Marketing & Analytics Meets Patient Outcomes at Dreamforce 2015

Author:  Laurel Skurko, Marketing Director, UCSF Radiology and Biomedical Imaging

Members of the UCSF Radiology marketing team were among 170,000 people to attend the annual Dreamforce conference in downtown San Francisco last week.

The conference lived up to its reputation for over-the-top exhibits. Between 8:30 am last Monday and about 2:00 pm Friday, attendees rallied in virtual reality race cars, rode in rickshaws, took their breaks in hammocks strung over lawns installed just for the occasion, and lounged in colorful bean bags while tapping away on their laptops. And though there were plenty of opportunities to play, there wasn’t a single unbooked moment on the conference agenda-- Emil Michael, Uber’s senior vice president for business, took the stage at the conference’s opening bell and began speaking with Salesforce Founder, Chairman and CEO, Marc Benioff, about his vision for seamless customer service.

In fact, the entire conference was a celebration of what it means to be customer focused. Reiterated throughout the week was how to ensure that organizations remove the silos between marketing, sales and customer service – the silos that prevent them from achieving their vision. The twin mantras of “great marketing looks like great customer service” and “great customer service looks like great sales,”  reinforced Salesforce’s belief in maximizing value to the end-user.

Thanks to Benioff’s dedication to UCSF, the institution was at the helm of the conference, with UCSF surgeon and oncologist Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, featured during the keynote address. During minute 7:40 of this 18-minute video, Benioff introduces the work of Esserman and the WISDOM study, a broad-based data study supported by the Salesforce platform which assesses breast cancer screening methods. In this clip, Esserman also elaborates on the critical need for precision medicine and draws an analogy between the concept of fantasy sports teams and the book and movie “Moneyball,” which demonstrated big data’s role in creating a winning baseball team, and the need for precise tech tools to deliver better patient outcomes. As she told Benioff  and the Dreamforce audience, “I saw the vision that you had, and I thought, ‘This is what I want!’”

Thank you to UCSF Imaging manager Cynthia Hammond and others from the UCSF Imaging team for your contribution to the success of the WISDOM study. Your dedication helps us all realize what it takes to move from dreams in "the cloud" to reality and, most importantly, to customer outcomes.