Danny Brown - Latest Comments in How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Re: How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Albert Maruggi — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:50:13 -0000

Preface to my comments: 1) I am a trained journalist, native New Yorker and spent a good bit of time in politics, this makes me a cynic. 2) spent time in the 90s at VC firm working on forward looking technologies including desktop telemedicine apps so I have scars to prove that I know the difference between vision and hallucinations Anything that speeds communication can save a life, heck, "Watson come in here I need you." Whether Bell's words were fact or fiction when it is claimed he uttered them into the telephone to summon his assistant Watson for help, they proved that communication technology can deliver a result.

I just spent the weekend in Haleyville, AL, the location of the first 911 emergency call and that technology has saved millions of lives. So I am not so quick to say social media is “All That” regarding life saving milestones.

It is however, undisputed, that social media allows for rich information sharing. When that happens, people become smarter, more confident, more comfortable and can make better decisions about their healthcare. Will those characteristics save lives? sure. Social media enables people to overcome time and geography. But clearly there were plenty of cancer support groups long before social media. I caution those that think a Second Life is a replacement for a doctor's office. In the case of the routine lab report result, to me email or a web portal will do just fine,

Second Life, graphics and 3D worlds are overkill. In the case of disclosing when a patient has a life threatening sickness, nothing beats in-person, or in the situation of a combined team of specialists around the world, I like the video option with someone that is trusted and caring with the patient. Sure I advocate social media in applications that are appropriate, but I also would ask why a few times before making the statement that social media is a must for healthcare.

Re: How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Danny — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:28:56 -0000

Fantastic conversation, everyone, and something that deserves a wider stage than a blog. Arik has definitely opened up a great can of ideas (thank you, good sir) and this could have the basis of an interesting hashtag conversation on Twitter.

Re: How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Katie Adams — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:52:23 -0000

Arik,

Great post. It got me thinking about University of Chicago Medical Center's recent decision to do pre-care triage in their ED to refer people to less expensive community hospitals for ER services. The Chicago Tribune article reported that U. of C. found 40% of all ED patients did not need their services and could receive the care they needed - for less money - closer to home. That, in itself, is a pretty bold move, but what if they took it further - like you suggested - and leveraged social media tools to do the pre-care triage at home before patients even arrived on scene? They could do an initial assesment and diagnosis, share that information with the hospital they refer the patients to, thereby saving (1) patients an unnecessary drive to U. of C. and (2) the community hospital some time/work at intake.

Thanks for keeping the fires of social media innovation & healthcare burning!
- Katie Adams (@katieisawriter)

Re: How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Arik Hanson — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:34:08 -0000

Great points and ideas by all. Thanks for sharing and adding to the conversation. We need more crucial conversations like this to push some of these great ideas through to tranform our current health care models.

Phil--I agree with your point about privacy. We need to take a long, hard look at our privacy laws and how the impact the way we care for our patients in this new Web 2.0 world. Many of these laws and policies were put in place years ago and need to be reviewed with a lens for the current state of business.

Alexandra--Great ideas, thanks for sharing. I especially like the ideas around patients sharing data directly. I plan on looking into both of those example more in-depth.

Candee--Interesting perspective about integrating marketing/PR into the cirriculum for physicians/dentists. We both know the younger professionals are using and embracing these tools--we just need to bring along the Gen Xers and boomers now.

Tom--Completely agree with your take that customer service is a huge opportunity. We have a tremendous opportunity in the next few years to use these tools to educate our patients about the health care system and to deliver basic care. I think patients are ready for this, too. Just look at Frank and Comcast--people will find and utilize the new channels, just give them a chance.

Re: How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Candee — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:22:06 -0000

A big hurdle is changing how doctors and other health professionals view various communication tools. Many still believe you only need a yellow pages ad (bigger the better) and a few billboards around town (of course, along their commute pattern) and patients should flow in.

I would love to see marketing and customer service basics required for health care professionals while they're still in school. I see that happening a bit more. I work in the dental field and many of our younger dentists are the ones who best understand the value of communication tools, including social media.

Change in health care is most often a slow road. More support from medical schools and associations could help speed efforts.

Re: How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Alexandra Carmichael — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:47:41 -0000

Great future scenarios! I would add, What if the medical system were crowdsourced? Jeff Howe talked about this here - http://crowdsourcing.typepa...

And while sharing stories is a great source of support, What if patients shared data directly with each other? CureTogether and PatientsLikeMe are early experiments.

Social media definitely can save lives - thanks for posting this inspiring perspective.
Alexandra Carmichael
Co-Founder, CureTogether.org

Re: How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Danny — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:10:51 -0000

@Joel. That's one of the reasons I was more than happy to offer Arik the space here - his thoughts make a lot of sense and they're desperately needed in current climes. :)

@Phil. These are some great points you make. Much like any industry, the health care one is far behind the times in more ways than just physical funding and resources. Many countries are near collapse, like you say. The sooner newer approaches and methods are used, and relevant training and support given, the better for all concerned.

Re: How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Phil Baumann — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:54:22 -0000

Arik,

Health care definitely could benefit from the proper use of communication and collaboration technologies and communities.

Since health care represents a wide range of services and needs, the pliancy of various social media lends itself to enhancing the quality of patient-provider relationships, collaboration among healthcare professionals and enabling the availability of authoritative, validated and meaningful online content.

We need to flush out all of the opportunities and dangers of social media in provision of safe and effective health care. Our helathcare system is fast appoaching a catastophic collapse. We need more doctors and nurses and administrators and others involved in getting up to speed with an understanding of how the Web works, and how it doesn't.

Quality of care not only involves direct patient-provider contact: it involves remarkable communication among all parties involved. Services like Twitter (or more secure analogues) could certainly provide better follow-up care for patients who have established relationships with providers and could radicalize the way professionals accomplish their goals.

HIPAA will need to be reformed. We will need to re-visit the issue of privacy in a world where technologies are making it harder every day to maintain privacy.

We have a long way to go before social media can be used in the ways that it aught to be used, but my I think as awareness grows of the technologies and communities that are sprouting, healthcare will take a needed look at social media.

Above all, efforts to incorporate social media into health care must focus on the safe and effective uses of the various technologies, without being fearful of change.

Glad to see interesting in health care communication and collaboration technologies waxing. It's time.

Re: How Social Media Can Help Save Lives

Joel Swanson — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:50:51 -0000

I love Arik's explanation of why the health care industry excites some of us. Especially in Minnesota, where health care providers and insurers are required to operate as nonprofits, health care seems to attract mission-driven people. Complicated, often frustrating industry, but very rewarding. I still get comments from people on how much they were encouraged by Blue Cross's "do." campaign and the commercial of the guy dancing in the physician's office --- and I haven't worked at Blue Cross in almost two years.

The area of using online tools to better share stories is exploding. With consumers/employees increasingly responsible for their own health care costs, it's become a need; not just a nice-to-have element. In fact, Fairview is treading into that space as we speak. Also, check out www.healthcarescoop.com (put up by Blue Cross, but sponsored by Mayo Clinic and Fairview, among others).