Patient image in advertising: how can healthcare institutions stay within the bounds of the law?

Although the content shared is presented as naturally as possible to build a connection with the target audience, many clinics often violate the provisions of the Lithuanian Law on Advertising. We invite you to take a closer look at what’s important to know and what to avoid.

According to Article 2(8) of the Lithuanian Law on Advertising, advertising is information disseminated in connection with a person’s economic, commercial, financial, or professional activity that encourages the purchase of goods or use of services, including real estate acquisitions and the transfer of property rights and obligations. In such cases, it is prohibited to use a patient’s name, surname, or image, or to rely on medical specialists’ recommendations. A common practice is to share a patient’s story after treatment to enhance the perceived effectiveness of the service and create an emotional connection with the audience. But such examples often fall under the definition of advertising and may be considered a violation. In this context, it’s important to understand that even a goodwill message about a patient — with their consent — becomes advertising.

To create engaging content, healthcare institutions on social media often use real patient stories or testimonials. But even communication created with the best of intentions can easily cross legal boundaries. The most common mistakes happen not out of bad intent, but out of a lack of information.

• Sharing patient testimonials. Institutions often share thank-you messages or comments, but as soon as such a testimonial appears on the clinic’s official profile, it acquires the status of advertising. In this case, the information must be fully anonymized.
• An influencer telling about their treatment experience. If services were provided to the influencer and the cooperation with the institution is of an advertising nature, they can’t talk about their experience as a patient. This is treated as use of a patient’s image in advertising, which is prohibited.
• Disclosing covert advertising. When content is presented as a sincere opinion but is actually a paid collaboration, it must be clearly labeled with the word ‘Advertising.’ Unlabeled advertising is considered misleading and contrary to the law.

It’s important to distinguish between an organically expressed patient opinion and information that becomes advertising. If a patient willingly shares impressions of the services they received on their own social media or other platforms — it isn’t considered advertising, so the restrictions of Article 15 of the law don’t apply. But the situation changes when that same information is taken over by the institution itself — for example, uploaded to the clinic’s ‘Instagram’ profile, website, or used on an advertising poster. In that case, even a positive, sincere patient opinion becomes content of an advertising nature, to which all legal requirements apply.