individuals use social platforms to compensate for structural gaps in healthcare communication and emotional support.

The study identifies five consistent functions that online spaces now serve in the experience of illness: social support, encouragement, education, information-seeking, and experiential knowledge-sharing.

Continue reading on Substack

Healthcare communication has always mattered — but audiences’ expectations have changed dramatically.

People now move fluidly between clinic visits, search engines, peer communities, and social platforms. They cross-reference, compare, question, and seek reassurance in places far beyond formal care.

In this landscape, a message is no longer enough. People don’t want to be spoken at. They want dialogue, clarity, and the sense that someone is genuinely listening.

If you’re still creating content for people rather than with them, you’re missing the shift already happening in healthcare. I break down the change — and what to do next — in my latest Substack.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how people look for health information now — and how quickly things have changed without most of us fully noticing. For years, “Dr Google” shaped what people knew (or misunderstood) about symptoms, treatments, and diagnoses.

But that era has shifted.

Today, people don’t search the way they used to.
They ask.
They describe their concerns in plain language.
And increasingly… they ask an AI.

In many households, Dr Google has already become Dr ChatGPT — a tool that doesn’t just retrieve information but also interprets, organises, and presents it as guidance.

This has huge implications for healthcare communication:

• how patients form first impressions,
• how they prepare for appointments,
• how they evaluate risks,
• how they find trusted organisations in the first place

I wrote a new piece exploring what this shift means for all of us who work in health, advocacy, or patient communication.

If you’re curious about how the health information journey is being rewritten, you can read it here.