For those with an interest in the implications of social media for public health and health care, here are some recent links (they are in two parts – the first is related to medicine and the second to public health):
Social media and medicine
• This article published by the New England Journal of Medicine Careers Centre gives an indepth and informative overview of how doctors in the US are using social media – and the potential benefits and risks involved. It also profiles some new business ventures in the medico-blogosphere.
• How American doctors are using Twitter et al to market themselves and their services.
• And to find jobs.
• How one American doctor is blogging to help answer the general public’s questions and concerns about healthcare.
• This blog introduced me to a new concept – group visits or shared medical appointments, comprised of patients with similar medical conditions. A medical team, typically including a doctor, nurse, and other support staff, counsel patients as a group, and address issues common to everyone in the room. Sounds like an excellent way of helping to address workforce shortages, waiting lists etc.
• In a similar vein, could greater use of online consultations help overcome workforce shortages?
• How doctors can use social media to help patients.
• Can doctors afford not to engage with social media?
• This post by a US physician-blogger is mainly aimed at helping the markerters of the world how to engage effectively with doctors using social media.
• Doctors love to moan about patients using the internet to source health information, but they’re doing it too.
• There are concerns about the inappropriate use of social media, especially by medical students. And this is about the potential dangers of online consultations.
• This is the first of a three-part series on using social media to engage with the carers of hospice patients.
• No wonder – given the proliferation (at least in the US) of health professionals as bloggers – there is a new program to teach doctors how to become journalists (run by a journalism school).
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Social media and public health
• This is a terrific presentation on how social media can foster innovation in public health. It is by Dr Jody Ranck, Director of Health Horizons and Global Health, at The Institute for The Future. He was previously Director of the Technological Politics Program at the Sustainable Sciences Institute in San Francisco.
• How social media is changing disaster relief.
• Some iPhone applications may not be as healthy as they make out.
• And on a similar theme.
• This is a new SMS-based service which aims to promote maternal health and reduce the number of babies born prematurely in the US. Text4baby, is a free mobile information service that sends health tips via text message three times a week.
• National Public Radio had an interesting discussion recently on “communicating science in a post-newspaper era”.
I particularly liked this quote from Deborah Blum, professor of journalism at University of Wisconsin in Madison:
Prof. BLUM: “Well, I teach journalism, and so I have to say to myself, I’m not going to teach my past. It’s not interesting to me, and what interests me about the changing landscape of journalism is the opportunities that I hope it has for us to do things better, to find different audiences, to approach people about science in different ways. It allows us to build new voices, and I try to teach that, and I try to do it myself.”
It’s a comment that has some broader resonance for the health care and public health spheres, perhaps.
Meanwhile, I do apologise that so many of the links above are to US sites – perhaps it’s a reflection of who I’m following on Twitter (where I found many of them). Or perhaps it suggests that the uptake of social media by the US health industry has been quicker and more extensive than in Australia. Do you have any thoughts on this?
Dear Ms Croakey – I’d be more interested to hear how you actually manage to tweet and use it usefully and I hope gracefully.
My efforts so far made me abandon it a year ago. It’s just too noisy and random.
Can you really use it usefully?
How is it better then RSS or email updates?
How can you filter into folders or organise it?
and so on….
and teaching doctors how to become journos…wtf?
More press releases about cancer cures?
Wouldn’t it be more useful to teach journos how to become doctors – keep them off the streets at least..
Dear Dr Whom
As you may have gathered, I’m a bit of a luddite so I wouldn’t say I”m using Twitter to its fullest extent. But I do find it the most wonderful source. For my purposes, I think it’s all about who you follow, aligning the credible sources with your interests. I think it’s more efficient than the options you mention – I only need to look at one screen to check all the latest news from my preferred sources. For eg, I no longer have to open email alerts from BMJ etc so it reduces my email intray. I think it’s also expanding Croakey’s reach. I am hoping to get a real social media guru (not a pretender like myself) to write about the potential for the health sector..so stay tuned.
re doctors as journalists, there are quite a lot of them already, not to mention those doctors who aren’t actually journalists but do a good job of investigating and holding their own profession accountable in various ways. And didn’t you hear the quip that only the independently wealthy will be able to afford to be journalists in the future…
I’d be interested in a piece on using social media media effectively within the health sphere. I’ve found Twitter quite useful on a number of fronts – far more so than alleged professionally-oriented social media tools like LinkedIn. It’s reduced my RSS/email load, lists are quite good, there’s a readily available advisory pool (mercifully limited to 140 characters!) and it’s been a useful way for me to get through to actual people rather than buried in an email inbox or an unreturned voicemail. That being said, it’s far from perfect and requires discipline to not just become another time sink. Depends what you want to do with it.
And @Doctor Whom – I’ve come across at least half a dozen doctors who used to be journos, but hardly any crossing the River Styx in the other direction 🙂