UChicago Medicine, Formula 1, and AI

Salt Lake City - While health systems have been sponsors or partners in pro sports for years, UChicago Medicine found a way to break from the pack.

UChicago Medicine inked a sponsorship deal with the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team in 2024, becoming the first health system to be a sponsor in Formula 1 racing.

Andrew Chang, the chief marketing officer of UChicago Medicine, says the unconventional partnership offers a vehicle to highlight the health system’s brand and the work of the system’s researchers. He spoke with Chief Healthcare Executive® at the Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit earlier this month.

“We're the first healthcare system to sponsor a Formula One team, and the question I always get is, why would you ever sponsor a Formula One team? It sounds very expensive,” Chang says.

“Well, the fact of the matter is, we're not doing it for the impressions, we're not doing it just for the logo on the car. We're doing it because we are doing a very distinct and particular strategy around growth, especially in international, and using Formula One as a platform to help grow our international brand.”

Chang says the partnership is also designed “to help showcase our amazing faculty and research faculty.” And he says UChicago is working with “the most technically advanced, data-driven sport in the world to help improve their human performance as a team.”

UChicago researchers are doing a study with the Haas F1 team to examine the effects of workload, stress, disrupted sleep patterns and the rigors of international travel. Researchers have said they want to learn more to develop strategies to improve the health and recovery of the team members.

“We are doing an IRB-approved study to study their behaviors, their wellness, their sleep, because of their travel schedule,” Chang says.

“Eventually the goal is to have it published in a peer-reviewed journal, and then what we're able to do then is turn that into content and show the world how advanced and progressive we really are at UChicago Medicine,” he adds.

Chang also says he’s intent on making sure the health system’s marketing is linked to UChicago’s long-term strategic plan, known as Elevate 2035. He says there are quarterly metrics established linked to meeting the system’s vision.

“It's just about ruthless prioritization and making sure that we communicate our priorities constantly,” Chang says.

“We can track how much time we're actually spending on our priorities, and just trying to focus on those select few, and then we see what marketing has done to contribute directly to those goals,” he says.

UChicago Medicine also employs a dashboard to track the return on investment in marketing efforts. Chang cites the importance of understanding the value of marketing from his time working in the airline industry.

“Marketing, especially in healthcare, but in every industry I've been in, has traditionally been seen as a cost center,” Chang says. “I spent most of my career in the airlines, and marketing tends to be leading strategy and held responsible for results, and I believe that marketing should have a seat at the table in determining strategy in healthcare as well. You can't do that when you're just seen as a cost center.”

The dashboard includes data from Salesforce campaigns, tracking initiatives from the marketing department. Chang also says he has worked with the finance department to understand how returns are measured. He says the health system is seeing a “fantastic” return on investment from marketing.

“Marketing really is a growth engine,” he says. “We are bringing incremental revenue and margin to the system, and my goal is to show UCM how we're doing that, and hopefully use that for other health systems to show the same thing.”

UChicago Medicine is engaging in what Chang calls a major overhaul to the system’s patient engagement strategy. He says the system is looking to use AI tools to help guide patients, but also give patients the option of connecting with a human staffer more easily.

“We're not going to force everyone, like we have in the past, to go online and create this digital front door, so to speak,” Chang says. “We're not going to force anyone through one door. We're going to open all the doors and let patients engage with their health on their own terms.”

Chang says he sees healthcare marketing changing substantially in the future, in part because of the opportunities afforded by AI. He says AI tools help understand the voice of the customer, and personalization will become more critical.

“Now, there's really no excuse anymore not to focus on the customer, not to focus on what's relevant to the customer, and to personalize things for that experience, because AI will enable us to do that,” he says.