What the heck are we talking about? KNB Communication’s quarterly guide to health tech media coverage: Q1 2025

By Jeff Rusack, Media Relations Manager

It’s time for everyone’s favorite game!

Audience: “What the heck are we talking about?!”

Here at KNB Communications, we specialize in healthcare communications, with a heavy emphasis on health tech. We pride ourselves on having carefully curated relationships with editors and reporters at the outlets that cover this beat. We have fostered a level of both professional and personal trust with them — we swap stories about our pets, our kids, and our bosses. We know what stories they’re chasing and the keywords we should include in a pitch to entice them (and which words are likely to bore them). But, “trust me, bro” doesn’t always fly when explaining this to clients. Thankfully, we have public relations tools like Muck Rack to verify our gut instincts and show where the traction is in health tech. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy as we answer…

Audience: “What the heck are we talking about?!”   

A quick recap of the rules: We’re looking at every posted article (10,511 of them) across  24 U.S. news outlets that exclusively or significantly covered the healthcare technology space during the first quarter of 2025. 

This word cloud graph speaks for itself. It highlights the top terms these 24 outlets used in their coverage most from January 1 through March 31, 2025. We excluded common terms such as “healthcare,” “doctor,” and “Becker’s.”

As you can see, AI is king. Data is queen. And no matter how far away your organization seems from the patient, everything in healthcare goes back to the patient, especially access.

This word cloud shows the terms covered the most from health tech outlets. Some of these terms will always be tied to health tech, no matter the time of year. So, below is a graph where we dug a bit deeper to see how often other, more trendy topics were covered (we also included some that were mentioned in the word cloud). We then compared them to how frequently they were covered/mentioned in articles throughout all of 2024 (all 41,197 of them). For example, President Trump was not included in the word cloud, but these outlets covered his decisions and his administration's. We wanted to see what we could learn from the changes in coverage tendencies from these specific topics.

It’s a lot of numbers, but it paints a picture that can help earned media teams drive strategies and give everyone a snapshot of what is being covered and what is not being covered as much. 

Search terms indicated below include all versions of the word listed, i.e. AI = artificial intelligence, EHR = electronic health record, health records, Trump = Donald Trump, Donald J. Trump, President Trump, Biden = Joe Biden, President Biden, etc. 

What is vs what if: No matter what side of the political aisle you sit on, we can all agree that everything, especially the media cycle, moves faster under the Trump administration. Hence, we’re seeing 5.7x the amount of “Donald Trump” coverage in health tech during his inaugural quarter compared to last year during the campaign. The same goes for RFK Jr. at 2.26x and Dr. Oz at 7.52x. While that may not have been the case in more national outlets covering the campaign, the reality is that these health-tech-focused outlets typically cover what is happening, compared to what will happen. There’s too much going on in healthcare to pitch a “what-if” story. These journalists tell stories of “what is.” 

Cybersecurity: Has cybersecurity coverage decreased? Yes. But that’s compared to a year after the largest healthcare cyberattack in U.S. history. That, of course, was the Change Healthcare attack. So while coverage is down, it’s merely moderating from what was most likely all-time high coverage. It’s safe to say that, given the correct angle, health tech journalists will continue to cover this topic.   

Measles: While this topic most likely veers away from what health tech reporters typically cover, the outlets that have covered it have mentioned it 5.1x more than they did 2024. Given this disease was considered eradicated in 2000, it just goes to show, you have to be ready for anything in public relations, including the return of a disease thought to be behind us.  

Artificial intelligence: There’s no slowing down this train. If anything, the topic is only picking up steam. Nearly 25% of all articles this past quarter mentioned AI.  Takeaway — if you can show how AI directly addresses a healthcare problem, chances are you have a story that health-tech journalists are interested in covering.

That’s all for this quarter’s show. Hopefully, you’re better at playing…

Audience: “What the heck are we talking about?!”