Category: Health Care

Twitter + Facebook = Kidney Donation

Here’s an interesting story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which illustrates an interesting and unusual application of social media tools in health care and medicine:

Chris Strouth needed a kidney transplant. He’d been on dialysis for months after Berger’s disease (which he called “Harold”) wreaked havoc on his renal system. So he tweeted about it, casting a wide electronic net with a plea to anyone he was even remotely connected to online. He got an impressive 19 offers, and one match — casual acquaintance and Facebook friend Scott Pakudaitis of St. Paul, whose left kidney, “William the Conqueror,” was transplanted into Strouth in December. Both are doing well, and the rest is Facebook history.

Check out the rest of the story.

A Special Delivery

My colleague Nicole Engler, who works with our Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and its communications, is a great Mayo Clinic employee and a true believer in the power of social media. She’s involved in the leadership of a young professionals group in Rochester that invited me to do a presentation on social media and be part of a panel last July, and it was a tremendous event.

But it was nothing like her blessed event last Thursday. You can see the story below, embedded from her appearance Sunday morning on Today:

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We will all miss Nicole during the next few months as she’s home with Austin, but it’s typical of her work that she would find a way to get national media attention even as she’s going on maternity leave.

Where have all the polyps gone?

When I heard that Peter Yarrow of the ’60s trio (with Paul and Mary) had recorded The Colonoscopy Song to increase awareness of the need for colon cancer screening among those of his vintage, all sorts of lyrical possibilities ran through my mind…

Where have all the polyps gone?

Long time passing

Where have all the polyps gone?

Long time ago

Where have all the polyps gone?

Gone to lesions everyone!

When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

I naturally saw the progression moving from polyps to lesions to metastases (although that had too many syllables for the song’s meter) to graveyards. But instead of just recycling one of his oldies, Peter came up with a whole new song, which he performed on the CBS Early Show this week (and also posted to YouTube):

To support this screening awareness initiative, we interviewed a Mayo Clinic physician about for more background on colon cancer and colonoscopy.

I had my first colonoscopy about a year ago, a few years ahead of the time when I would otherwise qualify for a screening colonoscopy, as part of the journey that led to my diagnosis of celiac disease. The prep wasn’t the most fun, but I actually have no memory of the colonoscopy itself.

I don’t know whether my colon, like Peter’s, is “really cool.” But I’m glad to know it doesn’t have precancerous polyps. If you’re over 50 and haven’t had a colonoscopy, make an appointment this week to find out about the coolness of your colon.

Life-Saving Video Goes Viral, Gets Press Coverage

Last week, I got a direct-message tweet from Amber Smith (@AmberSmith), a reporter from Syracuse, NY. I had met Amber previously (because of Twitter) and we have interacted via Twitter, and she was tweeting because she had seen some chatter about one of our Mayo Clinic videos being among the most-tweeted videos on Twitter. It’s about continuous chest compressions, a kind of CPR that doesn’t involve mouth-to-mouth.

I have embedded that video below, but here’s the link to the in-depth story Amber did for Syracuse.com, as well as the sidebar about the viral phenomenon with this video (most of the nearly 3 million combined views as of this moment have been from a copy the Arizona Department of Health Services uploaded) and a post with more links to relevant research papers on Amber’s personal blog.

This story is another example of both Thesis 9 and Thesis 33. The original video was produced as part of our Mayo Clinic Medical Edge news program for television stations, and the story ran in 2008. Now, because of the power of social media, it has gone viral, which has led to more mainstream news coverage, which will undoubtedly increase the YouTube traffic. And as a result, more people who are untrained in mouth-to-mouth CPR will be aware of the continuous chest compressions alternative.

I hope you will take a couple of minutes to watch the video above, and also to read Amber’s story. Then I hope you will share this post (or the video) with your friends via email, or Facebook, or Twitter, or however you like to spread the word.

Examples of Social Media in CME?

I met with a group today interested in seeing how we could use social media tools for Continuing Medical Education (CME), which is now called Continuous Professional Development. Someone asked what is being done at other centers, so as a demo of the power of social media, I said I would use social tools to ask the crowd for some answers and examples.

Please post your examples in the comments below.