A new study from Duckbill, an online AI-enabled task handler, looks at how Americans avoid important self-care because of time scarcity. The survey was of 2,069 US adults taken in early May and it showed Americans are avoiding the doctor for themselves.

When asked if they "avoid or procrastinate" making medical appointments, Gen X women were the top of the chart. 30% of women and 26% of men at this age delay or avoid health appointments. These are the prime "sandwich" years where childcare and eldercare can overlap.

Splitting parents out from the overall numbers we see that they are more likely to delay their own care but at the population average for scheduling someone else's care.

Independence and self-reliance are honorable traits but taken too far they can cause Americans to delay important tasks, such as healthcare. The top reason for delays (of all tasks, not just healthcare) is "deal with it."

A new report from ETS (a skills measurement company) has the optimistic title of "The ETS Human Progress Report." It is based on two studies, one of 1,010 US HR managers and another of 18,159 adults across 18 countries.

What makes it interesting is that this report looks at the state of AI skills across six industry types, including healthcare.

Healthcare is with entertainment at the bottom of the list for skills benchmarking. You can keep your "notes" (don't hypothesize -Ed.).

When asked about informal skills measurement, healthcare puts AI at the bottom of the list. 

This is probably because it is hard to measure rather than the industry thinking it is unimportant as other industries have low numbers here, too.

This chart is a bit complicated. The largest number in blue is the percent of the population who trust AI coaching in their job. The total number (for Indonesia it's 87%) is the number trusting their manager coaching them. The black bar is the difference between AI and human managers. Positive numbers mean the humans are more trusted and negative mean that AI is more trusted. The chart is sorted by this number.

So, Canada has trust in humans over AI, Indonesia has the highest overall trust, and Nigeria has the highest AI preference.

This report has an industry breakdown for email deliverability that includes hospitals and other healthcare services (likely dentists, pharmacies, etc.). Hospitals have a very high deliverability rate, but other services not so much.

If you want to see more information, this report from March (you're late on this one -Ed.) has good background on email provider rules.

A new report from Litmus looks at marketers' email programs. The company surveyed 692 marketing professionals from five English-speaking countries at the start of the year. 

Ok, so to be clear the respondents didn't say that, but they may as well have. The updates that email platforms have been making over the past few years are specifically designed to mangle your metrics. Marketers are responding to this by looking at numbers from non-email sources.

Ok, CTR is still reliant on email tools, but the landing data on the website isn't and marketers can escape inflated open rates as long as it is calculated by deliveries and not opens.

Ok, granted this is a large range, but we're limited to the data Litmus gives us. In this chart we see these "middle ground" ROI ranges as 35% and 30%, respectively.

The net-net here is that ROI for email is good, and has been for years.

Not everyone is using AI in their email marketing programs, but significant numbers are and they are starting with creative. 

A new report from Birdeye is based on Google data on 150-thousand businesses (presumably global) split by industry. The Google data is centered around the Google Business Profile and related engagement tools such as lookup, contact, and reviews.

Not sure how extensive Google Business Profiles (GBPs) are now? They are full-featured with listings, sponsorship opportunities, maps, photos, contact elements, reviews, and more.

The biggest engagement type on business profiles for healthcare providers is the phone call. Directions are owned by retail stores and website visits by automotive dealerships.  

If patients are going to review a healthcare provider, 8 in 10 of them are going to do it on Google. This chart shows how Google is dominant in most industries with the lowest still nearly two-thirds.

Another feature available from Google is appointment scheduling. It looks like the financial industry is all over that feature, with healthcare a distant second. Other industries are not as appointment-focused it looks like.

All of this shows how digital-focused patients have become even if pharma brands can't really benefit from call or schedule buttons on Google.

The Harris Poll researchers call women the "canary in the coal mine" for US economic futures. A survey of 4,208 US adults by Harris Poll in May finds that women are cutting back more than men.

70% of women say they are the primary "shopper" in the family and so make more shopping changes. Everything is being reduced, including household essentials.

Relative measures can be biased by initial states. Someone driving 30 won't necessarily "slow down" when told by a sign to stay under the limit. However, men and women have a somewhat different perspective on the economy.

It's hard to know if this will substantively change how the family "health gatekeeper" will spend on medical products but it's a signal about the current economic uncertainty.

It's not just pharma that is in the crosshairs of Congress when it comes to marketing tax write-offs. The plan being discussed is a 5- or 10-year amortization. While companies would eventually "catch up" if budgets remain unchanged, there is still cash flow and future value issues surroundings the delays.

EY surveyed 4,942 non-executives (workers and management) from 9 western European countries in March. They asked about attitudes toward AI use in the workplace.

That vast majority of respondents said their experiences with GenAI systems has been positive with a narrow range of 79-90%.

The emotional response to AI is generally positive as well, though not as high as the actual experiences using the technology. Here, we see a difference emerge between managers (82%) and workers (63%). Age also plays a role.

Workers are expecting AI to change how they work. 61% say that change is coming and 42% say it worries them.

The latest CB Insights venture funding market report sees big gains in defense and AI deals. Digital health is doing ok but mid-pack.

Investors are looking at valuations of just over 11x of investment for digital health startups, likely reflecting the competition in the sector.

Q2 deal volumes are down slightly from last year but seem to show a soft landing from the 2021 bubble.

Last week Meta started allowing search engines (mainly Google and Bing) to index public content from professional accounts. This new channel combines the intent of search with the content style of social.

With search indexing and discovery, social posts may get a second life. We already recommend having important posts on the account or Page so that social searchers have something to find, and now that will be doubly important. Ensuring that all paid posts have an organic counterpart will be critical.

It is not clear where social posts will show up on Google, but likely they will be after the AI Overview where featured snippets often go.

For anyone who does not want their content to appear in search engines, indexing can be turned off. This may be desired by some conservative MRL teams until we know how the content will show and what elements of the social posts will be displayed.

Last week was "Prime Day" from Amazon... which hasn't been a "day" since 2018 but which increased from two days to four this year. So, really, it's "Prime Week."

This increase grew estimated raw product sales (Amazon does not release those numbers) by 69.7% to $24.1 billion over the four days. But that's not double, so the per-day take was lower ($6.0 billion compared to $7.1).

So, why the extension? Well, when compared to estimated average sales per day the Prime days completely dominate (4.2x daily revenue in 2022, for example).

So the multiple will be lower for the longer Prime day (we don't have full year sales estimates yet) but by extending the days they sell considerably more merchandise. 

All of this financial activity drives attention, and that drives ad sales opportunities. Amazon especially is growing at the expense of the search incumbents.

A new Pew Research report looks at how Americans feel about health policy in the country.

51% feel that scientists should get more influence, and doctors are next on the list.

Those on the "too much" side? That's health insurance companies by a large margin.

On the pharmaceutical side, 90% of Americans say that it's important for the government to test drugs for safety. The CDC is mid-pack but the FDA isn't on the list at all.