Social Media in Healthcare… an *Intriguing* Continuum
At this stage in the evolution of the healthcare and social media continuum — what are some of the most important actions the that the seasoned healthcare and social media professionals could be taking at this very moment to improve the understanding of those on the periphery.
Standing at the periphery we have people, patients, physicians, nurses, other allied healthcare professionals, executives from hospitals, marketing firms, the pharmaceutical industry, the device manufacturing industry, IT professionals and many curious observers.
Do all the aforementioned individuals, who each have their own vested interest in healthcare and social media, have the same goals and objectives when they’re entering the intersection. Clearly, the answer to that is no. Social media, when appropriately deployed in healthcare will have the ability to broadly disrupt our ability to teach, learn, educate, and to propagate (and collect) appropriate content and information.
Aside from all the *individuals* mentioned. We also have to deal with the issue of personal versus professional; and small business versus enterprise applications of social media in the healthcare marketplace.
Adoption, engagement, relationship building, and learning how to utilize the tools that the medium provides will go a long way to improving one’s ability to gain understanding and knowledge and aid in decision-making support when necessary.
Applications of social media and health care on the enterprise level have yet to emerge to any large extent. My own experience of trying to deploy Social Cast or Yammer on our campus has been an abject failure.
The majority of people entering the intersection of healthcare and social media remain within the *echo chamber*. They are just starting to explore and understand what the underlying potential is. They’re establishing relationships, determining who to follow, determining how to properly curate and perhaps even generate content meaningful to those who follow them.
But this is only the beginning — the very first steps that someone entering into the space needs to take to become comfortable and qualified to a point — prior to diving deeper into the opportunities that engagement in healthcare and social media allow.
Those of us who have been within the intersection for a number of years now are starting to think more deeply about what exactly your presence in healthcare and social media could potentially look like.
Phil Baumann, as always, recently had a fairly provocative post titled “The Cold Straight up Truth about Social Media and Healthcare“. For those who are comfortable in the early stages of their presence in healthcare and social media I think this is very useful article to read. I think this thoughtful piece will enable many of us to begin to move beyond the echo chamber and further towards the ultimate definitions and goals of social media in healthcare.
Why did I title this blog an “intriguing continuum?” I did so because there are new people entering intersection everyday. These people come from all walks of life, from many countries around the world and from many different professions. Some have a well thought out goal or game plan in mind. Most have absolutely no idea what’s going on. Ted Eytan, recently discussed the fact that he was asked by the Sermo staff to pose a question to their physician base about the their desire to participate in a social media endeavor in the near future. The resounding overall theme of the answers was no, to put it kindly. I wonder if a significant percentage of the participants in the poll had anything more than a basic understanding of the concepts/definitions many of us have proposed when it comes to a presence in healthcare and social media. My guess is that they did not and that they were merely thinking of Facebook and twitter and not much beyond that.
This is just the beginning… and this will take a long time to *figure out*. We need legislative (HIPAA) reform, we need a better understanding of how people interact and learn from each other, we need to better understand the learning process and we need to do so in a manner that encourages those on the periphery to become a shareholder so to speak. This is clearly an instance where the more people who have skin in the game, the better off we will all be.
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Hi Howard
A thoughtful intuition pump to use the “continuum” .
There’s definitely a staging to all this social media stuff.
It begins with awareness, moves on to education and eventually – at the extreme but difficult end – “care” (however we define that in the 21st Century).
Agree – we need more people in the game.
Phil
Hey Howard
No surprise that I agree there’s a continuum of engagement. From my perspective, I think it’s linked to issues relative to community development.
All social worlds (real and virtual) have a life cycle and the ones created by social media need to be better appreciated and understood by observers and participants. I say we need to understand the growth and development of virtual communities in general, then move on to considering how this development might differ for different cohorts before we drill down to the “person.”
My more-than-two sociological cents!
Everything spreads thru a society or group along a curve that we are all familiar with: The Difusion of Innovation Curve. There’s always going to be early adopters and then the rest of the group or society catches up. Perfectly normal really. Doctors are no different from those who said that mobile phones would be a niche market and very few PCs would ever be sold.
Great points. Perhaps we haven’t yet reached the tipping point of social media in healthcare. Lots of evolution still needs to occur before we see true integration of social media in healthcare delivery.
Pam Ressler (@pamressler)
The social health conversation is a continuum in as much as continuity is one of its characteristics, but perhaps what we are reaching for here is an acknowledgement of its concurrent complexity.
That need not be a great thing, however. What are we going to do with that observation?
I mean yes, it’s true that there as many facets to this discussion as there are participatory voices within identifiable communities of interest, but acknowledging and analysing this takes us on a long and circuitous journey to travel a very short distance.
If we revel in the pleasure of discourse, we can make the health conversation as amorphous and hetergeneous as we like.
However, as Phil remarks in the post Howard cites above, if there’s no change in behaviour as a consequence, we may as well all be doing something else.
The tough question we all need to ask ourselves every day is: what have I done today that has made a difference? How can I do better tomorrow?
@andrewspong
I believe there are three inherent reasons physicians are skeptical to begin participating in social media:
1. There is risk, which is not well defined
2. The benefit is also not yet well defined.
3. Most importantly, though, physicians are extremely busy. They are some of the hardest working people on the planet. Writing on a blog or post, with the existing first two problems looming, is just very far down on their to-do list.
As successes emerge, as rules and expectations are more clearly defined and as they feel a sense of comfort with it by observing mentors, more and more physicians will join in the conversation.
For now, there are a small group of us out on the field, playing as well as we can. Our game is improving, the rules are becoming more clear, and it is a joy to be a part of this new frontier.
Thanks for your comments Kelly… I agree with you. It has been interesting that we have seen an uptick in # of MD’s on twitter, and even medical students on twitter. We’ll leave the light on for all newcomers
I think we are just beginning to see the full potential of Social Media. The concepts of crowdsourcing problems, social media collaboration, creative commons licensing, and open source projects are still in their developing stages. While these technologies have the potential to free up time, it’s tough to point to media innovations in the past that have slowed down our lives, giving us more time to interact with each other.
I agree with you and Phil that now is the time to get more people in the game. While Social Media are developing, we still have the ability to steer it in productive directions to create platforms which are truly social, both in terms of the aims and mode of interaction. I think the tone of discussions in many of the healthcare twitter communities is great, really supportive, compassionate, and fun. This is something I hope will continue to develop. There is also healthy skepticism within these communities, which is not something you see too often in other healthcare media. It may be one of the most valuable assets of the social media movement.
On the horizon, I see social media and healthcare moving from discussion focused to problem-solving. Collaborative projects, crowdsourcing, and creating valuable health resources filtered by the community at large. I believe as these platforms develop, the value will become increasingly apparent to those who remain hesitant. We may not be there yet, but I definitely see it growing and evolving!
[...] who remain active *within* the intersection healthcare and social media have written lately (here and here ) about how we seem (at times) to be stuck in an *echo chamber* — or spend too [...]