ChatGPT's Canvas: A Healthcare Marketing Use Case

Last week I tried NotebookLM for the first time and was blown away by its ability to summarize two of my blog posts into a pretty listenable podcast put on by two AI-driven "hosts".

This week I'm trying another new tool getting lots of buzz: ChatGPT's new Canvas feature, which is currently in beta for subscribers. 

Side note: If I'm a niche player like Jasper or Grammarly focused only on the content experience, I'm getting worried that my customers are soon going to leave me and use Canvas, Microsoft Copilot, NotebookLM and other enterprise-ready (or close) tools. It's hard to imagine why a large swath of the population will want only content enhancement functionality as a stand-alone.

OK, on to the use healthcare marketing case...

Healthcare Content: One Size Doesn't Fit All

When I worked at Boston Children's Hospital years ago, our team was responsible for communicating with LOTS of different audiences: parents, patients, clinicians, researchers, the general public, etc. We struggled to create content that would appeal to the right audience at the right level at the right time.

So, in general, we defaulted to a 4th grade reading level, trying to shoot the gap and make content that was broadly helpful, but not specifically helpful, especially to children with learning difficulties or highly educated PhDs.

This is where Canvas and other tools like it could have a HUGE impact.

At the core of Canvas is the ability to adjust copy on the fly based on your specific needs. It starts off as any other ChatGPT interaction would. In this case, I asked for the definition of a common childhood condition, type 1 diabetes, and got a typical response. Then I asked to engage Canvas (for some reason it didn't show up automatically for me this time).

This is where regular ChatGPT users will notice a change. A new dialogue box opens in the middle of the page and the question/prompt section moves to the left.

Putting the Experience in the User's Hands

Now the fun stuff. Clicking on the pencil icon ✏️ in the bottom right brings up a tool that allows you to prompt Canvas in real-time based on a variety of capabilities: Add Emojis, Add Final Polish (which cleans up the copy), Adjust the Length, and, my favorite for this use case, Reading Level.

Check it out:

Now imagine this kind of functionality embedded into a hospital website (or any kind of site really), where the user can toggle a switch and have the content auto-adjust to the reading level they're most comfortable with, or their native language, or display images instead of words, or account for vision loss. 

Suddenly, the site visitor is in control of their experience and the content creators on the hospital side don't have to guess at their users' needs or, worse, provide a middle-of-the-road experience that doesn't really help anyone.

If I'm a hospital marketing leader I'm asking my CMS company to embed this functionality ASAP. It's a win-win: You get happier, more satisfied site visitors and more efficient content creation from your team.