Tag: Health Care

Aase at ASAE

I’m looking forward to participating in the 2009 Healthcare Association Conference sponsored by ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership (the acronym for which, oddly enough, is an anagram of my last name) in Baltimore on Tuesday. See the conference agenda (PDF).

Here’s the overview for the panel discussion I’ll be joining on Tuesday:

The growing popularity and power of social technologies creates both new challenges and opportunities for healthcare associations, as well as for the healthcare system itself. While the social web opens broader access to medical knowledge, enables greater collaboration among health professionals, and is actively transforming both healthcare advocacy and medical education, issues of information accuracy and patient privacy are enduring sources of concern. Listen to a candid and thought provoking dialogue on the present and future impact of social technologies on healthcare from players in different parts of the system.

I’m particularly pleased that this discussion will take place in two 75-minute segments, which will enable an in-depth exploration. As the brochure describes the focus of each:

  • In part one of this session, the panel will explore the current state of social technology use in healthcare, and some of the key strategic challenges and opportunities created by social technologies.
  • In part two of this session, the panel will focus specifically on how healthcare associations should be thinking about the application of social technologies to their work, as well as the future of social technology in the world of healthcare.

I’ll be joining Jeff De Cagna, chief strategist and founder, Principled Innovation, LLC (moderator) (@pinnovation); Gina Ashe, chief marketing officer, Sermo, Inc.; Ted Eytan, MD, MS, MPH, (@tedeytan) medical director, delivery system operations improvement, The Permanente Federation, LLC; Frank Fortin, director of communications, Massachusetts Medical Society (@frankfortin). We’re all going to be trying to follow Guy Kawasaki’s advice for panelists, and I’m sure Jeff will be a great moderator, too, involving the “audience” in the discussion. No long, boring PowerPoints: we will each have no more than three (3) slides.

I’ll be blogging about our discussion after the fact, and maybe tweeting occasionally during or between the sessions. But mainly I look forward to engaging in an interesting discussion, not just among the panel but with the whole group. I enjoy giving presentations about what we’re doing in social media at Mayo Clinic, but it will be even better to learn through the interchange with others.

I’m also excited that I’ll get to meet Ed Bennett (@EdBennett), who manages Web sites for the University of Maryland Health System and compiled the listing of hospitals using social networking. This again demonstrates the power of Twitter; I saw him offering rides from Baltimore to HealthCamp Philly…which led me to ask whether he was based in Baltimore…and we discovered he works across the street from where I will be on Tuesday. So we’ve arranged to get together after the conference. How cool is that?

Patients and Social Media

In many ways, SMUG has been my personal laboratory for learning about social media and how I can apply these tools to my work at Mayo Clinic. I’ve been able to experiment with blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms with my personal accounts, which then helps me see how they can be used for a health care provider like Mayo Clinic.

So we’ve established a Mayo Clinic YouTube channel, a Facebook page, and several podcasts and blogs — including, most recently, Sharing Mayo Clinic.

As of Friday the 13th, however, I’m also approaching social media from the patient perspective: yesterday I was diagnosed as having celiac disease.

So what did I do to find good information about how to cope?

My first step, of course, was the celiac disease section on MayoClinic.com.

And I recalled that my team at work had produced a TV story about living with celiac disease, which is also on our Mayo Clinic YouTube channel:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGmWf0et4hg] 

But I also turned to Twitter, and was amazed at the response.

@KimMoldofsky re-tweeted my call for help:

kimtweet

Bonnie Sayers (@autismfamily) alerted me to the #gfree hashtag and the Gluten Free Twitter Party she’s hosting on April 3.

Gluten Free Twitter Party

@FrannLeach shared a Gluten Intolerance group on Squidoo, along with some recipes.

Kayla Eubanks (@BallinOnABudget) told me about Pizza Fusion, and Nina (@lovingyouiseasy) pointed me to @wholefoods and @KarinasKitchen. Karina’s “The Morning after the Diagnosis” post on her blog was particularly helpful. Kristie S. (@KristieTweets) had a couple of suggestions, and Tom Stitt (@tstitt) helped me get an answer as to whether Coke is OK (it is!) I also found out about lots of resources available at celiac.com.

And because I Tweeted about it, my celiac disease diagnosis also was posted to my Facebook profile:

picture-19

…which led to several Wall comments (including a couple you see above that came within a half hour of my Tweet), and also some messages in my Facebook inbox. And I also found a Celiac Disease group in Facebook.

Some people are justifiably concerned about potential dangers of self-diagnosis through the Internet, but once a diagnosis has been made, social media tools are extremely powerful means of getting information and gathering support. 

As I write this, I’ve had my diagnosis of celiac disease for about 34 hours, and the learning about the condition I’ve been able to do in this time has been amazing.

And out of this experience, I’m also going to be getting my wife Lisa (@LisaAase) to use her Twitter account to participate in the #gfree discussions. She set up her account nearly two years ago, but has only done a dozen updates. And right now I’m her only follower. But now she has a reason to use Twitter, and I think she’s going to find it helpful in learning how we deal with gluten in our family diet.

World Health Care Congress Consumer Connectivity Summit Presentation

Here’s the presentation I’m giving this afternoon at the World Health Care Congress Consumer Connectivity Summit. Regular SMUGgles will note significant similarities to my previous presentations, but for those attending the Summit or who are unfamiliar with what we’ve been doing with social media at Mayo Clinic, I hope this will be a helpful resource.

World Health Care Congress Summit

View more presentations from Lee Aase. (tags: whcc whcc2)

Please feel free to chime in with any questions or comments below; it can help illustrate some of the benefits of social media, in that it allows conversations to continue even after the presentation is complete.

You also can follow the stream of tweets at #whcc2.

Microsoft, WebMD and CIGNA on Consumer Medical Data

The title of this session is Next-Generation Consumer Engagement — New-Age Solutions to Advance Consumer-Driven Health.

Jim Mault, M.D., from Microsoft started with an illustration, asking how many people know how to access credit card transactions online vs. getting access to our immunizations or cholesterol test readings. Not surprisingly, only about half of the health geeks here knew how to get these health records. The absurdity defies explanation.

You’re already suffering the risk of someone (a hacker) getting your online health information, but getting none of the benefits.

Need Portability and Interoperability to realize the potential benefits. In HealthVault, Microsoft is developing a health info ecosystem, much like Facebook and MySpace did for digital photography. Unlimited opportunity for you to share your data, on your terms, with whomever you want.

John Young from CIGNA says lifestyle accounts for most of the risk of chronic conditions. He says it’s not a decision of whether to do consumer-driven health care, but how. By year end 59 percent of employers will be using consumer-driven models. Companies need to design their plans as an “on-ramp” to promote consumerism. He says consumerism could save about $2,300 per employee per year within 5 years, without cost shifts. CIGNA’s offering is CIGNA Care Connections, and he says the key is making it simple. Better choices = improved health and lower cost. Incentives drive better decisions. Pharmacy tools enable consumers to compare specific costs for their particular prescriptions. Next up is a Cost of Care Estimator. Patients will get much more interested in how much the bill will be when they have HSAs and similar plans. 

Need to change language; instead of “coinsurance” need to say “amount you pay after the deductible.” The goal is to build confidence and self-sufficiency among consumers.

Craig Froude from WebMD Health Services works with a lot of big employers and health plans with the goal of improving health outcomes and lowering health care costs. They create an individual profile for each IBM employee, for example, and import lots of data from various sources into the system without the employee needing to enter information. Based on these data he says they deliver personalized, targeted information and recommendations. It’s called WebMD Health & Benefits Manager. He says 1.8 million people took a risk assessment last year, and 43 percent started an exercise program, 40 percent changed diet, but 26 percent reported making no changes. His team’s goal is to increase the proportion of users actually taking action.

Vince Kuraitis, the moderator, concluded the presentations with what he calls “5 New Realities”

  1. Personal control of PHI displaces health care incumbents and puts patients in charge. Emerging reality: Patients say: “It’s my data. Hand it over. NOW.” Now HealthVault and Google are making it practical for patients to exercise the rights they already have.
  2. Proprietary IT and processes give way to open standards and collaborative business models. Collaborative Care Management Networks are required to coordinate care, just as you don’t worry today about using a non-network ATM (other than some extra fees.) But 70 percent of PHRs are not interoperable.
  3. The Personal Health Info Network facilitates incremental advances toward interoperability and liquidity. This has been moving very slowly, but now we’re moving from Ready, Aim, Fire to Ready, Fire, Aim
  4. The jury is in: patients will use PHRs. Conventional wisdom says adoption rates are low, but the emerging reality is patients value integrated PHR systems. Kaiser has 30 percent adoption and Group Health has 50 percent.
  5. Google, Microsoft and others are collaborating in creating a new ecosystem. Conventional wisdom says it’s a battle between the titans, but the emerging reality is “It’s a new ecosystem!”

In the ensuing discussion…

Continue reading “Microsoft, WebMD and CIGNA on Consumer Medical Data”

Buy a Vowel?

In the past couple of years I’ve given presentations on “new media” or social media to several marketing-oriented health care organizations.

At Monday’s meeting with FSHPRM (Florida Society for Healthcare Public Relations &Marketing), I began to notice a pattern. Some other similar organizations to which I’ve presented:

  • MHSCN (Minnesota Healthcare Strategy and Communication Network)
  • WHPRMS (Wisconsin Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Society)
  • FHS/FCBMS (Forum for Healthcare Strategists 12th annual Forum on Customer Based Marketing Strategies)
  • SHSMD (Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development) – that one was in my pre-blog days, and was just  a presentation on media relations.

I was struck by the complete absence of vowels in any of these acronyms, and the resulting difficulty in pronunciation.

First Rule of Word of Mouth: To have word of mouth about your organization, people need to be able to pronounce its name.

Possible reasons for the completely consonant acronyms:

  1. They were created by committee. PR needed to be included in the name. So did Marketing. With a letter to represent the state name, you have four consonants, including a P and an R that need to be together, and everyone gave up on the possibility of pronouncability.
  2. They want to keep the organization secret. Maybe they don’t think marketing, public relations and health care go together — or are concerned that other people might have that opinion. So by choosing a vowel-less acronym they are sabotaging word of mouth about their organization, to keep a lower profile.

What do you think? Is it #1 or #2, or is there some other explanation? And do you know of any health care PR/marketing associations for which the acronym contains a vowel and is able to be pronounced?

(Organizations from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah don’t count, since their state names begin with a vowel. But it would be interesting to know whether they still managed to avoid a catchy acronym.)