Swaay.Health Podcast

Securing top digital honors usually requires a massive external agency and an unlimited checkbook. OntarioMD proved you can achieve excellence entirely in-house. Find out how their marketing team navigated competing stakeholder demands to build a critically acclaimed platform.

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, an incredible support system often springs into action around the patient. Friends deliver meals. Family members check in. Healthcare teams focus on treatment plans.

But as the weeks turn into months (and sometimes years), one group quietly fades into the background.

The caregivers.

For Charlotte Bayala, founder and host of The Cancer Caregiver Podcast and winner of the 2026 Swaay.Health Podcast of the Year Award, that reality became deeply personal after her husband was diagnosed with incurable thyroid cancer more than a decade ago. Suddenly thrust into a role she never expected, Charlotte found plenty of information about caring for the patient but almost nothing about caring for herself.

“There is plenty of information about cancer and treatments and how to support the patient,” Charlotte explained. “But very little spoke directly to what I was experiencing and what I needed.”

That experience ultimately inspired her to create The Cancer Caregiver Podcast—a community dedicated to helping caregivers feel seen, supported and less alone.

During our conversation, Charlotte shared powerful insights that extend well beyond cancer caregiving. Her lessons apply to anyone supporting a loved one through illness, disability or life’s most difficult seasons.

This conversation hit especially close to home for me. My mom is a full-time caregiver for my stepdad following a brain injury, and my brother is currently undergoing cancer treatment. I know our family isn’t alone, millions of caregivers are navigating similar challenges every day. Charlotte’s advice is for all of them.

Take moment to to hear the four of the biggest takeaways from our conversation.

One of the biggest misconceptions Charlotte encountered and hears is the belief that taking care of yourself somehow takes away from the person you’re caring for.

Instead, she encourages caregivers to think differently. “Self-care isn’t a reward for getting everything done. It’s maintenance.” In fact, Charlotte prefers another phrase entirely. “I love using the word self-preservation because self-care is overused. The goal isn’t to become less caring when you care for yourself. The goal is to remain well enough to continue caring the way you’d like to.”

Many caregivers tell themselves they’ll rest later. They’ll ask for help later. They’ll take care of themselves once things calm down.

But, as Charlotte points out, later rarely comes. Sometimes self-preservation starts with something as small as five uninterrupted minutes and learning that those five minutes aren’t something to feel guilty about.

Throughout the interview, Charlotte returned to one recurring theme: caregivers often feel invisible.

Not because people don’t care. Because people don’t know what to say.

One of the most powerful moments of our conversation came when she described how discouraging it can be for caregivers to finally open up about their fears, only to hear responses like: “Just stay positive” or “Everything will work out.” Instead, Charlotte says caregivers often need something much simpler. “Sometimes we just need someone to say, ‘That really sucks. I can’t believe that happened.'” Validation (not solutions) is often the greatest gift we can give.

Her podcast creates space for caregivers to acknowledge emotions that are often hidden: fear, guilt, resentment, grief, exhaustion and loneliness. As Charlotte puts it: “The connection starts when people realize they don’t have to pretend.”

It’s one of the most common phrases we offer someone going through a difficult time (I do it myself!). But it’s also one of the least helpful.

Charlotte explained that asking caregivers to tell us what they need unintentionally creates another task on an already overwhelming to-do list.

Instead, make the decision for them. Rather than asking what they need, try saying:

Small, specific acts remove decision-making and make accepting help much easier. She also reminds us that support shouldn’t disappear after the initial diagnosis. “You get this wave of support in the beginning,” she said. “Then six months later, everyone goes back to their lives but the caregiver is still caregiving.”

Sometimes the most meaningful gesture isn’t a grand one. It’s simply sending a text months later that says: “I’m thinking about you.”

For someone who has just become a caregiver, the pressure to do everything (and do it perfectly) can feel overwhelming. Charlotte encourages caregivers to let go of the idea that they need to become experts overnight. “You don’t have to figure everything out on the first day,” she said. “You’re going to feel pressure to become an expert overnight and to do things you have no skills to do.”

Instead, she encourages caregivers to focus on the next step rather than trying to solve every challenge at once. Being present in the moment not only helps reduce anxiety, but also allows caregivers to experience the meaningful moments they are working so hard to protect. As Charlotte put it: “Caregivers give up being able to care for themselves… so they can help the person they love live. But then, as they’re doing that, they lose the ability to actually live the life they were trying to fight for.”

Her advice is simple but profound: care deeply for your loved one but don’t forget that your own life, your own joy, and your own well-being matter too.

At Swaay.Health, community has always been about more than just professional networking. It’s about recognizing the people whose work often happens quietly, behind the scenes, and making sure they know they aren’t alone.

Charlotte Bayala has built far more than an award-winning podcast. She’s created a community where caregivers can put down the weight they carry (even if only for a little while) and hear something many of them desperately need: We see you.

Are you tired of your sales team complaining they were not invited to pitch a major deal? The problem usually points to a broken go to market strategy and a leaky customer retention bucket.

The temptation to let AI do all the heavy lifting is incredibly high when you are a solo marketer. But relying on quick prompts yields empty-calorie content that your audience will ignore. To truly move the needle, solo marketers need to stop trying to be a content factory and start behaving like a knowledge translator. Swaay.Health sat down with Jennifer Lazarz, Director of Marketing at Medical Informatics Corp, to discuss how to survive and thrive as a solo marketer. She shares how smart boundaries and a clear focus on quality can help marketers navigate an automated landscape without losing their creative voice.

Patients are already skipping your beautifully designed website navigation to ask AI directly for healthcare answers. If your digital front door isn't rebuilt for conversational search, your content might as well not exist. Adeline Ashley from Sitecore sat down with Swaay.Health to discuss the reality of AI in healthcare search. She breaks down the core concepts from her new book, “The Agentic Loop: How Humans and AI Build Experiences That Can Learn”, and explains why marketers must change focus to designing experiences that AI agents can read and learn from. She shares a framework you can use to keep your brand visible and avoid the trap of setting and forgetting your tech deployments.

Healthcare and the aerospace industry share a lot more airspace than you might think. We always hear about the regulations and the high stakes. What happens when you look at how these massive industries handle marketing? Swaay.Health sat down with Wayne Barringer, CEO of Jaro Group. Barringer spent years working in the communications and creative teams at Boeing and now consults in healthcare. He breaks down why finite markets force a shift from lead generation to deep sales support. He also explains how infrastructure lock-in dictates the buying committee. Barringer shares why marketing teams need to stop saying yes to every sales request and start helping their business partners think.

As AI-powered search tools become the first stop for healthcare buyers, patients, and caregivers, the rules of discoverability are changing.

People aren’t searching for links anymore. They’re searching for answers.

That shift has major implications for healthcare marketers, communicators, and PR professionals who have spent years optimizing websites, building thought leadership programs, and earning media coverage.

In a recent conversation, I sat down with Ivan Ruiz, Partner of Integrated Strategy, Health & Business Development at FINN Partners, to discuss how AI is reshaping content discovery, why trust is becoming the most valuable currency online, and what healthcare organizations need to do now to ensure credible voices rise above the noise.

For years, healthcare marketers focused on helping people find content. Today’s large language models (LLMs) are increasingly bypassing that step entirely.

Patients and healthcare consumers are asking conversational questions and receiving direct responses from AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. As Ivan noted during our conversation, these systems meet people where they are, responding in the same natural language they use to ask questions. That means brands must rethink how they create content and start answering real-world questions the way real people ask them.

If AI is the new gatekeeper, earned media is becoming one of its most important trust signals.

LLMs pull information from across the web, but they tend to place greater weight on credible sources, expert voices, and reputable publications. Ivan and I touched on how healthcare PR now serves as a critical filter for truth. Media coverage featuring respected clinicians, researchers, and executives helps establish authority and increases the likelihood that trusted information is surfaced when people seek answers online.

Many organizations assume strong SEO automatically translates into AI visibility. Increasingly, that’s not the case.

One of the first recommendations Ivan told me that he recommends to his clients is conducting an AI visibility audit. He told me that organizations are often surprised to discover they have little to no presence across major LLMs despite ranking well in traditional search. The reason is simple: AI systems reward expertise, depth, authority, and relevance, not just keywords.

Another key shift is how content is organized.

Healthcare marketers have long been trained to create concise web copy, but AI systems are looking for both clarity and depth. Ivan recommends structuring content with clear headlines, summaries, and easy-to-scan formats while also providing deeper layers of information for those who want to explore further.

His advice? Every page should have a “double click.” A visitor should be able to quickly understand the basics and then access richer, more authoritative content beneath the surface.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from the discussion was the need to elevate expert voices.

Whether it’s medical leaders, researchers, executives, or clinicians, organizations need to help their experts communicate in ways that are approachable and conversational. Patients don’t want a 75-page PDF. They want someone to explain a complex issue in language they can understand.

As AI continues to reshape healthcare information discovery, the organizations that build trust through authentic expertise, accessible content, and credible earned media will be the ones that stand out.

Learn more and connect with the FINN Partners team:

Are you keeping your brand awareness and lead generation efforts separate? Treating these as isolated marketing initiatives is a great way to waste your best content. Swaay.Health sits down with Mary Tindall, Founder and Principal, and Patricia Chaney, Content Lead at Calliope Communications. They detail how to use your top thought leadership assets to actively generate qualified leads. You will discover how to turn existing sales education into anchor content and why a real distribution plan is critical for B2B healthcare success.

Rebranding an established company carries risk. Get it wrong and you throw away years of brand equity. Brandy Kline, VP of Marketing at Greenway Health, sits down with Swaay.Health to share the exact strategy behind their recent corporate refresh and the launch of their Novare platform. We cover the mechanics of updating a legacy visual identity, the absolute necessity of internal change management, and the process of designing a new booth for the HIMSS floor. Marketers will see how to modernize a presence without abandoning deep clinical trust.

It is incredibly easy to fall into the trap of plastering clinical rankings across a billboard or relying on standard hospital tropes. This is the “marketing sin” of pride and it can derail your marketing efforts. The reality is that patients crave empathy and clear communication over a list of corporate trophies. Christian Barnett, Group Lead Strategy and Creative at Unlock Health, sat down with Swaay.Health at #MASHSMD26 in full dandy-devil costume to break down the seven deadly sins of healthcare marketing. We discuss why "Pride" and "Gluttony" quietly sabotage patient trust and how marketers can reposition their campaigns to drive real behavioral change.