The Future of Healthcare IS Online

There is a good article in the New Scientist about the Continua Health Alliance innovation in health care. The headline reads Innovation: Is the future of healthcare online?

I believe it's no longer a question of if, but when. As loyal readers know this is the crux of my position that it is a very long, slog to get there, but we're on the way. As I read the news (online, of course) and see the debate rage with a recess of Congress imminent, I wonder if the approach being taken is too top-down and that is why it is getting bogged down. I have been thinking a alot lately about crowdsourcing, social media and Health 2.0. I don't have all of my thoughts together yet, but I am fairly certain that a big piece of this puzzle is missing and that is the end-user.

Anyway, more to come on that, but check out the article. Continua is a doing some great work with over 200 of the leading companies in the world.

While we don't yet have holographic physicians to consult, healthcare is moving online, encouraged by an international coalition of medical and technology companies. Medical devices from weighing scales to asthma inhalers could soon carry the technology to connect directly to the web, shuttling data between doctors and their patients.

For practical reasons, health workers are often unable to talk to home-based patients with chronic conditions on a daily basis – but they could keep an eye on an online medical record that is automatically updated whenever the patient measures their own blood pressure, checks their weight, or takes their medication. Such technology could help medical workers ensure remote patients are healthy, and detect any problems at an early stage before they become serious.

The move beyond traditional telehealth – remote contact with a patient through phone calls or video conferencing – is being encouraged by the Continua Health Alliance, a non-profit open industry group. The alliance boasts some powerful players in both the technology and medical arenas, including IBM, Intel, Google, Kaiser Permanente and the UK's National Health Service.

Check out the full article.

Image credit: This was created by Scott Shreeve, MD] and licensed under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 2.5 License.

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How Does Your Garden Grow?

I have been slacking a bit on the writing because work and life tends to get in the way. One of the things that I continually am on the hunt for is good info on how to explain social media to people who may not read as much as I do. From a marketing perspective, I think it completely changes marketing as we know it today. And when I say that, I think the shift is well underway but most people don't realize it yet.

Davia Armano from Logic + Emotion is definitely a thought-leader in this area had a article in the Harvard Business Review and talked about developing a social media strategy much like you would when planning a garden, which I think is brilliant. It's a great way to explain social media and the need to temper expectations. This is a marathon and not a sprint. My concern is that many Rx/Dx companies will roll out social media initiatives and see no immediate return and kill the programs. My cotention is that marketing today is a conversation and the conversation is online. It takes time to build, nurture and yield results--much like a garden.

Excerpt below and check out the entire article here.

This underscores a fundamental truth to social media that many organizations underestimate--being social means having real live people who actively participate in your initiatives. It's difficult to automate and a challenge to scale, but it can also help move your business forward in ways that produce leveraged outcomes such as new/better products or services.

The economics of using social media in business require the participation of people to fuel it. It is not simply enabled by technology that maintains itself. One of the biggest lessons to be taken away from a social platform such as Twitter is that the ecosystem it's a part of if, is itself built on people who keep it humming along with not only content, but a seemingly endless stream of third party applications. This phenomenon is not entirely new--it's been referred to as end-user innovation (innovation by consumers and end users, rather than suppliers).

There are a few considerations every organization needs to consider when developing their blueprints for their own unique social media design. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, there are few things you can plan for as you review the many options before you.

Here are three to consider:

Seeding. As you plan your approach for designing your social system, take into account that you'll have to invest to grow your effort into a healthy ecosystem that can produce data, insights or even new ideas. People will be required in order to do this.

Feeding. Whether it's a community, Wiki or internal collaboration solution you've put in place, it will have to be fed with a steady stream of content. Some of this can be automated and some of it can come from your participants--but there has to be some editorial judgment made for every piece of content and functionality. People are required for that.

Weeding. A productive social business design will require efforts to prune and weed out material that can inhibit its growth (just like a garden). In some cases, automated moderation services can do this--but in others people will be required to ensure that interactions are productive. Weeding can also include creating a separate environment--for example, Nokia's "blog hub" encourages employees to vent freely internally (using anonymous aliases).You can bet that someone is looking at the data and analyzing it. If not, they should be.

It's worth noting that seeding, feeding, and weeding all take place after any social initiative has been launched. But not taking into account the manpower that's involved in these as you develop your social business design strategy can lead to a lack of adoption or participation--essential elements to any social initiative. Ignoring these realities will continue to propagate the myth that social media is fast, cheap and easy. As organizations look to grow or scale their current initiatives, it's proving to be anything but.

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Webster lake

Testing my mobile blogging....

Throwing a Bone

Check out this survey on smart phones from the guys at softwareadvice.com. Quick survey, feel good, move on....

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The Digital Tsunami is Gathering Steam

I've been saying that digital will be the centerpiece of marketing for quite some time. I know I am not alone in this thought and thank goodness the metrics are starting to catch up, I was beginning to think it was a 10 year trend that never came. Kind of like technology transforming health care delivery, only different.

Anyway, great post/article by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research at AdAge.com.

Unlike the last recession, digital marketing is no longer experimental. Now it looks more like advertising is inefficient, relative to digital. More than half of the marketers we surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, TV, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years. In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase.

The result is that digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years. Along the way overall advertising budgets won't grow much.

I think I an say that finally it has arrived. I've also mentioned before that the natural human condition is to fear the unknown. That is the next biggest hurdle to overcome.

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Rx in the Twittersphere

There is a very comprehensive rundown of corporate pharma companies on Twitter over at whydotpharma.com.

I personally don't think corporate blogging and tweeting as interesting as brands, but it is useful to bring a human element to what are often seen as nameless, faceless on a search and destroy mission for profits, enterprises. Many pioneers in Rx/Dx in social media are from the corporate communications side. I'm just waiting for that rush of brand efforts outside of your few known entities such as goinsulin.com or ADHDAllies among others.

Is Rx/Dx going social the wave that slowly crashes?

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Why People Go Online - eMarketer

#1 LEARN

When it comes to social media folks, provide value, value, value. Certainly give more than you take.

Why People Go Online - eMarketer

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Leadership is Responsibility, Not Power: News: Stanford GSB

Very Good stuff, here.

Leadership is Responsibility, Not Power: News: Stanford GSB

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Need to Explain Social Media?

Check this video. I always prefer to show versus tell.



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Simple Lessons: If you Don't Understand--ASK!

I like to keep things simple. This is a simple lesson.

This applies to life and work. This applies to social media. Please, if you don't understand--ask.

My fear for Rx/Dx firms is not whether they will launch social media, but whether they will break down the silos, make the decisions, place trust in those that understand and make it successful.



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Rise of Social Video Means Engagement

I have talked about what feels like near ad nauseum about storytelling (see sidebar tags). Here is Ad Age weighing in with a case study from Samsung. Believe it, folks. This is where it is going. The more I think about it the more it makes sense to me, but the proof is in the execution and I am not seeing a ton of great examples....yet.

Can't you see examples for Rx/Dx? I can see them plain as day. A day in the life with ....., what does having........mean to me? How do I live with.......

It could be a chronic disease, migraines, a new knee joint, the opportunities are boundless, but I think you have to get in quickly or the newness will be gone soon.

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Big Think!

I came across a site called bigthink custom built for me to spend a few hours. TV holds very little allure for me outside of sporting events so this is my form of entertainment. Strange, I know but I love big ideas, strategy and analysis. I should have gone to Washington D.C. after college so I could wrap my head around policy work.



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Must Watch Video: OMG + LOL?!?!

Via Seth Godin: This is a must watch video. I immediately felt like a geek for knowing the answer and astonished. This makes me realize how little they have to edit Leno's man on the street segments.

As for the point for marketing: never assume knowledge, educate and make it real and valuable.



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Dx Ads on the Rise + Video = Engagement

Via Ad Age: A gastric band maker has a new channel on YouTube.

Device ads on the rise
As both online and medical technology have improved, device DTC advertising has grown, said Peter Pitts, partner and director of global health-care at PR firm Porter Novelli, and a former associate commissioner for external relations at the Food and Drug Administration. So much so that AdvaMed, the trade association for medical-device manufacturers, issued "guiding principals" for marketing to consumers in March. "Overall, the importance is to be sure that you have truthful, non-misleading balanced risk information, regardless of media," said Khatereh Calleja, associate VP-technology and regulatory affairs at AdvaMed. Ethicon's parent company, Johnson & Johnson, is a member of the trade association.

This is a great step forward and interesting in that it makes news when this should be the norm for DTC marketing that requires intensive investigation and decision-making. The consumer effort here should supplement the information provided by the physician.

However, the article gets interesting and a little misleading in my view when they get some supporting information from Rodale who has a survey that tracks DTC efforts.

The problem with social networking
While the data from the Rodale survey tracks DTC advertising of prescription drugs, Cary Silvers, director of Consumer Insights, said that he expected consumer behavior to be similar for medical devices. "People are getting used to searching, whether it's for a car or camera, and this is pretty much the same for health information," he said.

But Mr. Silvers points out that only 9% of patients watched that health video on a video-sharing site such as YouTube; the majority of patients seek online video from health and wellness sites. Mr. Silvers said this might be because on a health and wellness site, content is more of a match, whereas YouTube can have videos that are only tenuously related. "There's the problem with any type of social networking, or YouTube -- it's a wild, wild West of other videos, right along with it," he said. [ed. note: emphasis is mine]

First of all, health information has been a leading reason for going online since the early 2000s. While it may have been taken out of context, Mr. Silvers rolls out this information about health information and searching online like its a revelation of sorts.

Then he goes on to point out that only 9% of patients watch health-video on a site such as YouTube, which may be true, but he goes on to throw out the most common red herring there is with online video and YouTube in general and that is that your gastric banding surgery clip may be associated with the skate boarding cat or glow in the dark Mountain Dew. I shudder at the very thought....!

What isn't pointed out is this: No social networking or online marketing activity is successful in isolation. It works when you have multiple activities working in concert. A strong SEM program, a good brand site, a product focused micro site, a social networking plan where you are creating a closed loop and leveraging the other to provide comprehensive information however, whenever and wherever a person may look for information.

Consumers are smart and savvy enough to know that. And at the end of the day consumers are in control so what does it matter anyway?

My last point is I would like to know why orthopaedic manufacturers are not diving head first into this as a way to drive consumer decision making. Knee replacements, etc are often elective and in a recession you need to be smarter marketers in order to drive decision making.

If you search for Zimmer Gender Knee in YouTube the only thing you turn up are a few testimonials posted by doctor's. Unbelievable. But I as I have discussed before, they are very slow to the game. Not to pick on Zimmer, but if you go to their site and check out the last updated page in some cases you will find dates going back as far as 2004-2005. That is poor, very poor.

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Really Simple Syndication

I may have been living in a hole the last couple of years, but I heard about this site last week and wished I had known about it a few years ago since it feels like I have been explaining social media, RSS feeds ( I love them and apparently fall into about 2% of people who use them) and other related topics. They explain the topics in a simple, straight-forward manner that is concise and easy to understand. I just wish I could hit the play button during my next presentation rather than labor over a PowerPoint.

Check it out, www.commoncraft.com






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Happy 4th of July!

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