With the room filled with minds representing nearly every sphere of the patient health care life cycle, one key point from Thursday night’s wool.labs Cocktail Convention in Philadelphia on patient adherence was that patients will only stick to a treatment when they trust the source.
Before the event, wool.labs used its WebDig tool to cull data from social media sites and to poll attendees and other health care-industry members. The resulting data have shown a proclivity of patients who seek help for their conditions through the social media realm; thus, many would like to see physicians become more involved in that space.
One of the event’s guest panelists, President and Co-Founder of Prostate Cancer International Michael Scott said that based on his own experience, it has been very difficult to get the medical community involved with any social network that brings together patients of the same disease.
“I wish I had a physician who would come on to my social network and answer questions honestly and straightforwardly,” he said. (read more…)
A George Washington University study found that 3% of physicians’ tweets were “unprofessional,” setting off a flurry of concerned headlines.
To be sure, doctors giving away patient details on Twitter or other social media sites is a big no-no and a nearly surefire violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Such providers need to reined in.
Yet, considering the number of studies done showing physician errors being made (39% of residents self-reported at least one major medical error during a six-year Mayo Clinic study) or physicians going to the other extreme and wasting patients’ money on unneeded exams (1 in 5 bone-and-joint doctors admitted in a Pennsylvania study to ordering exams based more out a fear of lawsuits than medical necessity), 3% of tweets going afoul doesn’t seem quite so bad.
The FDA lacks guidelines for drug companies and other marketers in the realm of social media, and the American Medical Association’s guidelines, released last year, are generic, lead researcher Dr. (read more…)
The event discussed in this post, “Patient Adherence Through the Lens of Social Media in the Healthcare Continuum,” is being jointly hosted by SmartBrief.
Wool.labs Chief Operating Officer Michele Bennett says she is hoping that a Feb. 24 event in Philadelphia will bring to the forefront a variety of different experiences involving patient adherence to treatment.
The company has put together a panel of representatives from practically every relevant field — the drug industry, physicians and pharmacies — with the aim of looking at the problem from all sides.
“The patient has influences at various levels, but everyone faces the same issue when it comes to patient adherence,” Bennett said. “It’s one of these troubling areas for health care.”
With viewpoints from more than a half-dozen panelists, who will further the discussion beyond the table in round-robin table discussions with attendees during the coffee-and-dessert part of the evening, Bennett said she expects, and even hopes, there will be disagreement among some of those who come, as it should create an atmosphere of constructive thinking about a complex issue. (read more…)
Adam Gaub is the lead editor for SmartBrief for Health Care Marketers.
Most industry experts agree that the health care industry — and hospitals in particular — has been behind the s-curve when it comes to engaging in social media. According to Betsy Weaver, CEO of social media consulting firm UbiCare, now that the industry knows the value, health care professionals are rushing to catch up.
Weaver said one of the big keys to making success in the social media realm stick in an industry where there aren’t necessarily products to sell, is having engaging content that people can apply to their lives.
“If it’s not valuable to the person stopping by, they’re not going to stop by again,” Weaver said. (read more…)
In preparation for the Feb. 24 event hosted by wool.labs, SmartBrief and MISI at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, wool.labs is rolling out a survey for anyone in the medical field — including patients — to take.
The survey aims to gather data on the event’s main topic: patient adherence with regard to medications and treatments.
The survey questions were honed using data from wool.labs’ WebDig tool, which pulled relevant conversations on adherence issues from the Internet on blogs, forums, social media sites and other websites. The goal, according to wool.labs, is provide as much dialed-in data as possible to give those in the industry a better reason why patients choose — or don’t choose — to listen to their physicians.
One focus of the survey is whether those responding believe social media interactions affect patient adherence, and to what degree. The survey builds upon research and conversation began at the first wool.labs event on the topic in Philadelphia in the fall of 2010. (read more…)
Twitter
Facebook
Linkedin
RSS
