Swaay.Health Live: Insights and inspirations

Over the years, I’ve gone to many conferences. Many, many conferences in fact! Believe it or not, I’ve enjoyed them all. I always come away with a few good takeaways (at least) and a few great people to stay connected with (at least).

Like so many things in life, I’ve found that what you get out of a conference experience largely depends on what you put into it. Time. Attention. Energy.

This year’s Swaay.Health Live was no exception to my long run of positive conference experiences. It’s a unique, focused event run by a passionate, dedicated team. Those qualities were evident right from the start as John Lynn offered up a set of core principles for the conference:

Give before you get
Vulnerability is not weakness
Start where you’re at
Have fun and be brave
Be persistent and ask for help
Ask whose life can you touch?

I love those!

Highlighting those principles was a great way to kick off the conference and provides us with a fantastic template for our lives. Personal and professional alike.

It’s impossible to capture all the highlights from the sessions I attended, but here are a few.

TLDR: Top 5 slideshow

Insights and inspirations

Interested in more? Keep reading!

🎤 Shereese Maynard – Keynote Day 1

“We forget that the people who use health care aren’t like us.”

“We must have empathy for the patients using our products.”

“Too often, patients are in isolation. They don’t understand tools and treatments.”

“Every conversation builds a bridge. Every bridge connects innovation to the patient who needs it.”

💡 My takeaway:

Healthcare marketers and communicators must help patients by easing their way and explaining things in terms that they can understand. Empathy, patience and understanding are key.

🎤 Dan Dunlop and David Laszakovits – Designing a Formal Listening Process to Support Decision-Making & Marketing

“Listening is about involving stakeholders in the process. They will feel included.”

“You have to report back on what you heard and share recommendations.”

“It’s not enough to listen. You have to tell people that you listened and share results.”

💡 My takeaway:

That last point is super important. How often have you taken a survey, provided detailed feedback and then … hear nothing? Crickets. Yeah, me too! It’s a huge missed opportunity to build and improve relationships with customers or partners.

🎤 Adeline Ashley – Responsible AI Strategies for Healthcare Marketers

“Watch where AI goes wrong and flag it. Be careful of potential impacts to your brand.”

“Ethical AI starts with human variety. You don’t want all the same type of people training AI.”

“You must have a process in place for reviewing content.”

“The data you put into AI should be as diverse as the population you’re serving.”

💡 My takeaway:

AI is such a valuable tool to assist and augment the work we do. However, caution is called for. Bias being just one of the issues we have to be aware of when using AI. It must be corrected and accounted for in your processes. This might seem obvious, but we really can't say it enough.

🎤 Craig Fairfield and Adair Leblanc – Influence for Impact

“We trust people who seem trustworthy.”

“We trust regular people, doing regular people things.”

💡 My takeaway:

This session was focused on how to pick the right influencers to support your organization. Most often, effective influencers are NOT big celebrities. They are “regular” people who can connect with your target audience.

🎤 Bonus: Building Your Personal Brand – me!

I had the pleasure of doing something a little different this year: Talking about how others can build their personal brands to achieve career success.

Many people think you have to be actively job searching to build a network and seek out

opportunities for more people to know you for something good. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Your reputation – inside and outside your organization – plays a huge role in your career growth.

💡 The key takeaway:

It’s never a bad thing to be known by more people for something good!

💾 Download the slides from my session:

Other upcoming conferences

If you’re looking for another – or your first – event to attend in 2025, check out these great options for healthcare communicators and marketers:

Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit: April 29-May 2, 2025, Orlando
SHSMD Connections 2025: Oct 12-14, 2025
HCIC - November 9-12, 2025, Las Vegas

And check out this article on how to get the most out of a conference experience.