iPads for Heart Patients: Mayo Clinic Rocks Again April 14, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Hospital, Innovation, Medicine, Video.2 comments
A great initiative coming from Mayo Clinic again:
Being in the hospital after major surgery is no fun. On top of dealing with pain, patients have uncertainty. They also have to worry about getting all the information they need to support their recovery. That’s not always easy in the hospital; things happen quickly and doctors and hospital staff are often really busy. Doctors at Mayo Clinic may have a solution to this issue. They’re giving iPads to heart surgery patients to see if a new iPad app can make hospital stays easier and more satisfying.
From 9 Tablet Tips to the 15 Most Wired Hospitals January 23, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Hospital, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.add a comment
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association accents the limits of web-based health management tools that are currently available.
Health Populi’s Hot Points: I’ve studied the “Healthcare’s Most Wired” Health Providers from Hospitals & Health Networks and the Thomson Reuters Top 100 Hospitals for many years. It strikes me in 2012 that with meaningful use and patient engagement on the front-burner for providers adopting EHRs that a useful metric for these studies could be patient engagement.
The number of pedestrians injured or killed while wearing headphones has tripled in the last six years: 16 oblivious PMP users were offed in 2004, the number rising to 47 for last year.
- Hugo Campos challenged himself to eat only vegan meals throughout last December and took pictures of everything he ate or drank from an almond to a cup of coffee.
Like this:
12 Predictions in Healthcare, Technology and Innovation for 2012 December 31, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in e-patient, eHealth, Facebook, Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Hospital, Innovation, List, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Pharma, Slideshow, Video, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.12 comments
Last year, I published a list of my predictions for 2011 in the areas of healthcare, innovation and technology. Now after a year, I checked these items and actually many of them proved to be right (year of tablets, Prezi.com skyrocketing, Siri leading the way for voice controlled apps, etc.), but now it’s time to come up with the predictions for 2012. Here are my 12 predictions, please feel free to add yours in the comment section.
1) Digital only class in social media for medical professionals and e-patients. Well, that’s quite an easy prediction, as I will launch the global form of my social media in medicine university course this February.
2) Social media policy everywhere. Now that we have an open access social media guide for and about pharma; it’s time for the FDA to come up with their own detailed instructions; also universities, healthcare institutions and medical practices, everyone must have its own as almost everyone is using social media intensively.
3) Augmented reality in radiology. Augmented reality has been a major issue for some time, but seeing the video below made it clear for me, this is where we are going to head in 2012. Doctors can see through patients.
4) Health-fitness gadgets will rock 2012. Myself, I’ve been using Striiv as a fitness motivation tool which also logs my data and visualizes my exercises making it easier for me to make plans and see how I’m doing. Other examples include Jawbone, but you can find even more if you follow the Quantified Self project.
5) Innovations in screen technologies. The form, material and functions of the screens we know now will change dramatically in 2012. Imagine paper screen, holographic screens or flexible screens on your wrist.
6) Internet TV and the operating room. The news sites are full of Apple TV and Google TV, so it’s obvious really innovative internet TVs will be launched in 2012 which brings up the idea of watching operations live on your TV at home. Just check OR-live.com.
7) Pharma will be using social media more intensively. I’m not saying all the pharma companies will have properly designed and managed social media presence, but many brands will use social media more intensively as we should be over now the so-called learing phase and they are getting braver by time.
8) More and more tablet-specific apps. I know the number of medicine/health-related mobile apps is growing rapidly, but now it’s time to turn to tablet-specific clinical apps that could be used in radiology, clinical trials or just for grand rounds.
9) Tablets in healthcare institutions. Whenever I talked to professors and colleagues about how I use my tablet in medicine and healthcare, in a few weeks, many of them had their own tablets and started using those apps. This is contagious. In 2012, a lot of hospitals, clinics and departments will hand out iPad or Galaxy Tabs to their employees in order to facilitate teamwork and make the work processes more efficient.
10) Wikipedia will have more medical featured articles, less medical errors. We recently published a paper describing how Wikipedia can be used for global public health promotion. After years of focus on creating new medical entries in Wikipedia, now we the editors focus on including proper references into medical articles. It is going to lead to a huge improvement in quality.
11) More health bloggers turn to microblogging due to lack of time. Although I believe my blog is still my major platform online even if Twitter is the fastest channel and Facebook is the most interactive. But I understand those health bloggers who leave their blogs and turn to Posterious, Tumblr or Twitter exclusively. It takes less time to post a message or entry therefore they will use these with a bigger chance.
12) Google+ health pages on the rise. I like Google+ and I think it could be used in medical communication successfully. As Google+ has only been letting companies or institutions have G+ pages, we are going to see a rise in their number soon. Even Ed Bennett who maintains a list of hospital social media accounts will include these as well.
Let’s finish my list with a great presentation about the trends in healthcare for 2012.
From DIY Diagnostic Tests to Mobile Health Competitions December 11, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Hospital, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, twitter, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.3 comments
In a letter published in the Journal of Emergencies, Trauma, and Shock, physicians in Scotland described the use of a webcam, Skype, and an iPhone 4 to connect a provider in Calgary to an expert over 200 miles away in Aberdeen for assistance in performing a pulmonary ultrasound.
The idea behind most diagnostic tests is simple: Identify a telltale chemical and look for it in a blood sample. The PSA test for prostate cancer is the best-known cancer diagnostic, but diagnostics exist for other cancers too — ovarian and colorectal to name a few. And while the tests are not infallible, they can help find hard-to-detect, early stage cancers and monitor treatment.
Dave deBronkart, “e-Patient Dave,” was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer in 2007. The median survival time for his condition was 24 weeks. Thanks to the help of an online network for patients with his disease, he quickly learned about treatment options and found support for his recovery. The treatment was successful, and now e-Patient Dave is cancer-free and has found a higher calling: empowering patients to have access to the best health care possible — by connecting with resources online.
eyeforpharma believes that the pharma industry must pay more attention to patient needs across the board, and that teen cancer patients are a great place to start. To this end, the organization is hosting its first annual Mobile Health Competition. The competition aims to highlight new and exciting mobile apps that help teen cancer patients better manage their conditions and improve their lives.
You cannot afford to take a “wait-and-see” approach or you may soon find yourself trying to catch up with competitors. Even if you do not currently have an active social media presence, your employees and customers are already using social media. Start now, start small and measure progress. Take precautions: develop a policy to govern your employees’ use of social media. Also use social media to monitor, enhance and protect your brand/reputation.
Mayo Clinic Launches ‘Know Your Numbers’ October 20, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Health, Web 2.0, Health 2.0, Video, Hospital, Innovation.2 comments
Yesterday, Mayo Clinic, the real rockstar health institution of social media launched another fantastic social campaign in which they aim at raising awareness of the importance of blood pressure, lipid levels and body mass index in preventing heart diseases. They started with a funny video and also created a website and a challenge for this. A perfect design, management and execution for a social campaign from a hospital (!).
The “Know Your Numbers” music video will help people around the world understand the importance of knowing their numbers for blood pressure, lipids and body mass index to help prevent heart disease.
As part of the campaign, viewers can use a free application on Mayo Clinic‟s Facebook page that will help them calculate their risk of a heart attack and learn how to prevent one. Visit the Facebook app here.
Video viewers also have the opportunity to enter a contest to earn points by helping spread the word about heart attack risk factors. Visit the site here.
Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media: New Advisory Board Members January 31, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Hospital, Video, Web 2.0.9 comments
I had the honour to be included in the Advisory Board of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media. Mayo Clinic has been an example about using social media by a healthcare institution and I’m very glad I can take active part in planning and designing their online activities from now.
In September, the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media named 13 members to our External Advisory Board and announced a plan to crowdsource the remaining positions.
We knew we wanted diverse perspectives and backgrounds on the board, and we felt crowdsourcing and using social media tools to aid the search would help us get the broadest input in candidate recruitment and identifying those diverse perspectives.
The response was overwhelming, with more than 120 candidates nominated or applying for what we had planned to be a dozen positions. With so many good candidates, the selection process for new members was difficult.
24 hours of an Emergency Department in South Africa December 13, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Healthcare, Hospital, Video.3 comments
My favourite emergency medicine blog, Life in The Fast Lane, shared videos about an emergency department and an intensive care unit in South Africa. My friends, this is not House, MD, this is real life.
Facebook stories and scandals: Mayo Clinic deals with them November 22, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Communication, Facebook, Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Hospital, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.4 comments
We all know that Mayo Clinic is an example for all the healthcare institutions in the world regarding the inclusion of social media in their communication. Here are two stories that happened with Mayo Clinic and that they could handle properly.
1) A Latvian doctor at Mayo sent a controversial letter to a Latvian government official in 2009 in which he stated “as a physician, [he] cannot treat equally Russians and Latvians.” Now the letter was translated and caused serious troubles to Mayo as users left comments on the wall of the Mayo Facebook page. Mayo could deal with this properly by using fast, accurate communication with users, open comments and they tried to “flood” the stream of negative comments with positive news and announcements. Later, they asked users to comment on this issue on a different discussion tab leaving the main page for other news.
For a clinic having such open and social media centered communication, I think they cannot let this happen without consequences, they should have fired the particular doctor for 1) publishing racist comments and 2) for keeping the positive attention/reputation they have been building for a long time. Instead, they posted a message saying that they “have talked with Dr. Slucis regarding the nature, tone and perception of his comments. Regarding every other aspect, the way they handled the situation was perfect.
2) A patient posted a picture on the Mayo Facebook page about a wound/infection and asked for help. As I teach students about such situations in the Internet in Medicine course, they should let the patient know that they can’t diagnose online and provide them with real contact addresses. That’s exactly what Mayo Clinic did in this situation. Although other comments came with diagnostic ideas and miracle cures, but that’s not Mayo’s problem.
Mayo Clinic could deal with two serious issues and is still an example not only for healthcare institutions planning to use social media, but also for any kind of companies that try to promote and defend a brand online.
Community outreach by hospitals November 17, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Cancer, Community Site, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Hospital, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
When I was preparing to the next lecture of the Internet in Medicine course, I asked my friends on Twitter whether they know about examples for community outreach by hospitals. Lucien Engelen shared a great example with me. The Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre (RUNMC) helps young people with cancer to develop their own community. More details here and in the video below.
Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre starts with the development of AYA4 (All information You’ve Asked For) : a unique online community for and by young people with cancer. Soon after the scoping process one of the FIRST steps was to have the Chief Listening Office of the REshape-team start listening to doctors, nurses, patients, parents and others in the informal care. So we as a University hospital facilitated the technique, supported and drove the innovation, but were the patients themselves who determined the content of the community and started filling. They create themselves a digital place where young people with cancer and their families can meet, exchange essential information, ask questions and share knowledge and feeling.
The Hospital Social Network List October 27, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Hospital, List, Web 2.0.2 comments
Ed Bennett has been managed a huge and comprehensive list of US hospitals using social media. In the newest update, Hospital LinkedIn accounts are now also tracked in addition to Twitter, Youtube, Facebbok and Blogs.
Current Stats:
871 Hospitals total
- 421 YouTube Channels
- 679 Facebook pages
- 648 Twitter Accounts
- 417 LinkedIn Accounts
- 94 Blogs
You can also browse by state. The number of hospitals using each account is below:
