Social Networking and Healthcare

The network is buzzing with excitement over twitter and social networking and there are increasing numbers of guides, top ten lists and other material aimed at the new participants in the world of twitter. Ashton Kutcher is doing it, Oprah Winfrey is doing it (albeit in CAPITALS initially) - interestingly the race to 1 million followers was close but now Ashton is almost double.

For the Record recently featured an article titled: Healthcare All Atwitter Over Social Networking that looked at the range of social networking tools. Everything from You Tube, Facebook, twitter and blogging is being used by the University of Maryland Medical System (twitter, facebook, blog and youtube links). They attract around 700 people per day that watch videos and read their material - new members, existing patients and more awareness of the system are all good results that will translate into business and good will.

Although healthcare organizations must deal with a unique set of challenges when it comes to establishing and maintaining a presence on social networking sites, they should nonetheless be taking the steps to utilize these sites and tools to reach out to patients and consumers. It is also imperative to monitor what is being said about them by others in the social media space to protect their brands and reputations.

It reminds me a lot of the discussions i was having ten years ago about a web presence with similar resistance to the idea of publishing or spending resource on a web site. Here we are today and it is hard to imagine any facility without a web site (usefulness, design etc widely varied) that is for the most part the online store front. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Social networking is the next innovation in the online/digital world.

In healthcare here is clearly a concern relating to protected health information (PHI) but this is a low cost

"It’s a grand experiment and it may fail, but the cost of entry is so low. It’s not like we have to decide to spend a million dollars to participate on Facebook. It’s more like investing a percentage of an employee’s time to set up an account. Hospitals should be saying ‘We’re here and we’re ready to talk to you.’ … You can just post press releases, or you can become very chatty and friendly. You’ll find out what the best match is for your personality and the way you think of yourself.”

Go ahead take a dip....join me on Twitter (and ranked #27 in the list of top CMO's on twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, My other Blog - Navigating Healthcare or Plaxo....amongst some of the places I can be found online

Why Participating in Blogs is Important

I had the privilege of meeting e-PatientDave at the TEPR conference this week. He was there to bring the patient's views to this conference - wow - that's a novel thought! Getting patient input at a conference on healthcare......this does not happen often enough. It was a commanding performance and one that should have been videoed and then youtubed but I think he has this in the plan based on what I read.

He has his own blog(s) e-PatientDave and is of course on twitter and is an advocate for the inclusion on the patient in the care process (whew - two eureka moments in a single post!). He made many compelling points, delivered an emotional and riveting diary of his incidental finding of an especially aggressive form of Renal Cell Carcinoma that he fought and won. He joined an impromptu tweetup at the evening reception and continued to engage throughout the conference. Much of what he does is on his own coin and time and done with the attitude that given the history every second is a bonus.

A post from last month on why he loves participating in blogs and healthcare is descriptive and a great study of the relevance of this media to our future.....if you are not involved in this media the world is going to pass you by. This post linked to Paul Levy's "Running a Hospital blog that is definitely leading the crowd in communication and openness. He had cited the news of the day on "Check Lists" - I talked about this last year in this post - Simple things save lives crediting Peter Pronovost and congratulating him on his recognition as a newly inducted fellowship. There was a great article in the New Yorker titled "The Checklist" that detailed the concepts and the amazing results

Social media power. Connecting and engaging everyone. If you aren't on board you should be. Do you agree or is this just more "stuff" to distract us form delivering care - you tell me.

There are so many ways to participate and here are some of mine (it's horses for courses - pick the media you like):

Twitter
Technorati
RSS Feed - Speech Understanding
RSS Feed - Navigating Healthcare
Linked-In
Plaxo
Facebook
Digg
del.icio.us
Follow me on Twitter
DM Reply on the Twitter