Molly Merrill
Medical associations, health systems and research institutions wanting to improve how they interact with their members are increasingly turning to social media. But unlike other industries, healthcare hasn't been able to reap the benefit this type of collaboration can provide, says one expert.Lance Hill, CEO of Within3, which is based in Cleveland, says his company can provide these industries with "highly adapted tools" to help them build and maintain an online community.
Mayo Clinic continues to demonstrate its leadership in social media. This month it launched its own social network for patients and caregivers, and it recently became one of the largest U.S. medical centers to establish a Spanish-language presence online.
Mobile devices have become as common as the stethoscope in patients' rooms since they're ideal for information sharing and time savings - but they pose huge security risks to patient information, experts say.
A new report from the National Research Council recommends steps the Food and Drug Administration, and agencies such as the Office of the National Coordinator, can take to ensure medical devices and health IT for home healthcare are easy and safe to use.These steps include developing new labeling standards, easier reporting of adverse events, improved training and methods to regulate, certify and monitor the devices.
The British Medical Association has issued new guidance to doctors and medical students, advising them not to accept Facebook requests from current or former patients.According to the guidance, "Using social media: practical and ethical guidance for doctors and medical students," problems can occur if the boundaries in the doctor-patient relationship become blurred.The BMA's key points include:
In its 13th year, the Most Wired hospitals and health systems list, put out by Hospitals & Health Networks, seems to have upped its value as an indicator of hospital care, rather than just a marketing tool.
As more doctors begin using their personal mobile devices to aid patient care, hospitals must be prepared to manage them in order to ensure security and privacy, according to one expert. It is imperative that the hospital manage not just the medical devices it issues, but also personal devices, like the iPad or iPhone, that the clinician may have brought from home, said Ilene Yarnoff, lead assurance and resilience principal for Booz Allen's Healthcare clients.
Twitter can be used to track important health trends, according to computer scientists at Johns Hopkins University. Mark Dredze and Michael J. Paul fed two billion public tweets posted between May 2009 and October 2010 into computers, then used software to filter out the 1.5 million messages that referred to health matters. Dredze, a researcher at the university's Human Language Technology Center of Excellence and an assistant research professor of computer science, and Paul, a doctoral student, said identities of the tweeters were not collected.
Critical access hospitals (CAHs) in rural areas of the U.S. are behind on quality of care, patient outcomes and technology adoption when compared to other hospitals, according to a recent study. In the first national study to examine care at CAHs in rural areas of the U.S., Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that, despite more than a decade of policy efforts to improve rural health care, substantial challenges remain.
Websites are "the new storefront" these days, and medical practices should not be missing out on the opportunity, says one expert. However, he points out that they "are a constant evolution," and so it's important to "lay the right foundation."Mike Cuesta, director of marketing at CareCloud, a Web-based medical practice management software firm in Miami, offered some tips for medical practices when it comes to creating and maintaining websites.