Social Media Guidelines for Medical Professionals: Summary June 2, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.add a comment
In the past few weeks, some amazing articles, reports and videos have been published focusing on the social media guidelines for medical professionals. At the end of last year, we crowdsourced an open access social media guide for and about pharma. I thought I would publish a summary of the most important thoughts and articles dedicated to this subject.
- Guiding Principles for Physician Use of Social Media my Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media
- A 12-Word Social Media Policy
Having noted this, among the most common concerns that seem to limit participation are those regarding professionalism. So let’s make this as easy as possible, with 12 words to light your way:
- Don’t Lie, Don’t Pry
- Don’t Cheat, Can’t Delete
- Don’t Steal, Don’t Reveal
- Doctors warned not to use social media with patients
- When it comes to doctors and social media, hospitals fail miserably
Visualizing a medical Twitter hashtag: MD_Chat June 1, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in eHealth, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, twitter, Visualization, Web 2.0.add a comment
I’ve recently got in touch with an amazing group, the Thesys Group. They invited me to their HQ to show me what kind of projects they are working on and we started a bit of brainstorming about what we could come up with together.
In our first project, the Thesys Group analyzed the network of discussions focusing on one of the most popular medical Twitter hashtags, MD_chat. In the figure below, a dot represents a Twitter user, lines connecting the dots represent their relationship. The bigger the dot is, the more tweets the Twitter user had. The thicker the line is, the more tweets the two users had with each other. Based on this, here is the network graph (click on the image below to access the interactive graph):
Dots in the middle account for active users, while dots in the periphery did not participate that often in these discussions. Graph includes only tweets including user names, therefore representing discussions. Here is a zoomed version of this graph just to show you how the dots are connected to each other on a smaller scale with @doctor_v and @jodyms in the focus.
A few numbers and facts:
- Tweets are dated between October, 2010 and October, 2011 (4815 messages).
- Data tables were obtained from a public Scridb database containing all the MD_chat discussions and can be downloaded in doc or PDF formats.
- 282 users are represented in the graph with 1972 connecting them to each other.
- Graph was visualized with the Gephi open-source platform.
The top 10 most active Twitter user using the MD_chat hashtag in discussions (largest dots in the graph):
| Rank | MD chat user name | Number of addressed tweets |
| 1 | richmonddoc | 559 |
| 2 | ellenrichter | 204 |
| 3 | gailzahtz | 190 |
| 4 | peds_id_doc | 181 |
| 5 | mdstudent31 | 178 |
| 6 | apjonas | 159 |
| 7 | ability4life | 155 |
| 8 | westr | 145 |
| 9 | chukwumaonyeije | 140 |
| 10 | md_chat | 139 |
The aim of this short study was to point out the importance of medicine related hashtags and the growing popularity of these. The dynamic growth of MD_chat is a good example for the changes that we can see now in the everyday communication among peers. Therapeutic experience, news and opinions spread without geographical or linguistic limitations.
Please let us know what you think of this analysis and feel free to contact me or the Thesys Group for more details.
Like this:
#HCSM Leaderboard May 24, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, twitter, Web 2.0.add a comment
Clinical Current came up with a leaderboard of the most active users using the Twitter hashtag #hcsm (healthcare social media). I’m glad to be on the top, but it only means I’m active in this area. The scores are a mixture of Klout scores and activity.
The reason why I’m showing this to you now is that next week, I’m going to publish here a very detailed and thorough analysis of a particular medical Twitter hashtag and also visualize the results. Stay tuned!
iDoo, Your Personal Mobile Trainer is Looking for Beta Testers! May 23, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Sport, Video, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
iDoo that I came across at the recent Smartmobil conference aims to become a mobilized personal trainer who even measures your performance. In order to reach this goal, the developers are looking for beta testers. It looks great and I hope a lot of people will sign up through the link below.
iDoo gives you the flexibility to perform the perfect training, anywhere, anytime. The app is based on a patent pending algorithm that uses several sensors of the smartphone to compare the movement of the user with the perfect motion desired by the exercise. The app features several exercises, targeting different muscles and body parts.
We are looking for testers to try out the first 15 warm-up exercises! Apply for the test following the link here, and be among the first users to try this revolutionary fitness app ever.
Next Stop: Paris! May 22, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Conference, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Just like last year, I’m a keynote speaker again at the upcoming Doctors 2.0 and You, the event of the year in the medicine 2.0/health 2.0 space. This year, I will come up with a brand new topic.
On Wednesday, I will be the moderator in the session about big data in healthcare.
And on Thursday, I will speak about how crowdsourcing helped my way through medical school as a real geek.
Here is a great summary about what’s coming up in Paris. Until my keynote is published online, here is my speech from last year when I talked about the favorite social media tools of a physician.
See you in Paris!
Prognosis for Moms iPad app May 22, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Mobile, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Prognosis has been one of my favorite Android apps as it helps me keep myself up-to-date whenever I have to stand in a line somewhere. It lets me read patient cases and solve them. The developers just let me know their newest app, Prognosis for Moms for iPads is out! It was designed for pregnant women to help them know more about potential pregnancy-related issues.
Pregnancy is a joyous occasion but the road is not always smooth. A variety of medical conditions can occur along the way – which are all too easily missed.
Prognosis for Moms gives you an in-depth understanding of these issues, via real-world stories presented in a cartoon format.
Mayo Clinic Releases Patient Mobile App May 17, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Mayo Clinic proves again that it has the best social media approach among all healthcare institutions worldwide by releasing a new mobile app for its patients.
The Mayo Clinic Patient app is an easy-to-use tool for navigating your visit while at a Mayo Clinic campus. The app also provides community information, including directions to local restaurants, entertainment, and much more.
Some of the features include:
- Access to request an appointment
- Navigation to amenities on the Mayo Clinic campus as well as in the community
- Up-to-date appointment schedule
- 24/7 access to your lab results and medical record
- Notifications regarding important information
- Up-to-date Mayo Clinic news, publications, and videos
Facebook’s Organ Donor Project: Aftermath May 11, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Facebook, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.add a comment
More than a week ago, we all expected something amazing from Facebook as they were about to hold a press conference focusing on a new health-related initiative. Then Facebook announced they would let users mark themselves as organ donors on their own timelines. While it is a nice initiative, I expected much much more from a community site with almost a billion users, to be honest.
“Many of those people — an average of 18 people per day –- will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need,” Facebook notes in a blog entry explaining the move. “Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis.”
As the video above explains, designating yourself as an organ donor is easy. All you need to do is go to your Timeline, click on “Life Event” and then “Health & Wellness.” Then, you’ll see the option for “Organ Donor.” At that point, you can add when and where you registered and your personal story.
What about the aftermath, the results?
6000 people registered… Compared to the 1 billion users, we couldn’t say it is a real success. We will see how it evolves. But Facebook must come up with more creative projects.
7 Quick Action Tips for Using Social Media in Healthcare May 8, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Interview, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.2 comments
Vic Phillips has been publishing interviews about success stories in social media and now he invited me to be his guest. We produced a video as I answered some of his questions. Here are the topics we covered:
1. Getting started with social media. He talks about the importance of a blog and three things you need to do to get started.
2. Implement what you have learned
3. The ROI for healthcare – R.O.I. in “healthcare speak” means the Return on Information.
4. Ways to use social media and examples vary based on your needs
5. Protect your reputation
6. Time Management: Saving Time
7. Tools to us for efficiency
