Archive for January, 2009
Health Care Summit Conversations
January 28, 2009
A major summit begins tomorrow in Florida on health care reform. With Donna Shalala moderating, this summit. There will be a dedicated topic on Health Information Technology with one of the key speakers C. Martin Harris of the Cleveland Clinic. The conference website notes the recent Rand Corporation study stating,
“that properly implemented and widely adopted, HIT would save money and significantly improve health care quality. Annual savings from efficiency alone could be $77 billion or more, and health and safety benefits could double savings while reducing illness and prolonging life.”
Will this conference result in a general consensus on health care reform which can be implemented by the new administration?
A webcast will be available at 630pm EST.
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Twitter for Healthcare
January 18, 2009
Phil Baumann has posted 140 uses of Twitter for healthcare. He does preface the list with challenges including privacy and the oath to do no harm. Yet his main point is the true potential for innovation using microblogging in healthcare.
It reminded me that my hospital has used text paging actively for years through the phone directory lookup, anyone can send a text page. But with the growing pervalence of smart phones, email and twitter are becoming more prevalent.
Two-way paging never caught on. The transition to smart phones has mostly meant a greater dependence on email. How to make the shift to Twitter’s possibilities in an organization that blocks YouTube and Facebook? As with blogs, the innovation will need to be outside of the official channels with individuals as champions on new technology by demonstrating its usefulness.
Perhaps I’m as optimistic as Phil. The outcome remains to be seen.
Share this:Web 2.0 as a Disruptive Technology
January 8, 2009
Imitation as a form of flattery – on SlideShare, Len Starnes has picked up on one of my slides on Web 2.0 in Health Care on disruptive technology. See the embedded slide show, slide #8 showing some of the similarities between healthcare organizations and pharma in terms of being risk adverse, requiring long lead times and intellectual property being closely guarded vs. Web 2.0 values.
Later in the presentation, there is a discussion of Wiks, “Doctors like wikis” and “Wikis can streamline project management.”
I am glad that pharma is adopting Web 2.0 strategies and I hope it will lead to listening to consumers and providers rather then just marketing to them.
Share this:Hospital Social Networking
January 8, 2009
Ed Bennett of the University of Maryland has put together a very comprehensive list of social networking sites hosted by hospitals including their use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. YouTube looks like the most common but many are moving forward with Twitter. Some have clearer strategies with Twitter and other Web 2.0 tools than others. Most are using Twitter for health advice, others as an abbreviated version of press releases. It remains to be seen where this will go in the future – how it might be used in emergency communication (MD Anderson during the hurricane) or employee communication.
Once hospitals begin to really exploit smart phones, the possibilities are endless except for the limitation of paying attention to patients first.
Share this:Twitter in Healthcare
January 2, 2009
Twitter’s popularity continues to grow. My main use for Twitter is hearing and sharing the latest trends in Health 2.0. It began at the Medicine 2.0 Congress with several people actively twittering during the conference and afterward. Since then my blogging has suffered as my activity on Twitter has increased.
John Halamka has posted about his adoption of Twitter on The Health Care Blog. He concludes that:
“then I’ve met my goal of overcommunicating with all my stakeholders to ensure they understand my strategy, priorities, and important healthcare IT news of the day.”
I am not sure overcommunicating is an appropriate goal for me. Hoping for some efficiencies in the near future as a result of social network aggregators like FriendFeed improve and offer new features.
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