What is Healthcare Voice Over?

Healthcare spans a wide scope of clients including hospitals, medical practices, specialty clinics, long-term care facilities, rehabilitation clinics, urgent care centers, veterinary clinics, alternative medicine centers, and sometimes insurance providers.

In general, the tones used for healthcare voice over are reassuring, calm and authoritative. I’ve found that a real person’s conversational tone pops up as a direction, especially when dealing with projects focused on children’s health and veterinary care.

Specialty clinics most often use an authoritative tone as they are establishing the credibility of their providers. The typical healthcare brand is seeking to build not only awareness but trust, and studies have proven that a female voice is heard as more trustworthy than a male voice. Because of this, many times you will hear a woman’s voice on healthcare commercials and corporate projects.

Healthcare Voice Over Data:

“Female-voiced ads performed better on the dimensions of authenticity, trust and uniqueness.” (Veritonic) Another study, by IPG, found that women influence at least 90% of medication decisions and impact 80% of healthcare purchases.

Since other studies have found that women tend to buy from women, healthcare clients will use a woman’s voice for television and radio commercials, patient-facing videos and other projects.

Differences Between Healthcare and Medical Narration

Healthcare voice over differs from medical in that most medical narrations are provider-facing where most healthcare projects are patient facing. Medical narrations are written much more clinically and require the voice over talent to be adept at saying unfamiliar, multisyllabic words and make highly technical copy sound like chatting around a water cooler with a group of brilliant physicians.

For information about medical voiceover and to listen to demos, please visit my medical demo page here.

On numerous pharmaceutical and medical device voice over bookings, I’ve voiced two videos for one drug, procedure or device. One of the videos is consumer-focused with simple, easy-to-understand content using a reassuring tone. The other is provider-facing with industry jargon and complex, detailed descriptions with a more authoritative, peer-to-peer voiceover style.

Healthcare Voice Over and Medical Insurance

The insurance industry is constantly changing and evolving. Each year during corporate open enrollment season, I voice multiple videos explaining each of the employee plans including pros and cons.

Having to spell out often confusing requirements and detailed explanations without putting the view into brain overload is like walking a tightrope.

Medicare videos can be full of confusing formulas and options as well. Like with employee healthcare plan enrollment projects, Medicare projects require clear communication, repetition of information in a reassuring-yet-engaging delivery

Pandemic Healthcare Voiceover

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the creative used by hospitals, practices, specialty clinics, etc. shifted from friendly authoritative to more reassuring and matter-of-fact deliveries. Once the initial wave was over, the messaging encouraged people to go back to their doctor’s office again, that it was safe.

Test Your Healthcare vs. Medical Hearing

If you want to test your Healthcare VO vs. Medical Narration ears, take the free Provider or Patient Facing quiz here.

It was awesome to be part of a national ad campaign for Quest Diagnostics’ COVID products. We recorded television, radio, streaming and social ads explaining both the at-home testing and in-person testing options.

Samples of Healthcare VO:

It was interesting to me that the pandemic brought brands to the more reassuring style of delivery in order to encourage their customers to return. It was about assuring them it was safe or that they now provided ways to shop that didn’t require people to come into the store.

Other patient-facing healthcare VO work I’ve done includes an amazing app for Sharecare that is like an encyclopedia of the human body. In a different app, this one for Zimmer Biomet, I voiced detailed instructions for physical therapy patients.