The Aria team took a break (mostly) from the world of health IT PR for a full two weeks this holiday season. After a year of hard work, a crazy pandemic, and a transition to WFH, we took some well-deserved time to relax. Read about the team’s much needed R&R over the holidays:

One of the only upsides of the pandemic is that animal shelters have reportedly been emptied, as many people have decided it is the perfect time to adopt a pet. In fact, a few Aria team members added furry members to their families during quarantine. We thought it would be fun to officially introduce Aria’s new dogs (and one cat): Polly, Maxwell Smart, Darcy and Bernard.

Summer is always a good opportunity to dig into an interesting book, and with the COVID-19 pandemic still keeping people at home, the Aria Marketing team has had more spare time to read than ever before. As a healthcare PR agency, we read about healthcare news and events on a daily basis, but sometimes it’s good to take a break to explore other topics. As such, we’ve compiled a list of our office’s current recommendations for your staycation or socially-distant beach day.

In-person events are slowly but surely returning after a year filled with fully virtual healthcare IT conferences. Several of our clients and Aria team members attended the HLTH Conference last week in Boston, which was a hybrid event with both in-person and virtual sessions. HLTH brought together senior healthcare leaders to discuss solutions to some of the industry’s most pressing problems over four days of networking and educational sessions for payers, providers, employers, investors, startups, life sciences, and policymakers.

The Aria team is sad to say goodbye to summer, but as the warm days fade away we can look back on some of the great milestones Aria reached in August, such as the celebration of our 20^th Anniversary, the launch of our new wellness initiative, and the continued great coverage we’ve secured for our clients. Check out our clients’ highlights from August below:

Aria Marketing, a leading healthcare public relations and marketing communications agency, is pleased to announce that it has been selected as the agency of record for AVIA, the nation’s leading network of healthcare organizations committed to transforming care through digital innovation.

As COVID-19 continues to spread at an alarming speed, health systems are facing a wide range of challenges—ranging from operating over their capacity, to a lack of personal protective equipment. To address these issues, the healthcare industry is working tirelessly to innovate at a rapid speed and provide solutions for these problems. One benefit of our exclusive focus on healthcare is that Aria really has a front row seat to some of the innovations and leadership coming from our clients to help the industry tackle this disease.

This month, Aria was selected as a finalist for BostInno’s Coolest Companies award. In celebration, our team attended BostonFest for a fun summer evening of drinking beer and rosé, playing lawn games, amassing free merch, and eating delicious, gooey food from food trucks.

Are you a recent grad looking for a career in public relations? If so, you’re in the right place! Aria Marketing is located just outside of Boston, a city overflowing with universities (and therefore, a lot of new grads). Over the years, our team has perfected the art of what to look for when hiring a candidate right out of school. I spoke with Aria’s leadership team (EVP Jessica Cohen and SVP Ross Homer) to see what they look for/value in a candidate. Read on to find out!

Meet the newest member of the Aria team, Account Coordinator, Serena Bronda. In getting to know Serena, we’ve learned that she has lived in some amazing places. So, I thought this blog post would be a great excuse to find out a bit more about her experiences around the world.

With Labor Day just around the corner and plenty of Summer Friday stories to share, it’s still hard to believe that the summer is almost over! We’ve been busy coordinating media interviews, securing coverage wins and prepping our clients for upcoming fall speaking opportunities. Before you grab your first pumpkin spice latte of the season, here’s the August edition of Aria Client Catch-Up!

Summer is in full swing here at Aria! Our team got to kick off the summer in style in Las Vegas at HFMA ANI (check out our full recap) and we are all enjoying the start of our Summer Fridays. As we soak up the sun, we’re reflecting on the accomplishments of our clients from the past month. If you’re lounging by the pool, why not check out a few of our highlights:

One of the great things about Aria Marketing is that we get to work with so many technology companies doing amazing things for patients, providers, and the healthcare system in general. One such client is eVideon, a Michigan-based company providing hospitals with interactive patient engagement and digital workflow solutions.

Throughout the year, Aria Marketing participates in a variety of charity events to give back to the local community and spread awareness of important causes. Often, we try to find organizations that align in some way with our PR agency’s focus on healthcare. Our most recent charity involvement has been with The Jimmy Fund, a non-profit organization that raises funds to support research and technology for Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Aria made it our mission to raise at least $3,500 as a team and walk the Boston Marathon® Jimmy Fund 10K on September 24th. To date, we have surpassed our goal and kept the momentum going. Getting there wasn’t easy, but there were a few successful tactics we employed which we thought we’d share to help inspire other companies in their fundraising efforts.

There are many opportunities in healthcare journalism for thought leaders to contribute content. Healthcare reporters are continuously soliciting bylined articles from healthcare industry thought leaders and experts to keep up with the content demand of digital media. As a healthcare focused public relations agency our goal is to amplify our client’s thought leadership platform and we see the byline article as one of the greatest ways to do so as they enable experts to directly communicate their insights and expertise in their own words to their desired audience. In general, contributed content – like a bylined article – is an excellent way for the client to control their message and eliminates opportunities for outside biases and perspectives. That said, publications and editors often have very specific criteria and sometimes unspoken expectations that contributed content must adhere to. Below we’ve shared the top three best practices to consider when drafting a byline or any other kind of contributed content.

Welcome to Corner Office – a new series on The Pitch featuring a Q&A with our President Scott Collins. For our inaugural column, we sat down with Scott to talk about healthcare trends that will capture the media’s attention in 2019.

The world has been facing the COVID-19 global pandemic for almost a year, but it finally feels like there is light at the end of the tunnel – vaccines. The Biden administration is currently pushing for a more accelerated vaccination rollout in the U.S., and the President recently suggested the nation could soon reach an average of 1.5 million shots a day. This push comes as many health experts call the initial vaccine rollout “flawed” and express concerns over the amount of Americans vaccinated thus far. As a healthcare PR agency working with clients across the industry, we are well-versed on the latest vaccine news and “hot takes” from industry executives and wanted to share what we have been hearing lately from our clients.  

As we look back at our biggest PR wins of the year, it becomes clear that one of the most successful strategies we deployed for clients centered on leveraging and packaging up data. One client that has seen the positive outcome of this strategy year over year is Kyruus. For the third time, we partnered with them to help promote its annual Patient Access Journey Report (PAJR) via leveraging data and insights to highlight its market leadership. Below is a snapshot of the strategy we deployed and some highlights of the results garnered to date: 

December is the most wonderful time of the year, and not just because of all the holiday cheer. We had some excellent client successes throughout the month, which was a perfect way to close out a great 2017 and welcome more PR wins in 2018. Here are our highlights from December:

As a healthcare PR agency, it’s our job to examine the latest industry trends and developments. One trend on the minds of many of our healthcare IT clients is the rapid rise of telehealth. The pandemic has accelerated telehealth’s adoption, but will things return to the way they were post-pandemic, or will this growth continue?

If we can conduct business virtually, educate our kids online and hang out with loved ones through a computer, what about seeing a doctor? Telemedicine is not new, but a 2021 study found one in three adults turned to telehealth in the wake of the pandemic with some providers reporting a 4000% uptick in virtual visits.

Yes, we’re more connected, but is that just on the surface? Let’s look at both sides of the equation.