Social Media and Health Care: A Primer for Health Care Executives
This presentation accompanied a talk I gave recently to a group of health care executives at an ABL Roundtable event in San Francisco. I was asked to discuss the meaning, importance and potential application of social media in health care.
Social media is often defined as “people having a conversation online.” In contrast to mass media produced by a few, social media is generated by grass roots efforts of millions of people. It has become the largest and most interesting use of the web.
Despite the fact that health care is one of the most information intensive fields, the health care industry notoriously lags behind every other industry in its adaptation of information technology. To get our initial bearings, we decided to kick off the discussion by asking the audience to describe their own personal use of social media.
I was happily surprised to hear many personal stories, including using the Barack Obama iPhone application to mobilize “get out the vote” efforts, and using Myspace to find band members for weekend gigs—personal examples given by senior leaders of some of the largest and most influential health care organizations in California!
The challenges we face in reforming, modernizing, and improving health care are not for a lack of talented and committed people eager to make things better. Health care is a field full of committed and smart people applying a continuous stream of innovation in addressing difficult challenges.
Efforts to create the more proactive and responsive models of care enabled by the Internet, however, have been stymied for a decade by outdated policies that too often reward inefficiency and penalize prevention.
The health care industry may not need to solve all of its problems, however.
Some of the challenges in chronic care, public health, and wellness that currently seem so intractable to our institutions may have surprising community-based and grass roots solutions, enabled and spread through social media.
Social Media Primer Transcript
- Social Media Primer for Health Care Executives
Steve Brown
Adaptive Business Leaders
December 11, 2008http://brown2020.com
- Social Media Defined:
People
having a conversation
online - What are we sharing?
Ideas: WordPress and Blogger
Friends: Facebook
Photos: Flickr
Status: Twitter
Websites: Digg
Videos: YouTube
Slides: Slideshare
Documents: Scribd
Music: Myspace
Events: evite
Books: Amazon
Restaurants: Yelp
Travel tips: Tripadvisor
Articles: ArticlesBase
Notes: 3banana - Social media is growing rapidly
WordPress unique users
Facebook unique users
Twitter unique users - Just for a sense of scale…
Comparison of Google Trends data
Global Warming, Football, Sex, Facebook - Why are we sharing?
Because life is richer when we share - Why Should Health Care Executives Care About Social Media?
Social Media is about Connectedness. In Business and in Life, Connectedness Wins
Barack Obama Case Study
Connectedness is part of the solution to:
Wellness challenges including obesity and lifestyle diseases that relate to our own motivation and behavior
Chronic care management challenges exacerbated by isolation, loneliness, depression
Aging population challenges resulting from cognitive decline and neurological disease
Public health and research challenges that depend on the velocity and relevance of real-world information - In Google, Winning is a Function of Connectedness
PageRank: How many pages link to the pages that link to you?
BarackObama.com Case Study: What was the number one issue of the campaign? - The Most Connected Sites Win
Comparison of BarackObama.com and JohnMcCain.com
Pages and backlinks as a result of social media - Digging Deeper Into Obama vs. McCain. Looking at the 501st page in Google
JohnMcCain.com content: Campaign generated press releases
BarackObama.com content: User generated blogs and local groups - Traditional Media: Passive, expensive, celebrity driven. People you only think you know.
From Barbara Walters Presents: The Most Fascinating People of 2008. - Social Media: Active, engaged, free. Real people, real conversations.
- Real Time Activity on Facebook from Palantir
120 million active users, now 4th most trafficked website
10 billion photos, adding 30 million per day - Social Media and Your Business
How do people find and judge your organization?
How do you listen to and motivate your employees?
How do you listen to and motivate your members? - Top Three Barriers To Social Media
“None of my friends are there”
“I feel thrust into a public space”
“It’s too much effort” - Overcoming Barriers: Social Media For Adults
Applications that have value even before you have any “friends” on the network
Applications that start with private thoughts and share gradually, with clear privacy control
Applications that effortlessly integrate with what you already know and do - For Discussion: Potential Applications of Social Media in Health Care
Wellness
Chronic Care
Brain Fitness
Public Health
Research - Chronic Care 1.0
Scripted
Top Down
Inherently Limited
Labor Intensive
Home health monitoring technology examples
Honeywell Hommed Genesis
Intel Health Guide - Chronic Care 2.0
Unscripted
Grass Roots
Open-Ended
Social
Display of social network of informal caregivers - Real Life is Unscripted
wefeelfine.org - Real People are Diverse
wefeelfine.org - Real Needs are Highly Personal
wefeelfine.org - Connectedness and Your Brain: Keep Learning and Stay Engaged – Or Else!
From “The Coming Neurological Epidemic” TED talk by Biochemist Gregory Petsko - Social Networks and Brain Health
Women who had daily contact with friends and family cut their risk of dementia by almost half.
If you stay connected, you have a better shot. Whenever we have even the most basic exchange, we have to think about how to respond, and that stimulates the brain—Valerie Crooks, clinical trials administrative director at Southern California Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, lead author.
American Journal of Public Health 1221-1227, July 2008, Vol 98, No. 7 - Social Graph on Facebook
More connected outside = More connected inside
Brain map from brainmaps.org - Social Media: A New Window Into Human Behavior
Unprecedented ability to measure social and emotional behavior of a populations
Opportunity to understand problems based on real world data, not from the laboratory!
Who is currently at the forefront of human behavior research? Social media companies! - Every Day Presents a New Way to Connect, Engage, and Learn
Ocarina iPhone Application from Smule: your phone becomes an electronic flute you can play with people around the world.
Hi Steve, Nice presentation. It will be interesting to view it in 2-3 years to see what changes have occurred in healthcare with Social Media especially in Wellness, Chronic care and other areas of healthcare.
Comment by Mike Ryan — December 16, 2008 @ 12:14 am
Steve, great job of both presenting the “issues – and opportunities” in your PowerPoint and framing the discussion in your blog. The idea that Social Media offers a cost-effective way to help deal with some of our most costly social issues, e.g., “caring” for the isolated elderly who socially and psychically “shrivel up” due to lack of social engagement, could be one of the most humanitarian uses yet of the Internet. Thank you for putting together such an outstanding “primer” for all of us. Mimi
Comment by Mimi Grant — December 18, 2008 @ 1:03 am
Qnahealth (http://www.qnahealth.com) is a new social network for health related information and support. It’s designed to be friendly and easy to use and is focused around users asking and answer questions and sharing their experiences and knowledge.
We invite everyone to take a look as they explore their online health information options.
Comment by Qnahealth — February 20, 2009 @ 8:52 pm