The Center for Connected Health reports that Twitter will be an effective tool to notify the public of medical alerts and information. As we’ve seen with recent news events, including the Hudson River landing a few months ago and tales of people in trouble who tweeted for help, citizen journalism and Twitter are powerful tools to spread news quickly.
But, UPI reports that the key to Twitter’s success as a mass communication tool for such a serious subject will rely on ensuring cautiousness to avoid public panic and protect confidentiality and patient privacy.
While new media is certainly important and citizen journalism intriguing, all industries, and specifically the health industry, will soon have to take steps to remedy situations that may arise from inaccurately reported or false news from unofficial sources that could lead to public panic. Naturally, this is an even greater concern when one’s health is at stake. I’ll certainly be on the watch for government and health agencies developing standards and protocols to protect confidentiality and ensure cautiousness while disseminating news through social media channels, will you?
Or at least Esther Dyson thinks so. In today’s Financial Times, Dyson discusses how consumers are using the Internet to take control of their personal health. And it’s true –every day, more health-devoted blogs, Twitter handles and patient community sites crop up attracting more and more visitors.
In a recent interview with DiagnosisPR, new media evangelist Ron Ploof discussed how healthcare communication has changed over the past few generations. Ron noted that doctors were once the be-all, end-all for health information. Whatever your doctor diagnosed you with, you had, and whatever the doctor prescribed, you took. This began to change sometime around when the baby boomers began aging. More questions were asked. More doctors were consulted. Then, the Internet emerged as a tour de force. Now, when we go to the doctor, we are armed with questions and printouts from WebMD or a list of symptoms from About.com or iVillage. And chances are, we’ve probably also already talked to our mom, our friend, the daycare provider and the dry cleaner for their opinions along the way.
Dyson is right – the way we receive health information has certainly changed, and the way we engage in our personal health has also changed. But Dyson also wonders how the medical system will adapt to this grassroots approach. As Ploof pointed out, the government and healthcare providers will soon be forced to choose how they lead and engage in healthcare communications, because if they don’t, patients will go on talking without them. Between physicians’ Twitter handles, live OR streams and President Obama’s HealthReform.gov Website, the industry is certainly experimenting, but no clear direction taken yet.
Dyson put it simply, “health begins at home,” and the healthcare choices we make are based on the information and resources we have available to us. Now that we have more information at our disposal, from many different resources, it will be interesting to see how healthcare providers and the government adapt to the new modes of communication and understanding.
The White House is taking a lesson from President Obama’s campaign and venturing online to debunk healthcare reform plan myths with a new website, according to the Associated Press.
The Website hosts consumer FAQs and YouTube-esque videos of White House staffers discussing healthcare reform issues. Although the site holds only basic information at the moment, it encourages readers to find and engage in new information in the manner they prefer. Readers looking for more in depth information on the plan are directed to the administration’s HealthReform.gov Website, while social media enthusiasts can connect with others on the issue by visiting the White House’s Twitter and Facebook pages.
Physicians and hospitals have recently been experimenting with delivering health news through new media channels, but President Obama’s adoption of new media for healthcare communications may point to a real change in how healthcare information will be disseminated and received by consumers moving forward. Although we can’t be surprised by this move from our Internet-savvy Commander in Chief, it will be interesting to see how the rest of Washington responds.
Silicon Alley Editor Nicholas Carlson thinks you should. Carlson wrote an interesting post this week about a recent hospital stay he had as a result of a broken foot. He shares his story of discomfort when he endured chills and tremors during a routine bandage change in the middle of night because the resident didn’t have the chart that would have forewarned her of the recurring chills.
Carlson wrote, “Here’s why this was all so frustrating: The resident should have known I’d get the tremors so bad, coming out of my sleep like that. It’d been happening for days.”
He points to the lack of easy information flow as the problem and points to a stat by Consumer Reports that shows less than 2 percent of hospitals in the U.S. have comprehensive electronic records systems that make patient information readily available anywhere in the hospital.
Carlson suggests that renting iPod Touches to patients including an app that allows them to keep notes and synch the medical information between the nurse and doctor, whom would also carry iPods, could be a practical solution.
He writes, “The notes could be video, text, audio, or photographic. I’ve had several nurses thank me for showing them a picture of the wound I keep on my iPhone before they re-do the bandages. It helps them proceed carefully and plan ahead.”
At Diagnosis PR, we’ve blogged about electronic patient records in the past, but Carlson may be onto something here as well, what do you think?
This morning, the WSJ reported on various Silicon Valley companies striving to reduce healthcare costs and inefficiencies using high-tech methods. Examples include:
• A miniature digestible chip that can be attached to conventional medication, sending a signal that confirms whether patients are taking their prescribed pills.
• A wearable device for wirelessly measuring vital signs in hospital rooms.
• A Band-Aid-like sensor that monitors patients on the move by measuring respiration, fluid status and physical movements.
Can these technologies help improve our ailing healthcare system?
Eric Topol, a cardiologist and genomics professor at Scripps Research Institute, believes they can. “Wireless applications have the potential to change every one of these areas,” he said at an industry event in San Diego last week.
I must say I’m surprised some of these ideas are only now being developed. Wirelessly measuring vital signs seems like a no-brainer, as it eliminates the need for “spot checks” and allows for continuous monitoring of various signs such as blood pressure.
The digestible chip, though intended for good use, seems a bit “Big Brother” to me. I take my prescribed pills in the proper dosage, so I don’t know that I will get behind this chip.
What do you think about Silicon Valley’s effort to improve healthcare?
In an interesting article by Kaiser Health News (via MSNBC) health experts raise issue with the widely held belief that by stressing prevention they will lower healthcare costs. Furthermore, these experts also warn that prevention may not help to save lives either.
As I’ve written about before on this blog, the web is starting to transform how we, as patients, obtain healthcare information. Recognizing this, healthcare companies have become much more aggressive in how they’re using the web, specifically social media, to disseminate information. Forbes recently reported on a creative way one organization chose to promote a pivotal study.
In the Forbes piece, reporter Rebecca Ruiz, explains how the Mayo Clinic out of Rochester, Minn used Twitter to tease an upcoming study on celiac disease. They followed the folks re-tweeting the news and chose a select few to share the findings with exclusively. What’s unique about this, is that Mayo didn’t give the results to traditional reporters. They gave them patients with celiac and offered them an embargo of the study, with free reign to blog about it. A privilege typically reserved for journalists.
The results were also distributed on Facebook and through this YouTube video.
This example from Mayo is likely to be the wave of the future. Undoubtedly, more and more healthcare organizations will begin using Facebook, Twitter and other emerging social media tools and communities to reach out directly to the people affected by the disease states and conditions for which they are providing education. It will be interesting to see how these interactions impact new and traditional media as well as the consumption of healthcare information.
The Forbes piece also includes a great slideshow that highlights the best resources on the web for obtaining healthcare info. Check it out here.
Nor surprisingly, news came out of a group of global researchers today in The Lancet reporting that tanning beds are as deadly as arsenic. The studies concluded that the risk of skin cancer jumped 75% for folks using tanning beds under the age of 30. According to WebMD,The International Agency for Research on Cancer (division of the WHO) announced today that “that it has moved UV tanning beds to its highest cancer risk category .”
I don’t know about you, but this news isn’t shocking to me. The days of bronzing up before a big event are over but what about the summer months? My follow-up question is, what does this mean for sun worshippers or people just enjoying the beach? Even though we know to use sunblock (everyday!) and self-tanners, does this news show that tanning beds are more dangerous than the sun? OR are they equally as dangerous…I’ll do some digging and report back on my findings.
Based on some additional research, as expected, it looks like the sun is almost as bad as these tanning booths. Time to reapply the sunscreen…check out this WebMD article that sites some recent studies to back up these claims.
Robotic devices and assistants are starting to be used in a wide variety of surgical disciplines, including urology and vascular procedures. Despite initial nervousness from surgeons and patients alike the results speak for themselves.
Research shows that surgery performed using robotic assistants have the same, if not better outcomes for patients, with the added benefit of a less invasive procedure, which reduces trauma on the body and speeds recovery time. Robotic assistants often reduce the time needed for a procedure, freeing up the operating theatre which helps NHS Trusts meet targets and reduce costs.
Whilst research into robotic assistants and devices is compelling, these techniques are not yet commonly used. However, the development of virtual operations is growing at a faster rate and is already being used by a handful of training hospitals. Surgeons feed information’s from X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds into a computer model, which creates a virtual patient. This allows surgeons to ‘practice’, and try out different scenarios prior to deciding on the best course of action and operating on the patient.
In addition, virtual operations have been proven to speed the training process. The Cochrane Systematic Review looked at 23 trials involving 612 participants and ‘clearly demonstrated the benefits of virtual reality training’. In another review it was found that training surgeons using virtual reality simulators helps them to learn techniques faster and with greater accuracy meaning the technology could help the UK to cut junior doctors’ working hours to comply with the European Working Time Directive – a constant pressure on surgeons and hospital managers.
The use of robots and virtual operations in surgery has a number of benefits for patients and surgeons. More people can be treated in expert centres. Similarly, more complex cases, for example patients with diseased veins which hinder access, can be treated due to the improved level of accuracy.
This is a new way of working for the surgical community, and it will no doubt take some time before we see widespread adoption. However, combined with the latest minimally invasive techniques and most advanced medical devices it seems that healthcare and technology can continue to combine to provide superior surgical options for patients.
Coming out of last week’s NJ scandle was the arrest of Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, who has been accused of brokering illegal deals to organs. Newsweek published an interesting article about this market and highlighted costs associated with these organs on the black market. Who knew that Kidney’s could go for updwards of $30,000?!
