Health Care | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Meredith Gould Goes National

I’ve known Meredith Gould for about three years, and met her in real life a little over two years ago, at which time I discovered that she is a great humanitarian.

Meredith also has been a great advisor as we established the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, and in advance of her visit to Rochester for our Social Media Summit she did a post on our site, which she called: “This Bride Wants to Register at the Mayo Clinic.”

That post has gotten lots of traction, including being reposted on several other blogs. And earlier this week our Austin, Minn. ABC affiliate, KAAL, picked up on a tweet and decided to do a TV story featuring Meredith via Skype (and me in my office.). Here’s the link to that story.

Sometimes other stations pick up TV stories that have run on a network affiliate, and that happened with Meredith’s as well. Here’s the version that ran today on the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles, KABC:

Another case study showing how social media can lead to traditional media coverage. It will be interesting to see whether this goes any further.

My ABC National Radio Appearance

Instead of the American Broadcasting Company, it’s the Australian Broadcasting Company, and from an interview I did while in Sydney last week for the HARC Forum. The interview was for The Health Report, with Dr. Norman Swan.

We had a lively conversation, and I enjoyed getting to speak with Dr. Swan about our Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media.

The program aired Monday morning in Australia.

Listen to the program or download it. And follow Dr. Swan on Twitter.

Let me know what you think.

New Mayo Clinic Heart Health Campaign

Today at our Mayo Clinic Social Media Summit, which we have produced in collaboration with Ragan Communications, we launched a new awareness campaign about heart health. Here is the story behind the project (including the back story behind the video.) This video is the cornerstone of the campaign:

We also have a Facebook app on our Mayo Clinic page, and a contest site for friendly competition in helping to raise awareness of heart disease through this video. Here’s my profile on the site.

Note: I can’t win the contest, and neither can any other Mayo Clinic employees. But others can win Mayo Clinic books, pedometers or other prizes, including a trip to next year’s Social Media Summit. And teams can win a one-year Social Media Health Network membership for their organization.

Please help spread the word!

Studying a Rare Disease with Dr. Tweet

In the last few months I have had an exciting opportunity to be part of a Mayo Clinic project using social networking tools to assist in the study of a rare disease, and last week we reached a milestone with publication of a study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

One of our key team members is Dr. Marysia Tweet, so it’s almost poetic that we’re working with Dr. Tweet to use social media in medical research. You can’t make that up!

At any rate, the paper on our pilot study of SCAD (spontaneous coronary artery dissection) is published this month in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, as reported in the Wall Street Journal and described in this Mayo Clinic news release.

The really exciting part of this story is how the research was initiated by patients, and this Mayo Clinic Medical Edge story tells how it happened:

We’re continuing to use our social media tools to help with the ongoing research into SCAD, as the Mayo Clinic research team led by Dr. Sharonne Hayes is creating a virtual registry to study SCAD. This SCAD research post on our News Blog provides the information physicians and patients need to take the first steps to be included in the study.

The pilot study showed that this kind of virtual registry is feasible; 18 women signed up for the pilot within a week, and the initial 12-person study included participants from New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada as well as the United States. Dr. Hayes discusses the rationale for and the implications of the study:

Finally, here are some additional sound bites about the pilot study and its implications, from Dr. Hayes, Dr. Tweet and yours truly:

Our Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media mission is to go beyond the public relations and marketing uses for social media and find ways to apply these revolutionary tools in education, research, clinical practice and in the administration of health care organizations. I was really excited to have the chance to be involved in this first publication, and that we are having an ongoing role in facilitating this patient-initiated research into a rare disease.