Social Technologies in Health Care – Part II

Note: This is the second of three posts based on material I provided in advance for  a two-part panel in March sponsored by ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership, “Social Technologies in Healthcare: Applications, Implications and What’s Next?“ 

Question Two: What are the biggest challenges to the effective use of social technologies in health care?

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) are probably the biggest barriers. Concerns about potential implications of disclosure of private medical information must be addressed. Making data security as bulletproof as possible must be a priority; if I can send money anywhere in the world from my Web browser without concern about theft, I should be able to do the same with medical information. Alternatively, or perhaps concurrently, we should work to reduce the potential harm that could come from medical data being disclosed, by ensuring that such information couldn’t be used to deny insurance coverage or employment.

Technically, it’’s a matter of convening standards bodies to enable data portability while protecting data security, and encouraging software engineers to develop a user experience that builds upon or is at least equivalent to the general purpose social networks.

While some FUD is reasonable (we do, after all, live in an uncertain world), some of the fears about social media in health care seem to go beyond what the data would dictate. Worst-case scenarios are envisioned and assigned high probabilities, which prevents the serious contemplation of far more likely beneficial outcomes. We need to understand that keeping the current delivery system and just reducing reimbursements and cutting the length of doctor appointments is a guaranteed path to declining quality and patient satisfaction, and that social tools hold the promise to enable more in-depth interactions with physicians when necessary while creating communities of smarter patients who can help each other.

These tools also have immense potential for helping teams to work smarter together. The idea of the corporate firewall fortress also may limit some organizations’’ willingness to consider Software-as-a-Service solutions.

For the answer to Question One, go here.

Social Technologies in Health Care

In late March, I had the opportunity to participate in a two-part panel sponsored by ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership, “Social Technologies in Healthcare: Applications, Implications and What’s Next?”  I did a recap post of the event here.

To set up the conversation, each of the panelists were asked to respond to a series of questions. I thought it would be helpful to post here the answers I provided there. I don’t know that they’re profound, and I hope they’re not totally unique, because then I’d be seriously off base. And as always, what you see written here is my perspective, and doesn’t represent my employer.

Question One: What is your long-term vision for the impact of social technologies on health care?

Social technologies already are important in health care, in that they give voice to individuals and enable them to connect with others who have similar experiences, conditions and concerns. Word of mouth has always been important in health and health care, dating back even to biblical times when reports of miraculous healings would cause thousands to gather on a hillside in Galilee. So it’’s no surprise that patients are using powerful social technologies to spread the word about their health care experiences.

Patients also are forming virtual communities and support groups that overcome geographic barriers. It has been impractical to form many of these communities of interest locally because the conditions are too unusual to provide for a critical mass of individuals with common interests. But social technologies eliminate these barriers to group formation and enable patients to learn from each other.

In the longer term, we must find ways to incorporate social technologies into management of chronic diseases and conditions such as diabetes. The shortage of primary care physicians will worsen, calling for more emphasis on mid-level providers. But nurses and physician assistants (PAs) will be in short supply as well.

It will be physically impossible to provide quality management for a growing population of Baby Boomers with chronic conditions, even with increased reliance on mid-level providers. But virtually it may be possible. And since many of those conditions are substantially influenced by behavior, peer networks mediated by social technologies have potential, with appropriate medical provider involvement, to provide social support to reduce the burden of disease.

3 Steps to Preparing for Tweetcamp II

Our Mayo Clinic (@mayoclinic) social media team is hosting Tweetcamp II (#tweetcamp2) on Thursday, April 23, 2009 from 3-4 p.m. CDT. You can sign up to participate in the comments on this post (please leave your organization name and city) and can get more details, including the link to the live video stream, on the Mayo Clinic News Blog.

After you’ve signed up, here are 3 steps you can take in advance to get the most out of the experience (and to help share the opportunity):

  1. Sign up for a Twitter account if you haven’t yet. If you need assistance, go through Twitter 102: Creating an Account.
  2. Using your Twitter username, log into the #tweetcamp2 “room” in TweetChat. Use it to tweet your plans to attend, and if you wouldn’t mind, copy and paste the link to this post into your tweet (or you could use this abbreviation to save characters:  http://bit.ly/q9hgu) You will see that you don’t need to add the #tweetcamp2 hashtag if you tweet from that Web interface, and that it automatically subtracts the 12 characters in the tag from your 140-character limit.
  3. To put a smile on your face as you look forward fondly to your upcoming Tweetcamp II experience (and so I don’t need to show this video during the session) take a couple of minutes to view this video on Sharing Mayo Clinic. And if you like it, Tweet it to your followers:  http://bit.ly/pjqY 

These three steps will help you see some of the power of Twitter, and at Tweetcamp II you’ll get even more hands-on experience.

Three Reasons Why Mayo Clinic Health Manager Matters

As regular readers know, I work for Mayo Clinic, so my opinion on this isn’t exactly objective, but I think the launch today of Mayo Clinic Health Manager is pretty significant.

I’ve had the opportunity over the last several months to learn about this product as it’s been in development, and it’s got some neat advantages that I think make it a step beyond what’s available currently in the world of personal health records.

  1. Portability. Some other products are sponsored by employers or health plans. In Mayo Clinic Health Manager, the record belongs to you, so if you change jobs you don’t have to worry about having to re-enter data.
  2. Personalized Mayo Clinic guidance. Based on the data you put into the program, you’ll get tailored recommendations for steps you can take to improve your health, screening tests you should have, and the like. The more data you provide, the more useful recommendations you will receive.
  3. Being connected to Microsoft HealthVault. This gives a couple of important benefits. First, you have strong security for your data. When I set up my account, it made me choose a password that was a lot stronger than what I typically use, for example on my Facebook account. And as more pharmacies, hospitals and medical devices provide for automatic upload of data to HealthVault, that will improve the personalization of recommendations you can get from Mayo Clinic experts.

I did a post last year about Turbotax and how much I like it for doing my personal income taxes, and how I could do my taxes in an hour because all of the data from my six children (some of whom are no longer dependents) could be carried over from year to year, saving me having to enter the data anew each year. At the same time, I don’t worry at all about the safety of my tax records. I’m confident that Intuit has it covered. And it’s great to have the deduction finders, and audit alerts and error checking, not to mention electronic filing.

I think the same principles will hold with Mayo Clinic Health Manager. Getting the data entered once into a safe place will simplify managing your health. You’ll be able to produce an immunization report, for instance, with a couple of clicks. You’ll get expert guidance tailored to your health situation. And you can make notes of the questions you wanted to be sure to cover in your visit to the doctor, so that you can print it out and take it with you. No more worrying about forgetting to cover your important concerns because you freeze up in that anxious moment with your health care provider. It should make those visits more orderly and productive, too.

But while Turbotax charges for electronic filing of your federal and state tax returns, Mayo Clinic Health Manager is completely free. The other thing I like about the program is that it lets you enter data in small chunks as you have time. I just added my height and weight, along with my history of colon cancer screenings.

Unlike the IRS, Mayo Clinic Health Manager doesn’t require you to meet a deadline for “completing your return.” In fact, you’re never really done. But as you put in more information, and as the product grows in providing more tools to give you guidance based on your data, it will improve your ability to manage your health (and that of your loved ones who grant you access to their records, such as aging parents, your spouse or children.)

You can read more about Mayo Clinic Health Manager, and see an introductory video, on the Mayo Clinic News Blog, or sign up for your free account.

Announcing Tweetcamp II

Attendance and participation at last week’s Twitter bootcamp — dubbed “Tweetcamp” — was strong, but with less than 20 hours from announcement to course delivery we had lots of people express interest in participating, but inability to join us due to schedule conflicts.

Tweetcamp II will be held Thursday, April 23 at 3 p.m. CDT. It will cover some of the same material as Tweetcamp, but will have expanded examples of practical applications and case studies, particularly related to health care.

The course is primarily for Mayo Clinic employees and will be offered by videoconference from our Rochester, Minn. campus to Mayo sites in Arizona and Florida, but it’s also open on a first-come, first-served basis via the Web to interested individuals outside of Mayo. Your participation will help demonstrate the power of tools like Twitter to bring together a broadly dispersed community with common interests.

If you would like to join us on Thursday, leave a comment below with your name and organizational affiliation. Your email address will not be published, but we will need it to contact you with further details on how to participate.

Update: The hashtag for Tweetcamp II will be #tweetcamp2 (here is the room in TweetChat), and instead of phone conference you will be able to particpate live via Web cast. See this post on the Mayo Clinic News Blog for details.