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 to drive the growth that led to Stryker's acquisition of care.ai in late 2024.
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 to drive the growth that led to Stryker's acquisition of care.ai in late 2024.
care.ai had a vision for smart hospitals. Bruce Bandes, President at care.ai had a playbook. Outcomes Rocket helped execute both and built a brand worth acquiring.
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.
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 care.ai engagement was run.
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.
"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
Creating a category while competing in a noisy, skeptical market.
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.
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.
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.
Health system decision-makers need to know a company long before they buy from it. The go-to-market foundation Bruce and the team needed had to be built for a long arc, not short-term lead generation.
A full-service marketing partnership built around a single goal: category ownership.
Our team at Outcomes Rocket worked directly with Bruce and care.ai to implement an integrated strategy that built brand authority across every channel relevant to health system decision-makers.
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.
Produced branded podcast content featuring CIOs, CTOs, CNOs, care.ai leadership and secured placement on prominent industry shows, amplifying credibility through the expert-driven channels health system executives actually trust.
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.
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.
care.ai grew into the leader of the category they helped create, and was acquired by Stryker.
The company's growth culminated in its acquisition by Stryker at the end of 2024, forming the foundation of Stryker's Smart Care Division. Bruce credits the category creation work and Outcomes Rocket's multi-channel execution as central to that outcome.
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