Patient or Reporter – The Lines Are Blurring

July 31st, 2009

By Shannon

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.

Entry Filed under: Health 2.0, Media, PR Strategy & Tactics, Social Media, Uncategorized