For nearly a decade, I have had the privilege of experiencing, researching and contributing to the digital revolution in health. When I started focusing on this space, few were paying much attention. Today, most people in health recognize that digital is important.

It's no secret that, while most American adults have an appreciation and fascination for healthcare and the practice of medicine, it is often accompanied with an equal - if not greater - level of skepticism.

In the classic Frank Capra movie "It's a Wonderful Life," the hero hits a low point where he ponders whether the world would have been better off if he had never been born. Spool forward 67 years, and it feels as though our industry is having a similar crisis of confidence about brands. Do they still matter? Are they relevant in today's world? Articles and opinions abound telling us that brands have less and less of a role because people want content that is (or at least feels) independent of commercial interest.

The healthcare interaction model was traditionally defined by the patient-doctor relationship, with the physician "brand" the source of decision-making, care planning, and patient loyalty. Since then, there have been drastic changes in market dynamics--improvements in outcomes and quality, choices of providers, availability/transparency of information, and the integration of physicians into healthcare systems. While the patient-doctor relationship is still important, patients look beyond their primary care physicians, elevating the role of the healthcare system. To that end, healthcare systems should consider their brands as a vehicle to build relationships with consumers, a compass to help patients' navigate decisions, and a beacon …

These days, doing good is good business. Many of today's largest and most successful businesses and brands are recognized more for the good they do and the causes they support than the actual products they make and sell.

Patients not only need medical care but also emotional and educational support from their healthcare team. Treatment can be a daunting experience, but a good medical team can assuage patient fears for an easier healing experience.

In the nonprofit world, we strive to fund the causes we care about. And to do this, sometimes we need to think like a business-particularly with regards to branding.

In 2012, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report focusing on how people are using their cell phones to engage in real-time information seeking and sharing behaviors. Pew's research revealed that 70% of adult cell phone owners had conducted "just-in-time" searches using their cell phones.

We know that patients and healthcare professionals are using mobile devices for health and wellness information. In fact, 80% of physicians own a mobile phone, and 68% of them have at least two screens (smartphone and tablet). But many health and wellness brands have been slow to adopt mobile strategies, and have instead relied on the desktop experience to translate to a shrunken screen.

The diagnosis is grim: the American healthcare system is suffering from an acute shortage of integrated health information networks. Technically, it's more than a shortage: such networks simply don't exist.