What the heck are we talking about? KNB Communication’s quarterly guide to health tech media coverage: Q2 2025

What the heck are we talking about? KNB Communication’s quarterly guide to health tech media coverage: Q2 2025

By Jeff Rusack, Media Relations Manager 

It’s time for everyone’s favorite game!

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

It’s KNB Communications' favorite blog-formatted game show! It’s the game where we analyze health tech media coverage of the previous quarter. A quick recap of the rules: We’re looking at every posted article (10,488 of them) across 24 U.S. news outlets that exclusively or significantly covered the healthcare technology space during the second quarter of 2025. 

Take a look at this cloud graph. It gives a 30,000-foot view of what is most often discussed in this space.  It highlights the top terms these 24 outlets used in their coverage most from April 1 through June 30, 2025. We excluded common terms such as “healthcare,” “doctor,” and “Becker’s.”

As you can see, AI is still the most commonly used phrase, with data not far behind. We observed a similar trend in the first quarter of the year. So, what is different from Q1? You can see the Q1 word cloud here.

New words in the Q2 word cloud include: “cuts,” “HHS,” and “employees.”

The word cloud shows the terms covered the most by health tech outlets. Some of these terms will always be associated with health tech, regardless of the time of year. So, in the two charts below, 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 the articles from these 24 outlets in 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 provide a snapshot of what is being covered, and just as importantly, what is not being covered.

2025 Q2 health tech media mentions compared to 2025 Q1

2025 Q2 health tech media mentions compared to all of 2024 

The heck?

Cuts + Medicaid: There’s a 58% increase in coverage from Q1 to Q2, specifically with the term “cuts”. Compare it to 2024, and it’s a 388% increase. That’s one of the most significant increases in coverage compared to the other terms monitored.. Federal budget cuts, including those to Medicaid, dominated headlines and will continue to as healthcare journalists and healthcare organizations parse out what the “Big Beautiful Bill” will mean for one of the largest industries in the country. If you can explain where cuts will affect patients or use real-world examples to demonstrate how organizations can maneuver around these cuts, chances are you have a story that will interest journalists.

AI: Thought the AI train might be losing steam? Think again. There was a 19% increase in “AI” media mentions from Q1 to Q2. A 44% increase in coverage compared to  2024. This increase is closely tied to “cuts.” Payers, providers, and every healthcare organization in between will be looking at their bottom line. The healthcare industry has experienced a wave of AI implementations over the past year and a half. Moving forward, those stories will move from the novelty of implementation to the reality of return on investment. The amount of “AI” media mentions will peak one day, but don’t expect it to be anytime soon. 

Presidents: You may have bet a large sum of money that the term “Biden” would have fallen off a media mention cliff in Q2 compared to Q1. It didn’t. It went up by 113%. This comes down to comparison. Portions of healthcare are about to undergo a significant shakeup thanks to executive orders and legislation passed by the Trump administration. When describing these changes, journalists often mention the previous administration’s agenda in comparison to Trump’s. Trump’s mentions remained relatively flat from Q1 to Q2 in health-tech outlets. Despite the additional mentions of Joe Biden, Donald Trump was mentioned nearly 4X more than Biden, which comes at no surprise. 

From a media relations standpoint, if a person or organization does something with enough staying power, it becomes the benchmark journalists use for comparison. Obviously, you can’t just become the president. But doing and showcasing impactful work in healthcare over time can lead to ongoing media coverage, even if that person or organization isn’t intentionally drawing attention to itself.

Other quick takeaways:

Cybersecurity is always a topic of discussion, but it lost substantial coverage since early 2024 due to the Change Healthcare attack largely finding resolution. That will change quickly, if / when there is a similar breach or attack.

Measles is stubborn – both the virus and its coverage. Mentions grew by over 100%. Over 100 of the 328 mentions of measles references from Q2 also mention RFK Jr.

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

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

We’ll see you next quarter!