Why medical communication is not only a marketing opportunity — but increasingly a professional responsibility
The recent death of Greek singer Giorgos Mazonakis has opened a much wider conversation than the circumstances of one tragic case.
Authorities are still investigating the exact sequence of events surrounding his death after he attended a private medical office for plasmapheresis. The Athens Medical Association has reported that the practice housed a pathologist and a physician without a recognised medical specialty, and that two plasmapheresis machines found during a subsequent inspection were not permitted to be installed in a private medical office. Questions have also emerged around educational credentials publicly associated with “quantum medicine”.
It is important not to prejudge an ongoing investigation.
But the case raises another question — one that extends far beyond a single clinic, physician or treatment.
What happens when scientifically trained, experienced physicians choose not to participate in the public conversation about health?
Someone else does.
And today, that someone may have a better camera, a larger following and a more compelling story — but considerably less science behind what they are saying.
Medicine has changed. So has the way patients choose whom to trust.
For decades, a physician’s reputation was largely built inside hospitals, academic departments and professional networks.
Patients arrived through referrals. Expertise travelled by word of mouth.
That world still exists, but it is no longer the only one.
Before booking an appointment, patients now search Google. They watch videos. They read Instagram posts. They listen to podcasts. They encounter doctors, clinics, wellness practitioners and self-proclaimed experts side by side on the same screen.
To the person scrolling through that screen, the distinction between them is not always obvious.
Patients rarely evaluate expertise directly. They build trust through a collection of signals — reputation, credentials, communication and consistency.
A charismatic speaker making an extraordinary claim may appear every bit as credible as the surgeon who has spent fifteen years operating in major hospitals.
And there lies one of the uncomfortable realities of modern medicine:
Expertise that remains invisible leaves space for confidence without expertise to become visible instead.
“I don’t like social media” is understandable. But is it still enough?
A physician once told me something that stayed with me.
He did not enjoy social media. He had no particular desire to become a public figure and certainly did not want to spend his time creating content.
But he kept seeing medical claims online that were misleading, scientifically unsupported or dangerously oversimplified.
Eventually, his thinking changed.
If people were already looking online for answers, where were the physicians who had actually spent years acquiring the knowledge necessary to give them?
Where were the doctors who had treated thousands of patients, worked through difficult cases, trained in demanding hospital environments and understood not only what medicine can do, but also what it cannot promise?
His decision to communicate publicly was not driven only by the prospect of attracting patients. As I have written before, good medical marketing should never manufacture authority; its role is to make genuine expertise visible.
It came partly from a sense of responsibility.
And I believe that distinction matters.
Visibility is power. In medicine, power requires scrutiny.
I work professionally to build physicians’ digital presence.
My job is, quite literally, to help doctors become more visible, more recognisable and more trusted by the people they want to reach.
That makes the decision about whom I help to become visible something I cannot treat lightly.
A successful digital strategy can give someone considerable authority in the eyes of the public.
That is precisely why I do not believe every potential medical client is automatically a suitable client.
A recommendation from another doctor is valuable, but I still want to know more.
What is the physician’s actual clinical background?
Where have they worked?
What responsibility did they hold there?
Have they completed substantial postgraduate clinical training?
Have they worked for years within recognised hospitals or specialist centres?
Do they have peer-reviewed scientific work in the field they publicly claim expertise in?
And, perhaps just as importantly, how do they think about the limits of their own knowledge?
Because impressive credentials matter.
But medicine also requires something less measurable and equally important: the ability to recognise when you do not know.
Five days abroad do not make someone an expert
Medical biographies can be remarkably misleading when context disappears.
“Trained in London.”
“International fellowship.”
“Advanced training in Germany.”
Those phrases may describe years of intensive clinical work.
They may also describe a short observational visit.
These are not equivalent experiences.
There is an enormous difference between watching specialists work for several days and spending years inside a demanding clinical environment — arriving early, leaving late, assuming responsibility, following patients, managing complications and repeatedly encountering cases that cannot be learned from a textbook.
Expertise is not created by geographical prestige.
It is built through depth, duration, responsibility and repetition.
The same principle should apply when medical professionals describe themselves online.
Patients deserve enough information to understand the difference.
Medical marketing cannot simply be marketing
For other industries, exaggeration may sell a disappointing product.
In healthcare, misleading communication can influence decisions involving a person’s body, treatment and sometimes life.
That changes the ethical equation completely.
Medical communication cannot be reduced to reach, engagement and conversion.
It should also ask:
Is this accurate?
Is it supported by evidence?
Does it describe the limits of a treatment as clearly as its potential benefits?
Does it distinguish established medical knowledge from experimental approaches?
Could a patient misunderstand what we are saying and make a harmful decision because of it?
And are we building authority around someone who has actually earned that authority?
These questions may make medical marketing slower.
They may make it less spectacular.
They also make it worth doing.
The ethical case for doctors being visible
None of this means every excellent physician needs to become an influencer.
They should not.
Medicine does not need more influencers.
It needs more credible medical voices that patients can actually find.
A surgeon explaining when surgery is not necessary.
A cardiologist correcting a dangerous misconception before it spreads.
An orthopaedic specialist explaining why a treatment that works for one indication should not be marketed as a cure for everything.
A physician saying, “We don’t have sufficient evidence for that yet.”
These may not be the loudest messages online.
But they are among the most valuable.
And this is why I have increasingly come to see responsible medical communication as something more than a commercial opportunity.
For qualified, experienced physicians, visibility can certainly grow a practice.
But in an information environment in which scientific authority and pseudo-scientific confidence compete for exactly the same attention, being present also serves another purpose.
It gives patients an alternative.
An alternative to the miracle claim.
An alternative to the impressive title they cannot evaluate.
An alternative to the person who appears certain about everything.
An alternative grounded in training, clinical experience, evidence — and the humility that serious medicine requires.
Sometimes the most responsible thing a good doctor can do is not simply practise good medicine behind a closed consulting-room door.
It is to make sure that, when a patient goes looking for an answer, good medicine is there to be found.