Category: Health Care

Workplace Partnership for Life Webinar Slides

I’m doing a presentation early this afternoon for the Workplace Partnership for Life, a program that encourages organ donation campaigns. We will be hearing some case studies from other presenters, but I have been asked to share 15 minutes on “Using Social Media Wisely in a Health Care Setting.”

Here are the slides I’ll be using:

Some other relevant links participants might find helpful:

I look forward to the discussion this afternoon! And of course, it can continue here and on Twitter!

New Connections Tweetcamp

I will be in Princeton, New Jersey tomorrow for a presentation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of its New Connections program for junior researchers. We will start with a social media overview, but then will conclude with a 45-minute focused session on Twitter. The goal is to give these researchers a taste of how they can practically use Twitter and other social media tools to be more effective in their work.

Here are the slides for second half of my Friday morning presentation:

Tweetcamp for New Connections

View more presentations from Lee Aase.

I hope you will join me in showing the speed, reach and power of Twitter as we conduct a mini-Twitter chat. Hopefully many of the researchers will have created Twitter accounts in advance of the session, and will be able to participate directly.

Our #TweetcampRWJF chat will start at 9:45 a.m. ET on Friday. I have created a couple of questions that are included in the last slide of my presentation above, and I’m asking the participants to tweet their own questions, too.

So if you have some time to share your experience with some younger and mid-career researchers, I hope you’ll join us. Or if you can tweet some pearls of wisdom between now and then, we would appreciate that, too.

Please tweet your introduction and answers to the following, using the #TweetcampRWJF hashtag:

  • Introduce yourself and give your location (or where you work) – City, State (Province), Country
  • Q1: What is the most important benefit you have experienced in Twitter?
  • Q2: What questions do you have about using Twitter in health care or research?

During and after the scheduled chat, I hope you will also engage in dialog with the students as they tweet their questions.

Happy Birthday Caring Bridge

USA Today has an article this morning (in which I’m quoted) about Caring Bridge celebrating its 15th birthday.

CarePages, a similar health-focused social network that launched in 2000, does accept advertisements.

Both “provide a good service in that they enable the loved ones or caregiver to update the site once to tell a lot of people who care what’s going on,” says Lee Aase, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media.

“It really does help relieve a burden” of constantly having to call or text, he says.

Thirty years ago, patients would come to Mayo Clinic for a few days of tests or hospitalization, and they or accompanying family members would go to their hotel room to call friends and family with updates.

Twenty years ago, as cell phones became more prevalents, that was the key update method.

In both scenarios, the calls involved repeating a lot of the same information, and added some stress to an already challenging situation.

Then Caring Bridge came along to make it possible for the patient to update a Web site and share news with family and friends once instead of through multiple calls. CarePages began offering a similar service a few years later.

Now patients have even more options, such as a closed or secret Facebook group among them, for sharing news with their loved ones. But still, many patients find these specialized services attractive because they may not want medical information connected to their Facebook.

So if you think social networking in health care is new or radical, Caring Bridge and CarePages both have more than 10 years experience serving patients and their families that suggest otherwise.

Taking (Triple) Aim with ICSI

I’m delighted to be working with Dr. Gary Oftedahl of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement to present a pre-symposium workshop this afternoon. We’re going to be exploring how social media can support the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s “Triple Aim” :

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) believes that new designs can and must be developed to simultaneously accomplish three critical objectives, or what we call the “Triple Aim”:

  • Improve the health of the population;
  • Enhance the patient experience of care (including quality, access, and reliability); and
  • Reduce, or at least control, the per capita cost of care.

During the first part of the workshop we will be providing background and deepening understanding of social media tools along with examples of their applications in health care and in other industries.

After the break we will be brainstorming ways social media can be practically applied to solve problems and to meet one or more of the three aspects of the IHI aim.

Please join the discussion, even if you can’t be in the room. Share your ideas for how social media can help improve population health, enhance the patient experience and reduce (or at least control) per capita costs for health care. Here are two ways you can participate:

  1. Put your thoughts in the comments below, and we will share with the group.
  2. Otherwise, we will be tweeting from the using the #CoCreate2012 hashtag. Follow the discussion and chime in with your ideas.

What do you think? How can social media improve the patient experience, promote population health and reduce per capita costs?

 

Where’s Lee?

This isn’t an allusion to my travels; I’m staying in Minnesota for the whole month, with no trips scheduled until February.

It’s about this video we did through our Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, in cooperation with our colleagues in the Office of Women’s Health and our cardiology group.

I wrote the lyrics to this parody of Tommy TuTone’s 867-5309/Jenny and was the Executive Producer, and Makala Johnson from our team shot, edited and coordinated production. We had a great team for the project, including a band and back-up singers drawn almost entirely from our Mayo Clinic employee population, and over 100 enthusiastic concertgoers.

So here’s the trivia question for the day:

Where are my two cameos in the video?

Put your guesses in the comments below. And with February Heart Month coming up, I hope you’ll also help spread the word.