CASE STUDY · CARE.AI · HEALTHTECH

From Category Creation to Acquisition: How Outcomes Rocket Powered care.ai's Growth

Outcomes Rocket partnered with care.ai and its leadership team to build a category that did not yet exist, smart hospitals, using podcast production, PR & media and brand strategy.

Podcast Production

PR & Media

Website Optimization & Branding

Go-to-Market Strategy

Category Creation

Smart hospitals established as a recognized category

Market Leadership

care.ai positioned as the category’s creator and leader

Acquisition

Acquired by Stryker in late 2024

The starting point

care.ai had a vision for smart hospitals. Bruce Bandes had a playbook.

When Bruce Bandes joined care.ai as President, the company had a compelling vision for AI-driven hospital infrastructure, but the category of smart hospitals did not yet exist in any recognized way.

Competitors were circling the same space, market noise around AI in healthcare was growing, and care.ai needed to do more than market a product. It needed to create a category and own a conversation. care.ai partnered with Outcomes Rocket to build that authority from the ground up.

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HOW THE TEAMS WORKED

care.ai was looking for a full-service team with the breadth and healthcare expertise that would otherwise require multiple agencies, or resources built expensively in-house. They hired Outcomes Rocket as their marketing team, not a vendor. That distinction shaped everything about how the engagement was run.

“We not only created the category of smart hospitals, we executed well to associate care.ai as the leader of that category, as well as the creator. Outcomes Rocket was our partner in achieving that.”

Bruce Bandes

President, care.ai

Challenges

What stood in the way

No established category to enter, it had to be built

Smart hospitals were not yet a recognized concept. care.ai needed to define the category, educate buyers, and assert market leadership simultaneously, a compounded challenge most companies never face.

Heavy AI noise with no clear signal

As AI awareness in healthcare grew, so did the number of companies claiming to lead it. Differentiation required a multi-channel presence and a consistent, authoritative narrative, not a single campaign.

In-house creative talent without full-spectrum execution capability

care.ai had strong internal creative resources, but lacked the breadth and healthcare-specific expertise to run a category-creation strategy at the speed the opportunity required.

Long, complex healthcare sales cycles demanding sustained presence

Health system decision-makers need to know a company long before they buy from it. The go-to-market foundation had to be built for a long arc, not short-term lead generation.

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Solutions

One narrative, executed across four channels

Working alongside Bruce and the care.ai team, Outcomes Rocket executed across brand strategy, podcast production, PR, and website optimization, coordinating every channel around a single, disciplined narrative that positioned care.ai as both the creator and the leader of the smart hospital category.

Category Creation & Brand Positioning
Developed the smart hospital narrative, building messaging that established care.ai as the originator and standard-bearer of an entirely new category of healthcare infrastructure.
Podcast Production & Thought Leadership
Produced branded podcast content featuring CIOs, CTOs, CNOs and care.ai leadership, and secured placement on prominent industry shows, amplifying credibility through the expert-driven channels health system executives trust.
Public Relations & Media
Secured high-impact media placements that reinforced care.ai’s category leadership narrative and built the external validation required to support the commercial strategy at the executive level.
Website Optimization & Brand Refresh
Brought a strategic outside perspective to care.ai’s digital presence, enhancing the overall marketing plan and aligning the brand’s visual and verbal identity with the ambition the leadership team had set for the company.

Outcome