John Eudes spent his career furthering healthcare marketing, firmly believing that traditional marketing techniques combined with innovative interactive strategies and new technologies empower healthcare providers to engage consumers, patients, physicians and employees in very useful ways. John was an early innovator in the industry and continued to be throughout his career. He sought innovative and technological answers to facilitate healthcare marketing from the early onset of his career beginning in the late 1970s.
John was a pioneer in several different areas of healthcare marketing and technological advances through strategy and development. While at UAB Center in Birmingham, he was the first to understand the value of call center integration and to develop a physician relations program that included the use of liaisons to visit referring physicians to build relationships and referrals. He was an early innovator with the development of an “electronic catalog” of UAB physician information for use by referring physicians (called “eCat,” it was a directory for referring physicians delivered on a floppy drive).
In 1996, John co-founded the interactive marketing firm Greystone.Net, which has helped hundreds of organizations plan their first and/or improve and re-engineer their Web sites, intranets, patient portals and physician portals. He was one of the first to strategically use Web sites to build markets and customer relationships and to integrate the Web and technology into an organization’s overall marketing and operational strategy. He helped many individuals launch their careers and guided the development of many organizations’ first generation Internet strategy.
Throughout his career, John was active in many industry organizations as well as a contributing author and frequent speaker. He was the chief architect of the Annual Healthcare Internet Conference, now in its 15th year. John was a long time member of the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development (SHSMD), and one of the founding members of the Academic Medical Center Marketing Group. He served on the Board of Directors as a chairperson for the Alliance of Healthcare Strategy and Marketing, and was the recipient of more than 30 awards for planning, marketing, and public relations excellence from national, regional, and local organizations, including most recently, the SHSMD 2011 Award for Individual Professional Excellence.
John passed away in February 2011, but throughout his career he was a mentor and role model to many in the industry, a change agent with an enormous passion and a constant source of inspiration and motivation. During his nearly 35 years of healthcare industry experience, John was a visionary and, to the very end, was dedicated to moving healthcare marketing and the Web to new levels within hospitals and healthcare systems. John brought innovative, fresh ideas to the table and gained consensus for their implementation. His enthusiasm and passion to bring people and ideas together is his legacy. John impacted not just the healthcare industry, but the people in it.
