Edelman Digital » Dave Levy

Health Digital Check-Up: The Gratitude Quotient of Digital Health

Dave Levy — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:43:43 +0000

The ability to communicate gratitude is an important thing in any relationship – professional or personal; it balances the line between both respect and motivation, no matter what realm. Think of when a famous athlete leaves one city to join a new team; sometimes they show their thankfulness on the road away with something like a full page ad in their old home paper, and, while a small gesture, it shows that the time spent was valuable.

Online communication relies a lot on the notion of gratitude, as well, and it’s one place where health definitely aligns with the other arenas of the digital discussion. It’s a small element of humanism that extends across every channel, from forums, to Twitter, to engagement – a thank you can go a long way in creating a relationship or adding value to a discussion.

Here are five ways the online community says “Thank You” – and why it matters in health.

Health Benefits of Gratitude

As a WSJ piece from last fall pointed out, studies have shown there is actually a healthy reason to give thanks to those around us. These studies demonstrate the improved psychological condition of those who feel gratitude, which has all sorts of other good benefits, including increased energy, optimism and social connections – all which lead to a better sense of wellness and health.

The Support-Gratitude Cycle

If you’ve ever monitored a patient community or researched a conversation among people coping with smoking cessation, you’ll note a pretty consistent trend of shared experience. What’s really interesting in these groups is that, often, someone will thank the original poster for sharing their story, and then immediately offer support to the person who then thanks them right back. It’s kind of awesome.

Thanks for the RT!

This one definitely isn’t specific to health, but certainly worth keeping in mind when using Twitter. The more time you spend on the network, the more you will see users “Retweet” (RT) messages from other Tweeters. That’s common. Stop to think, though: there’s also way more than an outside chance that you’ve also seen the phrase “Thanks for the RT” shared more than once. In a community that has developed more than its fair share of communication ideas that get embraced widely – such as hashtags – the development of RTs and the public display of returning thanks is certainly one of the most interesting.

Assessing Outreach Success

Every now and then, you’ll read a post from a well-known blogger in which they flame a PR person for an off-topic pitch, sometimes even going so far as to post the note to their site with information about the person conducting outreach in the first place. As more and more people get used to the non-traditional method to engage bloggers – personal and mutually beneficial – a nod of encouragement that you’re doing it right is great as opposed to the alternative. As health communicators engage more in the online space, we can hope for the latter. It’s always great to hear back from a blogger, but it’s especially great if it is something along the lines of, “This is exactly the type of information in which I’m interested sharing with my readers; thanks for thinking that through before sending this information my way.”

What’s Next

Health is digital. Period. The reason, though, is not anything revolutionary: health is digital because digital makes conversations easier since our social networks are easier to access. People didn’t start talking about health and having questions about what their physicians tell them because search engines and Facebook came around. Networks are still based on relationships and they work in the ways most connections work – the more personal, the more impactful. That’s why gratitude matters, and in health, perhaps even more. Health is fundamentally private, and it will take the comfort of something personal to ensure that the conversation can happen. Online and off, don’t forget to say “Thank You”; it keeps the conversation going.

Image credit: TheTruthAbout

Health Digital Check-Up: Rewind on 2010

Dave Levy — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:53:52 +0000

I’ve always thought that the “Year in Review” post is always a bit like cheating. That doesn’t mean I won’t do it.

Since the Check-Up has been around for more than a year, the holiday season is a convenient time to look back on some of the most talked about columns or other favorite topics. Sure, it’s a little bit vain, but if you haven’t read any of these clips from the HDCU vault, then they’ll be new to you!

Is one of the ones you remember from the archive missing from this list? Let us know which ones you found useful by commenting.

How The Red Sox Taught Me About Patient Communities (April 27, by Dave Levy)

It may be December, but I kind of always have baseball on my mind, and since we’ve had a lot of activity in the off-season, I get to be more excited than usual and think about this post from last season. The points about community are still really valid: when you feel like your health depends on something (for me, it’s mental health around a sports team, I know I need perspective), you look for people with whom to share your experience.

Digital Health in 2020 (November 2, by Eric Tatro)

A lot of other people in the digital space get to play the “What’s Next” game, speculation about the next gadget or social network to take over. In health, we’re maybe a few years behind other fields when it comes to clever online innovations, but that doesn’t mean we can’t dream. Eric’s post looking at the end of this decade in health is a great way to think about where the next big thing may start.

What’s Going on at the FDA (September 7, by Emily Downward)

What a difference a year makes. Or, actually, the bigger point of Emily’s piece was just how little changed between November 2009’s FDA hearing on social media marketing and this fall. The warning letters are still flying out of the FDA’s offices, but as Emily noted, the balance between taking a risk and avoiding any involvement is still a delicate one. The other reason to include this post in the 2010 rewind is that we really hope we don’t have to repost it in 2011 void of any update or news.

A Health Digital Journey (March 11, by Dave Levy)

I get to cheat and sneak two of my own into this rewind, I hope that’s ok. Beyond being one of the more fun Check-Ups to write, this post was enjoyable because (a) everyone loves Journey and (b) it’s little bit less dry of an approach to looking at the struggles and challenges of our field. It’s at least a little more amusing and easy to remember than, “the divide between those talking and those with information is wide, and that’s because no one is willing to take too many risks given the regulations.”

It also helps that Edelman Digital’s Community Manager loves this post. And Journey.

Places You Might Not Know to Find Health Online (May 11, by Jessi Langsen)

Back in May, Jessi took some time off from authoring Edelman’s other weekly feature – the Friday Five – to offer up some ideas on the unexpected places that health conversations happen online. Her suggestions for a few intriguing health blogs and updates are really a fascinating cut outside of the usual health professional or patient bloggers we read.

Image credit: Tom Novot

Health Digital Check-Up: Tracking the Flu

Dave Levy — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:24:14 +0000

Thinking through the history of data-driven digital health application, one of the most memorable in recent years is something launched by Google in 2008. Back then, the company unveiled a tool that used the trends of searches related to flu to show where colds are hitting this year.

Since that tool, there have been different attempts to take data surrounding the flu and digitizing it to be useful for people around the world. Search is a key component – after all, we know how many people turn to search when it comes to health information – but there are many other places where people are talking and tracking the flu this winter.

Here are a few of those such places, but feel free to add any others you may know about.

CDCFlu

One of the most entertaining things from last cold season was a PSA contest held by the U.S. Center for Disease Control. Instead of just letting flu content with chainsaws and rapping doctors sit around, the CDC is out there pushing more flu information on Twitter. You can follow them for both practical and entertaining resources about cold season on Twitter at @CDCFlu.

Tracking with Twitter

In addition to being a great place for resources, Twitter also serves as a good tool for researchers to track the flu itself. From a September article at Consumer Affairs. The real time nature of Twitter provides a faster channel for researchers to track data, a notable advantage when trying to find flu hot spots when official statistics may be on a two-plus week lag.

Geopatterns Epidemics

How about some proof that the last concept works? Geopatterns Epidemics looks at geotargeted Tweets from different regions in the UK and uses that information to graph and predict flu spikes. Check it out in all its infographic glory here.

HealthMap

Want to go deeper than Twitter for tracking? Good news, you can, thanks to HealthMap. Plug in a disease, and the Google Map mashup takes news items that are caught by the algorithm and gives it a pushpin or alert based on activity and significance of the outbreak. The search I ran this morning indicates that parts of Eastern Europe seem to be the center of conversation today – if you’re in Ukraine or Western Russia, bundle up!

Image credit: Daniela H.

Health Digital Check-Up: Don’t Do It Yourself

Dave Levy — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:17:39 +0000

Earlier this year, we had some fun via a Lifehacker post about the Do-It-Yourself movement and where that fits into health. Courtesy of that great blog, here’s another intriguing idea worth considering in the health digital space: DDIY, or “Don’t Do It Yourself.”

The concept of DDIY has little to do with avoiding something you can’t do alone. Instead, it’s about finding places where a little assistance can get you to a certain personal goal or creation after you hit an impasse that you can’t overcome yourself. Part motivation, part crowdsourcing, when it comes to personal health, there are many places that resources from others can play the part you need to get you past your obstacle. In today’s Check-Up, we take a look at a few places to help you so you don’t have to start from scratch when it comes to health.

Healthy Together

One of the suggestions from the Lifehacker post about DDIY was looking into online forums and answer services that may help you connect the dots on your goal. When it comes to health, there is no shortage of these. Offline, there are no shortage of groups at gyms or local community centers dedicated to healthy living; online portals like Healthy Together try to gather that same information to help people get, well, healthy together.

Aardvark

Another interesting example from Lifehacker is definitely something worth investigating as it applies to specific health conditions or even information you can help supply. Aardvark is a digitally based question-and-answer service, hooking up community members who have certain knowledge bases and connecting them with the people who have questions in those fields. Flipping through the topics, there is a deep well of experts on aspects of health that include things like fitness, technologies or even hospitals.

Wellsphere

While another community/forum driven site like Healthy Together, there is one other reason to point to Wellsphere’s resources and how it offers up information. Looking at the community breakdown, there are two clear areas: “healthy living” and just “health.” This probably is a good way to think about the places where people have the ability to do things themselves or realize that they need information or help from others before going on their way.

DIY vs DDIY

I think most people could easily guess the times when not to do something concerning their health on their own or through the help of an online community. Crowdsourcing a physical shouldn’t be high on your list, but in terms of looking for support for personal fitness goals or health and wellness, there are certainly places you can go so you don’t have to go it alone. The additional question for communicators is how to work with these groups – both as a beneficiary and as a resource – to help people who do want to do it themselves.

Image credit: wenzday01

Health Digital Check-Up: Check-In To Wellness

Dave Levy — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:40:36 +0000

The ability to check-in on location-based services anywhere under the sun means that there are a number of ways to possibly work in a relation to other issues or industries. This naturally could include health care, fitness, nutrition or wellness. The Check-Up has been ranting on this topic for some time, dating back to early summer when we first pointed out that there is an unexplored opportunity for healthcare facilities to tap into the power of location-based social networks like Foursquare.

In this week’s Check-Up, we’ll take a look at some of the ways Foursquare has been used to promote positive health decisions – and some other ways that applications that revolve around “checking in” could be used in the future to encourage better health.

Gym Rat

One of the signatures of Foursquare is its gaming element, rewarding points and badges when users check-in to certain places or with a certain group of people. Among these badges is one called Gym Rat, a badge you unlock by checking into a facility marked as a gym 10 times within a 30-day period. Other than the completely intangible reward, one thing Foursquare will do is kick out an automatic notification to your Twitter followers that you achieved such a healthy end – as we know, furthering the effect and reward thanks to the additional network that knows about your fitness lifestyle.

Badges? Badges!

Foursquare users do seem to need their stinkin’ badges. So why not use them as a reward for sticking to a health plan? That’s the idea behind Foursquare-partner Health Month. As Health Month outlines on its site: “Health Month is about taking the SCIENCE of nutrition and behavior change and combining it with the SOCIAL GAMES of the recent social web to help people improve their health habits in a fun and sustainable way.” Just by following your own rules and goals, you can actually earn Foursquare badges based on the difficulty of your personal challenge.

RunKeeper

Carrying on the theme of “do healthy stuff and earn a badge,” fitness tracker RunKeeper falls right into line. By setting up your run-tracking account on RunKeeper to sync with your Foursquare profile, you’ll earn badges for the distances you run or other benchmarks along the way. It is in this nature that Foursquare has probably surpassed its original function as just something you can use to check-in to places, and the next features may involve finding a way to use the service to share your mental state of being, not just your physical.

Oversharing Public Health

There are some elements of Foursquare that get knocked by privacy stalwarts, most notably the consequences that could come from users who tend to check-in to every possible location into which they wander. That nature of oversharing took an interesting turn by way of a health partnership earlier this year: MTV partnered to offer a badge for anyone who checked-in to admit to getting tested for STDs. There are a few intriguing questions about this development. Did the nature of the campaign do more for awareness because of its public nature? Or is this toeing the line a little too closely when it comes to how much private information someone is willing to share on an online network?

The Next Check-In

Public sharing of health – or even specifically of personal health care – may be the last part of this field that works its way into location-based services. Given the sensitivities of that level of information sharing, it may be some time before you see a health center willingly embracing the audience that checks into its facility, but as outlined above, the public health benefits seem to rise to the top. Where will the next check-in be?

Health Digital Check-Up: Doctor, Doctor, What's Poking Me

Dave Levy — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:36:24 +0000

There is a health space issue that I once jokingly channeled Journey’s Separate Ways to define: while conversations about health are happening, they tend to stay constrained within specific verticals. That is to say, patients talk with other patients, and health professionals are more likely to turn to their peers than the public. The challenge is that this is probably the opposite interaction of what is occurring in the real world, where physicians and patients are intertwined in addressing health conditions.

This debate is crucial to the future of our role as online communicators. As much as we study, learn and research our clients and their medical issues, we will never be in a position to replace physicians who have studied these things for years.

What does the landscape look like in terms of patient-physician interaction? To help explain it, here are a few points from the debate.

The Paradox

A doctor’s office may only be open during regular business hours, but search engines never sleep. When someone with a health condition tweets or interacts with other patients, there is no bounds on who or what they discuss. Yet, when the lights go off and the doctor is off the clock, there are myriad reasons –such as privacy concerns and legal implications – for them to not answer that e-mail, friend request or direct message. Herein lies the paradox: a search engine is an emotionless algorithm; a physician has years of academic and professional experience.

Ignoring Is Easy

Susan Giurleo, PhD, wrote an awesome piece on KevinMD last week about the many different mistakes that can be made in social media health care. While all of her points are worth reading, I think the primary issue is the idea of avoidance: physicians and other health care professionals may rather skip the “confusion and distraction” of social media as opposed to learning about the tools – and the other positives that come with it.

Valid Hesitations

Even if it is part avoidance, there are certainly doomsday scenarios that create valid concerns for doctors looking to jump into the online channel. In one case, patients may only be sharing a small portion of information online, and part of the doctor’s visit isn’t just a patient’s documented history, but they can ask additional questions and run tests to get the whole picture. A doctor doesn’t want to give diagnoses based on partial information; it puts them at risk for missing something and, then, potential legal action. Of course, there’s also one more question: reimbursement. Doctors have bills to pay, like everyone else, why should they give away medical knowledge online if there’s no business?

Forget the Return

Seattle area health facility Swedish is in the midst of hosting a conference to recognize 100 years of serving Washington state. Lucky for us, some of the smartest physician voices online were not only there, but tweeting some of their thoughts. There was at least one thing shared that Wendy Sue Swanson and Bryan Vartabedian (SeattleMamaDoc and Doctor_V, respectively) agreed on: “This is not about ROI. This is an obligation to inform and share knowledge.”

Who Fixes It?

Just as with so much of the online health space, the question often comes back to how it changes. Just as no one wants to be the Pharma company made example of for trying something new in social media, those who are willing to jump in and try and embrace these channels are faced with the risk of being weary trailblazers. Until then, I’ll try to sum it up with a quote from former President Dwight Eisenhower: “No one ever hit a home run by bunting.”

Image credit: tabithahawk

Health Digital Check-Up: Health, Wellness and Tumblr

Dave Levy — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:30:53 +0000

Twitter isn’t the only service out there that’s changed blogging in the last few years, and as long as there are some users dedicated to content longer than 140-characters, there will always be blogging. However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be “long-form” posts, and in the space between 140-characters and 1,400 words exists a service called Tumblr.

Tumblr allows many of the same things as both blogging and Twitter – posting videos, images, links – but the intent is to keep things short and within a relevant community. Since users can follow other Tumblrs, the influence of one post can always be traced back to its origin. There is one additional advantage for the health space: whereas the limit of Twitter often is a detriment when trying to share complex health information, the ability to still focus on brief content while including more context may help bridge the gap between space limits and disclosures.

Exploring the many Tumblrs out there can be informative, and to help on your search for relevant health, wellness or nutrition Tumblrs, check out these five examples.

Ben Does Life

The state of Tumblr is generally very personality driven, straddling the line between a personal blog and individual Twitter profiles. Just as with those bloggers, you can often find people sharing detailed, day-to-day information about a personal goal. That’s what Ben Does Life is about: the daily battles of being healthy and fit – including a monthly countdown of the 110 pounds Ben Davis has shed since January 2009 by way of his very public effort.

Jay Parkinson + MD + MPH

As mentioned in the intro, the opportunity to provide context to complex medical ideas is one attraction to finding a little more content space than Twitter. Take Jay Parkinson for example (and his 6,003 followers on Tumblr). Whether it’s a detailed stat on public health or a 15-word quote about Television’s impact on America, Jay uses health as his path to engaging in the space.

The Sugarholic

People with diabetes make up one of the most active communities across all patient blogs, and it’s likely because the age of people with the condition extend far beyond other demographic information. Not surprisingly, you can find some really interesting Tumblrs dedicated to people living with diabetes. Whether sharing recipes or asking for new ideas to keep energized, bloggers like The Sugarholic push Tumblr’s video and post capabilities to their best use will providing this information.

F No Eating Disorders

One important thing to watch with any Tumblr post is how each post’s individual audience grows. Because of the “Reblog” function on Tumblr, a post is connected to all of the blogs that share it. A really interesting example of this is the tight knit group of men and women connected through the F No Eating Disorders Tumblr. The messages of support for people struggling with eating disorders are intimate, but at the same time, the relationship between posters, commenters and readers help amplify the voice of the community behind each message. To see this in action, see how this one post was reblogged and liked not just within the FNED blog, but across other similar users.

Boo Cancer. You suck!

Sometimes the title of a blog explains pretty much all you need to know. Case and point: Boo Cancer. You suck! No need for a lengthy explanation on this one, but even in the simple story of combating cancer, this one Tumblr user and her experience with treatment and recovery from breast cancer is both personal and an insight into how a community of support can grow.

Health Digital Check-Up: Benefits of Peer Pressure in Social Networks

Dave Levy — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:17:56 +0000

The collection of people who we follow, friend and like on social networks is likely an interesting cross-section between personalities, professional contacts and friends. Depending on the networks, of course, there may even be more personal ties (say, like on Facebook), and each different channel works a little differently.

One lesson that has come out recently is that the personal ties on some of these networks can also work as a little bit of a peer pressure to those who chose to air their vices publicly as a way to use the power of the hive as motivation.

As you think about programs with a public health tinge, or even ways to help reach a personal goal, think about these five ways social networks and peer pressure have helped people improve their own lifestyles.

The Twitter Diet

Late in August, New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter shared the results of his personal diet test. His goal, starting last March, was to shed 25 pounds in the 25 weeks leading up to his 25th birthday. He wasn’t going to use a professional diet or weight management program, instead, he decided to lean on Twitter. As he recounted in his column last month, the network was more than “diet and tell,” and his followers really did become a support group that forced him to keep honest. The result speaks for itself: Stelter got rid of 75 pounds by the time his birthday came around last week.

Qwitter

Just like with losing weight, others have relied on social stigma to help them quit smoking cigarettes. While one example was featured in TechCrunch last month, this capability of the Twitter network has actually been tapped well before then. A neat case study in the public health engagement space involves a group called TobaccoFreeFlorida. The organization launched Qwitter in 2008 as a way to use Twitter help count – and kick – the habit.

Handling Chronic Conditions

Earlier this summer, we documented a great event from Digital Capital Week on the impact digital communication can have on public health. During the event, Susannah Fox brought up lots of interesting data points. While we do spend a lot of time trying to quantify the number of people with chronic conditions who are online, we may be overlooking the fact that once they get connected, they get incredibly engaged with others as a network of support. Within that network, the relationships become tight enough that influence is a real possibility.

Watering Your Plants

Maybe the only reason you remember to water your plants every morning is the fear that a neighbor may disapprove of dead shrubbery on your porch. What if that neighbor was actually the public Facebook or Twitter universe, and your plant didn’t just show signs of thirst, but actively told everyone you knew? Last year, researchers from NYU found a way to hook up a plant to automate its state of care, and one of the creators shared a story of how her Tweeting plant (followed by more than 3,200 people) can cause her guilt since so many know how well she’s taking care of it.

Is the Influence Real?

A feature in Monday’s LA Times took a look at some of the more academic literature associated with this phenomenon of online social desirability. The author documents a few of the older studies that often look at just one demographic or condition, thus are not completely conclusively. However, compare that with a study at MIT released earlier this month: the power of social network influence has less to do with size and more to do with the cluster of connections, i.e., reinforcement from people you know, offline or on, often leads to the result of personal health change. The moral of the story may be best summed up by a quote from Thomas Valente in the LAT piece: “You can’t divorce the content of the program from the people delivering it. The message is really the messenger.”

Health Digital Check-Up: The Case for Analog

Dave Levy — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:12:45 +0000

There are many new trends popping up here and there regarding where health communication and care is going thanks to digital technology. That’s NOT what this week’s Health Digital Check-Up is going to cover. Instead, let’s take a look at the opposite side: the places where digital still hasn’t taken hold.

That’s right, the Digital Check-Up is going analog for a week. Shocked? Well here’s five ideas and stories to consider for when it comes to the case for traditional tools in health care. Are these destined to change too?

Word Of Mouth

Online resources may act as a second medical opinion for Internet users, but to find a specialist in the first place, word of mouth may still be number one. Tony Brayer included this point within a guest post at KevinMD: selecting a physician is still very much rooted in referral and less-digital guidance. As he noted, “The primary care physician is still the leading source for patients seeing specialist physicians and the opinions of referring physicians remain the leading factor for an individual patient choosing a hospital.”

Patient-Physician Communication

One of the hot topics of the digital age is how patients and physicians can communicate when they aren’t face-to-face through social networks, e-mail, etc. While the topic is still being discussed, it means that there is an important role of direct communication between physicians and patients. As Stephen Wilkins at Mind the Gap discussed, there are immediate gains from direct, strong communication between a patient and their doctor.

Bookshelves

There always has been a little bit of perceived pride that comes from a hefty bookshelf office, and in the medical industry, perhaps a hearty case of texts and guides will never be replicated by things like e-books and tablets. Think about this quote from Malcolm Jones that appeared in a Newsweek piece on the cultural downside of e-books:

I come from a generation for whom the books and records on the shelf signaled, in some way, who you were (starting with the fact that you were a person who owned books or records or CDs). If you visited a friend, you took the first chance you had to surreptitiously scan that friend’s shelves to get a handle on the person. I suppose I could sneak a peek at a friend’s Kindle, but is that the same? And try that kind of snooping on a bus or in a coffee shop and you’ll probably get arrested.

Rural Practice

For all of the Wi-Fi coffee shops and wired hot spots that fill our major cities, it’s really easy to forget that there are plenty of places around the world that aren’t completely connected. Among other things, practicing medicine and supplying healthcare to these regions relies on traditional, traveling physicians and small practices. Among other challenges to recruiting to this field is a newer one: the impact of the digital age. The attraction for young doctors to join the ranks, as this Washington Post article explained, is fading fast as many new physicians have been trained in a tech-heavy era that may not be as applicable in rural areas.

Nostalgia

Culturally, there may be one thing that never fades: our sense of nostalgia for how things used to be. Perhaps this mindset is one of the greatest challenges of moving forward in the digital space among many healthcare organizations. We have come a long way in the last few decades thanks to technology, but as Paul Waldman wrote last month in The American Prospect, we are in an era of immense innovation, and discussed how nostalgia can actually play into the fears of technological change.

Health Digital Check-Up: Mayo Gives a Social Media Clinic

Dave Levy — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:10:19 +0000

Earlier this summer, we took a look at a few different ways that hospitals have been using social media – or even what new networks could mean for future patient outreach. There are some hospitals and health centers that are ahead the pack, and the best example may be the Mayo Clinic.

The Mayo Clinic raised the bar in the past month, not only further committing resources to digital and social media efforts, but also by creating a first-of-the-field Center for Social Media. As Valeria Maltoni reported at Conversation Agent, the effort is designed to “accelerate effective application of social media tools throughout Mayo Clinic and to spur broader and deeper engagement in social media by hospitals, medical professionals and patients to improve health globally.”

As a case study on textbook engagement in the healthcare space, here are a few different ways the Mayo is using online channels – and what it could mean for the future of patient communication.

The Mayo Blog Network

At the tip of the iceberg is solid, original content, and Mayo lays its social media center on that foundation. There are few places that are as well respected when it comes to healthcare leadership as the Mayo Clinic, and by creating a blog network with these experts on topics like nutrition, pregnancy and dealing with depression, Mayo can ensure it always has quality information to share.

Cases in Social

As we have learned, the lessons from general consumer PR do not always apply to health communication, especially online. For a healthcare facility like the Mayo Clinic, there aren’t many examples to look toward while determining a new program. To help fill that gap, one section of the Center focuses on case studies of what organizations have successfully done in the space.

Centralizing Existing Networks

Across the big three social networks, few healthcare facilities are even in the neighborhood of the Mayo Clinic’s audience: 67,000 strong on Twitter, another 23,000 Facebook fans and more than 2.4 million total views of 800-plus YouTube videos uploaded. Not too shabby. But by building a central home, it brings all of these networks and conversations into one – making both monitoring and engagement less of a challenge.

Sharing Mayo Clinic

Up to this point, everything discussed has generally been content created by the organization (or at least conversations moderated by it). One additional component of the center, though, is Sharing Mayo Clinic, a blog dedicated to the stories of patients and families, as well as Mayo Clinic staff. With the number of people who touch Mayo, it’s easy to gather these stories, and promoting them online helps to get those interactions out to people looking for someone going through what they are. It’s further worth noting how simple this was to create: a free WordPress blog, a small annual fee to move it to the mayoclinic.org domain and minimal design. Complexity doesn’t make things interesting; this is excellent proof that compelling content matters much more.

But Why?

Katherine Hobson of WSJ Health Blog got a chance to interview Lee Aase, one of the managers of Mayo’s center. Hobson asked Aase what the goals of the new effort were, and Aase’s straight forward response is worth ending on, “[What’s the goal?] To help patients. Sometimes that means providing information directly to them, and sometimes it means disseminating information more rapidly to the medical community.”