What can hospitals do with QR Codes?

There are a myriad of healthcare facilities out there: private practices, public hospitals, multispecialty, single-specialty groups, and so on. In order to help patients make the right choice, these healthcare facilities have to know how to advertise themselves. In order to adapt to the current request, hospital advertising has to start using mobile advertising. The easiest way of doing this is through the use of qrcodes. However, in order for such campaign to bring desired outcomes, the campaigns have to be thoroughly planned out to avoid any errors.

The QR Code Campaign

The first thing you need to consider when launching your a campaign is doing a trial run. In order to ensure that the websites made are displayed correctly on different platforms, like Android, Blackberry, iPhone and so on, it is crucial to set up a meeting with an expert who will be able to check if they run flawlessly. Additionally, it is important to double check all information posted, in order to make sure it is relevant and correct from a medical point of view. Then hospitals have to make sure that the expertise shown is useful for patients and families of patients. Set up a few websites to cover the most important issues that concern the majority of people who use medical services.

In order to make things more interesting, hospitals should focus on offering dynamic and interactive apps. For example, place QR codes throughout medical brochures which direct people to a video presentation or an audio narration. Since the majority of doctors own smartphone, a great idea would be to come up with a campaign especially for them. Setting up QR codes that direct to web pages showing hospital schedules or upcoming medical conferences would be appreciated by many physicians.

Implementing a QR code campaign for hospitals can prove beneficial for all parties involved. The healthcare facility will draw attention, and patients and doctors will stay informed at all times because they can analyse and monitor patients interactions via QR code software.

QR codes software are being seen on products and in stores all over the world – but they’re also beginning to be used more and more in print media. Meredith Corp. have used QR Codes across a number of their publications, including Family Circle, Traditional Home and Better Homes and Gardens and they claim that of the people that snap onto their tags, 10-20% of those people view the advert or use it in some way.

Recent data from GfK MRI Starch demonstrated the increase of QR code software from January to August 2011 – they took a look at 72,000 adverts, and in August, 5% of those adverts contained the technology compared to 1.3% in January – showing us just how quickly advertising agencies are catching onto the QR code trend.

Print Media and QR Codes

But it seems that in print media, the interactivity of the codes is still taking a while to really resonate with consumers. Of the people that saw a code in an advert, 5% of them scanned the  code – compared to 14% of people seeing an advert and then looking at the advertiser’s website, and 20% of people seeing an advert with a scent strip then trying the scent strip. These figures are much larger than the figures for QR code software scanning and so this does suggest consumers are not interacting with codes in the same way as with other advertising.

Learn QR Codes

As QR codes are still relatively new and also because consumers need to learn how to use them the uptake of scanning was slow in 2011. Some smartphones come with a qrcode scanner, whilst others don’t, requiring the consumer to download an application in order to scan the codes, but consumers need to know that they need to scan the QR code to use it before they can download an application to scan it – and if they don’t know that, they will be unable to use or interact with the code.  the good news is that consumers since 2011 have really started scanning and there has been a surge  in the amount of people scanning.

The Tide is Changing

Normal adverts that direct consumers to a website or that have a scent strip on them are probably more popular with consumers simply because they are familiar and consumers are used to seeing them. With time and with an increase in the number of QR codes across many different mediums, codes will be just as popular as other more traditional forms of communicating with consumers – they’ve already evolved in the short time they’ve been around, from black and white checkered designs to ‘designer’ codes that can incorporate brand logo and colours. With increased consumer awareness, the only way that qr code software campaigns can go is up.