Well, this ought to generate some chatter among us e-literati who’ve been trying to get noticed by the stodgies! (Or, as Pew would say, “The 74% of the 80% onliners who look for health info are 99.9% happy to see this.”)
The issue of Health Affairs that just crossed the wire includes an article by Carleen Hawn titled “Take Two Aspirin And Tweet Me In The Morning: How Twitter, Facebook, And Other Social Media Are Reshaping Health Care.” I’m not a subscriber (dagnabbit) so I can’t get at but they opened it for free access so we can read the whole thing(!), but here’s what I hear on Twitter from @BoltyBoy, the inimitable John McEnroe of healthcare, Mr. Matthew Holt:
So Health 2.0 makes it into Health Affairs and the definition used is @tedeytan’s. You know, this means war!
Of course Health 2.0 is called a “nebulous” concept. I’m reaching for the dictionary
And in reading the article I found the first mistake! American Well’s deal is with HMSA (Blues) not state of Hawaii
But overall it’s pretty good and a decent way to intro Health 2.0, or at least the physician communication part of it
Here’s the abstract:
If you want a glimpse of what health care could look like a few years from now, consider “Hello Health,” the Brooklyn-based primary care practice that is fast becoming an emblem of modern medicine. A paperless, concierge practice that eschews the limitations of insurance-based medicine, Hello Health is popular and successful, largely because of the powerful and cost-effective communication tools it employs: Web-based social media. Indeed, across the health care industry, from large hospital networks to patient support groups, new media tools like weblogs, instant messaging platforms, video chat, and social networks are reengineering the way doctors and patients interact.
Anything that quotes Jay Parkinson and Ted Eytan perks my ears up. Especially if it garners only one nit-pick from Sir Matthew. (Especially good for a writer who’s new to healthcare.)
I’ve been dyin’ for ways to get the establishment to notice what’s happening in social media. Think this’ll do any good? Discuss, please.
No link to Bugs bunny? You losing it? :)
Well, yes, now that you mention it, I was losing it. This is what I get for blogging on a night when I was only going to do R&R.
So I added a proper SEO-juicy link on your name above, and I’m sure you’ll have something to say on TheHealthCareBlog.
I also haven’t had a chance to read the article, so I’ll reserve comment until I do.
However, I can say that the intersection of social media and health will be the centerpiece of my remarks at the Boston H20/Ix meeting: http://health2con.com/ I’ll have new data to share about what e-patients are actually doing out there.
Does anyone have a pdf of the article? I’d like to read it…
Come on Health Affairs…get with the times…information is free. Firewalls are for old people.
Funny Dave!
Who knows? One point of view holds: resistance is futile, ie, the change imperative is no longer optional.
Yet hard to discount Deming’s wisdom: “Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival”
The jury’s still out! My vote is S/M will change our silo-ed “Cathedrals of Medicine”
Hey Gregg – good to meet you. Good point on Deming, too. This is the whole thing with disruptive technologies. The established technology (or culture or whatever) is well adapted to the world in which it developed; for a time the only way to co-exist with it is to go along with it; but at some point something might change that enables a new solution that doesn’t need to be an extension of the past.
Yeah, that’s one of my soapboxes. Sometimes I feeling like I’m yelling “Yikes, ice!” on the bridge of the Titanic. :–)
Huh, Matthew Holt wrote about this on The Health Care Blog but we didn’t get a pingback. Well, here it is.
And I’m so happy to say that the article now has open access so no subscription is required. I suspect Ted Eytan’s Friday post (and Gilles Frydman’s comment) might have had something to do with that. But I don’t know, and regardless, kudos to the editor!
Thanks for your blog. You have been featured in the latest Bits of health Insurance carnival.