Healthcare > health care

Hey there.

The Associated Press Stylebook turned 58 this year. Last week, at the annual ACES conference in Atlanta, they announced the updates to this year's edition. The crowd cheered at one of them (yes, actually).

That one was “healthcare.”

As of the 2026 edition, the AP Stylebook has officially decreed that “health care” is now one word. Always. No exceptions. What does this mean for healthcare marketing?

Let’s get to it.

(And yes, I do wonder how many serious operators were in that room.)

If you work in health tech, you already know this.

The industry has been writing it as one word for years. Hospital systems, health tech execs, journalists who cover the space — essentially everyone who lives in this market defaulted to “healthcare” a long time ago. AP was the last holdout, and now they’ve caught up.

We’ve been writing it as one word for as long as we’ve been working in the space. So has nearly every client I’ve worked with. This change matters mostly as formalization of something that was already true.

That’s how language usually moves: the industry shifts first and the institutions follow. But it’s worth pausing for a few minutes on why it matters at all, because style questions like this one aren’t just about grammar.

Words are signals. In health tech and innovation especially — where the people evaluating you, investors, partners, journalists, potential customers — are reading dozens of pitches, decks, and press releases a week, small signals add up. Writing “health care” in 2026 isn’t technically wrong. But it puts you slightly out of step with the language of the industry you’re claiming to know well. That’s a small thing, and small things compound (into something called your brand).

The AP change is a good prompt to audit your own materials. If your website, your deck, or your boilerplate still has “health care” as two words, update it.

A few related questions worth a quick pass

“Health tech” stays two words. Health technology, compressed into a category shorthand — the same way “sports tech” is two words and not “sportstech.” The industry wants these terms to feel cohesive and category-defining, but cramming them together doesn’t accomplish that. It just looks like a typo (and don’t get us started on the single word, double capitalization mess of HealthTech or SportsTech as a term).

“Preventive” vs. “preventative” is another one that comes up constantly in this space, given how much health tech marketing is built around prevention, early detection, and proactive care. AP says “preventive.” So does most style guidance. “Preventative” is widely used and broadly accepted, but it’s also longer — and when both are correct, shorter wins.

These feel like small questions. And they are, in isolation. But they point to something that matters for health tech companies specifically: the language of your market is part of your positioning. Founders who write like they understand the space earn a different kind of credibility than those who don’t. Not because any investor has ever passed on a deal over a hyphen or word choice, but because these signals, taken together, tell a story about how closely you’re paying attention.

The AP Stylebook changed. Your materials should too.

Yours in marketing, Jeff