I came across a great infographic today regarding the Rise of the Digital Doctor. While the statistics mentioned look to be drawn from US data it is a good overview of what  is happening in this space, how they are involved and some of the barriers or challenges.

If you are interested in Social Media and Health please join Applying Social Media in Health a group I co-manage on LinkedIn, participants are drawn from around the world so it has some good diverse conversations.

You might also like to be involved in #hcsmanz  (Health Care Social Media Aust and NZ) this is a Twitter chat that occurs Sunday nights – check the feed for the latest schedules.

Interested in more reading in the area of Social Media and Health? View my previous blog posts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The British Medical Association (BMA) released social media guidelines this week entitled Using Social Media: Practical and Ethical Guidance for Doctors and Students.

This guide  ’provides a brief overview of the challenges and potential pitfalls that health professionals may encounter when using social media. It gives practical and ethical guidance on a range of subjects including, protecting patient confidentiality, defamation, the public-private boundary and the potential impact of social media use on medical education and employment’

This follows the release of similar guidelines in the US and Australia.

View the BMA site and download the full social media toolkit

As many readers will know I have a keen interest in Health 2.0 and how new technology can assist the patient experience.

Over the past week I have been following a conference entitled Doctor 2.0 held in Paris. This is the  first international congress devoted to the understanding of how physicians use New Technologies, Web 2.0 tools, Social Media to communicate with other health care professionals, patients, payers, pharmaceutical companies, public agencies…

For those interested in this area you might like to view the following:

Keynote Presentations Doctor 2.0

Videos

As a parent the topic of video games can be problematic! let’s face it all those hours in front of the box it can be a source of tension.

Well this week The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently published a paper that argued health-focused video games, including those for mobile platforms, now deserve “serious attention.”

Dr. Leighton Read of Alloy Ventures and Seriosity, Inc. and Dr. Stephen M. Shortell from the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley chronicled the popularity of video games and the promise that the popular form of media holds for teaching the public to make healthier choices.

Some examples currently include:  

• Zamzee – online rewards system for kids based on physical activity
• Mindless eating challenge – peer support via mobile phone

Read JAMA to find out more



Tonight on our regular health and social media Twitter chat #hcsmanz we discussed patient information and the role of social media.  We discussed that there were a myriad of benefits with emerging techologies but also noted they do have down sides

One area that did arise was the area of health information quality. As information sources proliferate and health consumers go to the internet to search for health information the area of quality becomes increasingly important.  The other area was that of consumer privacy.

With those two areas in mind I then did some further research and only recently Information Week wrote an article entitled Healthcare Social Media Sites Neglect Privacy Protections.  The article discussed a study called  “Social but safe? Quality and safety of diabetes-related online social networks,” It was  conducted by researchers in the Children’s Hospital Boston informatics program who performed an in-depth evaluation of the sites and found that only 50% presented content consistent with diabetes science and clinical practice.

The study examined four key factors:

• agreement of content with diabetes science and clinical practice standards,
• practices for auditing content and supporting transparency,
• accessibility and readability of privacy policies, and
• the degree of control members had over the sharing of personal data.

The study revealed

• sites lacked scientific accuracy and other safeguards such as personal health information privacy protection, effective internal and external review processes, and appropriate advertising.
• misinformation about a diabetes cure was found on four moderated sites. Additionally, of the nine sites with advertising, transparency was missing on five, and ads for unfounded cures were present on three
• technological safety was poor, with almost no use of procedures for secure data storage and transmission. The study found that only three sites support member controls over personal information. Additionally, privacy policies were difficult to read and only three sites (30%) demonstrated better practice, wrote the study’s authors.

The research was published in late January in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association,

Read the entire Information Week article

Recently the Pew Internet Project and California HealthCare Foundation released the findings of an extensive national survey revealing that 80% of Internet users look online for health information. While that figure may not be surprising it is useful to look at the areas of search themselves.

The following are some key items from the report:

• 24% of internet users look online for information about drug safety or recalls.
• 19% of internet users look online for information about pregnancy and childbirth.
• 17% of internet users look online for information about memory loss, dementia, or Alzheimer’s.
• 16% of internet users look online for information about medical test results.
• 14% of internet users look online for information about how to manage chronic pain.
• 12% of internet users look online for information about long-term care for an elderly or disabled person.
• 7% of internet users look online for information about end-of-life decisions.

Symptoms and treatments continue to dominate internet users’ health searches.

• 66% of internet users look online for information about a specific disease or medical problem (perennially in the top spot).
• 56% of internet users look online for information about a certain medical treatment or procedure.
• 44% of internet users look online for information about doctors or other health professionals.
• 36% of internet users look online for information about hospitals or other medical facilities.
• 33% of internet users look online for information related to health insurance, including private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid.
• 22% of internet users look online for information about environmental health hazards.

The most likely groups to look online for health information include:

• Adults who, in the past 12 months, have provided unpaid care to a parent, child, friend, or other loved one
• Women
• Whites
• Adults between the ages of 18-49
• Adults with at least some college education
• Adults living in higher-income households

By contrast, fewer than half of adults in the following groups in the U.S. look online for health information:

• African Americans
• Latinos
• Adults living with a disability
• Adults age 65 and older
• Adults with a high school education or less
• Adults living in low-income households ($30,000 or less annual income)

However, young people, Latinos, and African Americans are increasingly likely to use mobile devices to gather information, which could potentially shift the patterns among those groups when it comes to using health information resources.

About the Survey

This report is based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans’ use of the internet. The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between August 9 and September 13, 2010, among a sample of 3,001 adults, age 18 and older.