2026 Awards Presentation

Hello, everyone. Welcome to this year's awards presentation, human centered, digitally driven. Today, we're recognizing some amazing work, smart ideas, bold creative, new technology, stories that matter, and the people behind each winning entry using digital in ways that make health care better. I'm Char Wilson, a contributing editor at eHealthcare Strategy and Trends and principal consultant at Shar Wilson Consulting.

It's my pleasure to introduce my co presenter, Shannon Curran, chief client and growth officer at Unlock Health, our diamond sponsor for this year's award show.

Thanks, Char. Let's get warmed up with a sample of the incredible award winning work we're honoring tonight.

So we've given the awards a little refresh this year.

Be ready for a few surprises. We have a lot to celebrate, so let's get started. One change you'll see in this year's show is how we present the award categories.

Instead of presenting each category separately, we've divided the categories into six groupings.

Our first group includes the awards categories that deliver digital access.

So much of health care now begins on a screen with a search, a website, an app, a provider profile.

These awards recognize the teams making those first digital encounters easier and more useful.

Our first group of categories includes best Internet home page, best landing page or microsite, best overall website, best site design, best mobile experience, and best provider directory.

We'll present all the winners in this digital access category and show one example of award winning work from each category. If you see a name listed twice, that's not a typo. It means the organization won two awards in that category. Now let's see who won in these categories.

Congratulations to all the digital access category winners.

We promised some surprises tonight. Well, here is a big one. We're excited to announce the Diamond Awards. This new award is presented to the top scoring entry in each category group.

The Diamond Award winner for digital access is Mammoth Hospital and Geonetric. Congratulations to our first Diamond Award winners.

Good digital communication does more than put information in front of people.

Content with purpose helps them find answers, feel connected, or know what to do next.

It's content people want to engage with. The categories include best annual or special report, best digital internal communications, best health care content, best email content, best health care podcast. Thank you to doctor podcasting for sponsoring the best health care podcast category.

So who are the winners in these categories?

Congratulations to all of our content with purpose category winners. And now our diamond award.

The winner of the Diamond Award for Content with Purpose is Virtuahealth. Congratulations to the Virtuahealth team on your Diamond Award. We'll take a minute to thank our sponsors who are vital to the award show. First, our Diamond sponsor, Unlock Health.

And next, our platinum sponsors, Alliance Innovations, BPD, and Geonetric.

And our gold sponsors, Invoca, Ours Privacy, Strategy Collective. Without all of you, the award show would not be possible. Thank you.

Now our next group of winners. Digital tools may power these programs, but relationships are what make them matter.

Connected experience categories recognizes work that helps patients, families, physicians, and communities feel informed and connected. Categories include best online health community, which is a new category for us this year, best population health, prevention or chronic disease management, best physician relations and referral marketing, best online reputation management, and best overall digital patient experience.

Thank you to Geonetric for sponsoring the best overall digital patient experience category. And the winners are Congratulations to all connected experience category winners.

And now the winner of our diamond award for connected experience is Rochester Regional Health.

Congratulations to the Rochester Regional Health team on your Diamond Award.

We'd like to pause for a minute to thank our 147 judges.

We appreciate the time and thoughtful consideration it took to evaluate nearly 1,000 award entries.

Now it's time for our next group of categories.

Sometimes the best thing a marketer can do is stop talking and press play.

Stories in Motion honors work that uses video, sound, motion, and interaction to tell stories in ways that words alone cannot.

Categories include best interactive and rich media, best video content two minutes or less, best video content over two minutes, best video series. Let's see the winners.

We're excited to share two platinum award winning videos. The first is a long format video. Spoiler alert, you may wanna grab a few tissues before you watch.

You can never really tell how sick Denver is just by looking at him. He's always looked well. The left side of his heart is barely underdeveloped and basically doesn't function. Then September is when we found out he was in heart failure.

My name is Christina Ralston and I am Denver's mom.

Denver was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. We always know that if your heart was not formed normally, particularly for our patients with hypoplastic left heart syndrome there's always a chance that at some point they become more symptomatic and surgeries aren't going to correct it and so then we need to talk about alternative strategies.

Doctor. Yester was the first doctor with the transplant team that we met. I would say that we have an especially close relationship with her.

I wouldn't have gone into heart failure and transplantation if it wasn't for the families.

She was the first one who told us, Hey, we're going the transplant route. There was not another option for us.

The diagnosis of heart failure is this beautiful intersection between the art of medicine and the science of medicine.

There isn't a test that I can do that says you have heart failure. It's more of a conversation and an assessment, and so getting to know families is incredibly important to that process.

We draw from our experience in terms of making the decision when to do one operation or the other because we only have one chance. The heads of the heart center came together and we thought that the best strategy was to bridge them with a device.

A Berlin heart pump is an external heart pump that we can use to help support kids whose hearts aren't squeezing as well as they should be. The pump is connected to what looks like a small refrigerator that is what drives the pump to support the cardiac function.

I wanna just be a normal family with a normal two year old boy. It's one thing to be alive, but you need to be able to live as well.

At first, I was kinda just, like, in shock and disbelief, and I feel like as soon as they took him into the Operating Room, that's kinda, like, when it all hit me. Like, I was literally, like, shaking. Like, this is real. This is happening.

Doctor. Grilla has done all of our surgeries, so we love Doctor. Carrillo for sure. He wasn't actually even the surgeon on call that week, but when he heard it was Thember's heart, he let him know, I'm gonna do this.

I wanna see it through. That was very special.

There is such a large number of people to get to a successful outcome, All the ups and downs, but we go through this together.

I tell families that on average, it's about twelve hours from the time you kiss them goodbye to the time you get to kiss them hello, and they're gonna take however much time they need to get the best outcome that they can for every kid.

All of those moving parts, you know, came together at the right time and we essentially struck a home run because everything went super well. I remember clearly that we hugged Christina and I after the procedure and we we shared a tear because it was a long road.

There was times where I was scared that we weren't gonna get to this point. I mean, to sit and just watch him walk around the room without being limited by this device is really for real. It's definitely something that a lot of people take for granted, but that I never will. It's a beautiful thing.

He's just so stinking cute with the mop of curls that he has. He's just so sweet. His transplant went really well.

They caught everything exactly when they should have and that led us to this outcome, our miracle and now we're going home.

Next is one example from an award winning video series.

Enjoy.

We think healthy and happy should always go together. Welcome to health care that's all about caring. Amplify Health, a little empathy changes everything.

I loved watching those videos. It's it's not hard to see why these videos won. Congratulations to all the winners in these stories in motion categories. And now the winner of the Diamond Award for stories in motion is Amplify Health. Congratulations to the Amplify Health team on your Diamond Award.

Campaigns that move people celebrates ideas designed to capture attention and motivate action. Winners in these categories made people stop, click, share, search, schedule, or even just think differently.

And sometimes, they simply made people smile and feel good. The categories include best digital marketing campaign, best search engine marketing campaign, best social media, best children's health marketing campaign, and best integrated marketing campaign. Unlock Health is proud to sponsor the best integrated marketing campaign category.

Here are the teams that earned top honors.

Congratulations to all campaigns that move people category winners. The winner of the Diamond Award for campaigns that move people is Hackensack Meridian Health.

Congratulations to the Hackensack Meridian Health team on your diamond award.

And now our last group of categories.

Some of the most interesting developments in health care marketing happened behind the scenes.

Intelligence and Impact recognizes teams using better data, smarter targeting, new applications of AI, and changing search behavior to sharpen strategy and deliver stronger results.

Categories include best use of data and targeted marketing, best use of artificial intelligence and health care marketing, best answer engine optimization, another new category this year, and best digital marketing ROI and outcomes. Thank you to our category sponsors, Alliance Innovations for best use of artificial intelligence in health care marketing, and BPD for best use of data and targeted marketing. Here are this year's winners.

Congratulations to all the winners in the intelligence and impact categories.

The winner of the Diamond Award for intelligence and impact is Ochsner Health and The Group.

Congratulations to Ochsner Health and The Moran Group for your Diamond Award.

This final honor stands apart.

Throughout the evening, we celebrated individual campaigns, ideas, and innovations.

The Mark Gothberg eHealthcare Organizational Commitment Award recognizes something bigger.

It's what happens when an entire organization supports digital excellence.

Before we announce this year's Organizational Commitment Award winners, we want to recognize three honorable mentions.

This year's submissions were so strong that the judges just had to recognize them.

Our twenty twenty six honorable mentions are Hackensack Meridian Health, Lucy L. Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, Stanford Children's Health, Mount Nittany Health.

Congratulations.

And now the Organizational Commitment Award winners.

Our first Organizational Commitment Award winner is Fair Health. For Fair Health, digital isn't just one part of the operation. It's central to how the entire organization works. Fair Health uses digital tools and data to help consumers, providers, researchers, and policymakers better understand health care costs and make more informed decisions. Its commitment shows up across everything from cost estimator tools and consumer education to shared decision making resources and bilingual digital content. Congratulations to the Fair Health teams and your 20 '26 organizational commitment award.

Our next organizational commitment award winner is Intermountain Health. Intermountain Health shows what enterprise wide digital commitment looks like at scale. Digital engagement, marketing and communications, consumer experience, data services, and the contact center work together around a shared strategy. That means digital is connected across search, scheduling, MyChart, AI, marketing automation, and patient feedback with measurable results across the system.

Congratulations to the Intermountain Health team on your 2026 organizational commitment award. Our final organizational commitment award winner is UCLA Health. UCLA Health has focused its digital strategy on a simple but important goal, making it easier for patients to find and connect with care. Its work brings together AI powered navigation, streamlined appointment requests, personalized outreach, CRM technology, and a redesigned digital experience.

The common thread is reducing friction and helping patients move more easily from information to care. Congratulations to the UCLA Health team on your 20 '26 organizational commitment award.

Well, Shannon, we've made it to the end. Congratulations to all the twenty twenty six winners.

We are grateful for the opportunity to honor you, recognize your accomplishments, and share your excellent work. Visit ehealthcareawards.com for a listing of all the winners and for access to this recording.

We hope that you will share this virtual awards presentation with your entire team. Now remember, the call for entries for next year awards will open on 05/01/2027, and we would love for you to be a part of the eHealthcare Leadership Awards.

You can be a part of the community by entering your best work or participating as a sponsor or a judge. We look forward to seeing you at next year's eHealthcare Leadership Awards.

Good night.