Posts Tagged ‘SocialMedia’
Book Review: Program or Be Programmed – Ten Commandments of the Digital Age
December 30, 2010
This quick read by Douglas Rushkoff is less ominous than the title sounds but still thought provoking. The author does not advocate becoming a programmer per se but understanding the greater control and influence over our decisions that apps have on our everyday lives. Particularly the chapter on Choice: You May Always Choose None of the Above; here he emphasizes the need to be aware of and not locked into choices made for us. Whether it is Google search results/adwords or Amazon recommendations of what others have selected, were are ever so gently guided toward choices. It reminds me of the decades old book of Alvin Toffler, Overchoice. Even then he anticipated the problem of hundreds of choices of models and colors and didn’t anticipate the ability to search millions of products online. Maybe we need tools to help us in our choices to guide us to our preferences to reduce the number of choices. But understanding enough about how this tools are programmed frees us from a type of slavery to them.
In addition, there are chapters about online identity: Do Not Be Always On, Live in Person, Be Yourself, Do Not Sell Your Friends. Increasingly, the lines between our online and offline identities are becoming blurred. Some handle this better than others, but identity confusion occurs with the most distasteful evidence in cyber-bulling and getting lost in game worlds. The advice to retain our humanity is well founded.
While the book does not address health issues on the internet and social media in depth, there are some implications for ePatients and patient-physician relationships. These need to be based in reality, not the virtual world. These identities and relationships can be extended by apps and tools but not to the exclusion of real life.
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The Future of Coding
November 30, 2010
In Wired magazine this month, Clive Thompson talks about his own experience in developing a mobile app. Coding for the Masses is the new reality. In a way, many in the Web 2.0 world have been doing coding by creating blogs, wikis, communities such as Ning, with little or no technical training. Now tools for mobile apps allow for building tools for the handheld devices. He notes Scratch to Google’s App Inventor as the enablers of this new reality.
Related is the book Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff. The same concept of empowerment comes through. More once I read the book. Implications for healthcare? Obvious – epatients going beyond advocacy to become app developers. Physicians and nurses developing apps for their own use or for their patients. Check out this post about creating a journal club with Google Reader and Facebook. Not mobile yet but maybe for the iPad?
Check out the HIMSS HIT X.O conference track which include HIT Geeks Got Talent? contest – live programming. I was on the planning committee for this innovative program track.
Also, from Wired magazine check out the redesign of medical test reports.
Share this:Social Media in Health Care – Latest Presentation
October 4, 2010
This is more of an introductory presentation I gave at Toledo Hospital for social workers, including information on hospital policies, prescribing social media to patients, and some of the risks of social media. At the end of the presentation, I discussed the dilemma of managing the professional and personal identities. Links to website mentioned are on Delicious.com
Social Media Season
September 28, 2010
It must be Fall because the conference season is ramping up. Two social media conferences going on at the same time:
- ePatient 2010 in Philadelphia with the likes of ePatient Dave and Susannah Fox
- Health Care Social Media Summit in Jacksonville, Fl
Notable is the announcement by Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands and the Mayo Clinic of a Global Social Media Health Network.
All of this reflects the maturity of the healthcare social media, ePatient and Health 2.0 community. A kind of convergence is occurring bringing technology to the focus on the patient with full participation of the epatient. Greater attention by mainstream media and the scientific community is only accelerating the movement – see last week’s Scientific American Pathways article, “The Rise of the Empowered Patient“, which quotes Lucien Engelen of Radboud University among others. Can this convergence be sustained? Will the enthusiasm and energy be focused to create real change in healthcare? This level of optimism can only do good.
Share this:Partnerships with Online Communities – The Long Tail
June 4, 2010
Chris Anderson in writing Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, popularized this concept particularly in viewing markets in the wired world. How does it apply to health care? Probably in many ways. But specifically it came to mind in thinking about the relationship of provider organizations like hospitals and online communities. While many online communities may attract large numbers, for instance, in diabetes and breast cancer, many more condition specific communities are relatively small even though they may have a national or international scope. Gilles Frydman of ACOR recognized this early by encouraging the proliferation of online communities through his listserv.
Provider organizations are moving into social media but struggling to identify meaningful ways to connect with their patients through Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps the struggle has to do with a broad stroke strategy of trying to appeal to all comers. The real opportunity is in the Long Tail of small online communities who know the best hospitals, information sources, physicians for their disease or condition and talk to each other about it all the time. Certainly PatientsLikeMe.com has found this in the specialize community of ALS and others like it have found the value in the long tail. What about groups like Marfan Syndrome or others that fall under the umbrella of the National Organization of Rare Diseases (NORD). Specialist who treat these diseases in the long tail of healthcare have a unique opportunity to become online partners potentially contributing to blogs, social networks or listservs and inviting patients to post blogs about their experiences on the hospital’s blog or Facebook page. There are many possibilities to explore – meetups, suggestions for improving care – hope to see some take up this challenge.
Share this:Social Media for Canadian Health Care
May 2, 2010
On Friday, April 30, I had the opportunity to speak at the Toronto Academic Health Sciences Network Education Day for Healthcare Communicators or TAHSN. This well organized meeting provided some great interaction with health care communicators from Toronto hospitals and got me thinking about the use of social media in a country with socialized medicine. While the focus of much of US hospitals in social media is to attract new patients, in Canada, the purposes would be different. However, one common interest is fund raising. Canadian hospitals have Foundations as a fund raising arm of the hospital and social media provides a useful outreach to potential donors. Following the success of fund raising via text messaging and social media for Haiti, there may be an opportunity for Canadian hospitals to focus their energies here. As with US hospitals, there are opportunities for using social media, such as blogs and private social networks with personal profiles to enhance service and productivity. Engaging with patients, such as, the example of the Bloom Blog from Bloorview Children’s Rehab Hospital in Toronto is a great example engaging parents of children with disabilities.
More soon the the exiting New York Times magazine article on the Quantified Self which is the next trend in health and social media.
Below are my slides from the presentation. I follow Lee Aase from Mayo Clinic who joined the conference via webex.
Upcoming Conferences/Speaking
March 29, 2010
I will be speaking at the TAHSN Education Day for Healthcare Communicators – April 30, 2010 (Toronto Academic Health Science Network). Looking forward to visiting Toronto again and having time to learn more about the Innovation Cell as well.
There is a nice video on a conference I am presenting at in May in Philadelphia. The J. Boye Conference – see the embedded video. Some great keynoters, Eric Karjaluoto, Mary Jo Foley and Peter Kim and the promise of a pitch-free presentations.
Share this:eHealth Conference in May in Philadelphia
March 17, 2010
I feel fortunate to be participating in the J. Boye conference in Philadelphia this May. Unlike the Health 2.0 conferences which focus on startups, this conference covers Higher education, Intranet, Online communication, Online health, Online strategy, User experience, Web content management, Web project management.
My session will be on “Social media in health care – humble beginnings to patient engagement.” Here is a blog post introducing the talk. How to get to true patient engagement, participatory medicine? It takes more than a strategy. My hope is that the conference will help to get at some answers.
Share this:Social Media at HIMSS 2010
March 5, 2010
Social Media at the Annual Conference of the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society has come a long way. A few years ago, the bloggers meetup was a dozen or so of us meeting in a bar near the conference site. This year, for the second time, there was a social media center and three panels of Meet the Bloggers. I was glad to be a part of it. Participatory Medicine was represented by ePatientDave discussing his new involvement with Kaiser. A busy twitter stream kept many informed of the concurrent activities. My round table with Deborah Kohn on Social Networking: Are You Listening, was well received. Another version of the slides are below. Some of the recommendations out of the session include:
- be prepared for dealing with complaints via social media by monitoring and having a plan on how to respond
- listen – monitor what people are saying about you
- consider social media in job recruitment
- support for launching social media in health care organizations must be endorsed from the top
- educating employees about social media can prevent abuse of the tools at work
