(source: The Health Care Blog)
They said it couldn’t happen in Europe, that social media and online tools wouldn’t catch on, because the healthcare context was soooo different from the US. They said that Europeans don’t worry about access and cost, that they aren’t looking for information online because they they trust their doctors utterly and fully, and that European doctors don’t go online, except if they’re Scandinavian.
Social Media and Public Health working hand in hand.
(source: Joel Selzer via Slide Share)
Original New York Times Article
(source: NY Times)
Since the Internet’s earliest days, patients have used the Web to share experiences and learn about diseases and treatments. But now advocates like Dr. Farber say that online communities have the potential to transform medical research — especially into rare diseases like hers that lack the number of patients needed for large-scale studies and rarely attract research financing from the drug industry. Also, she said, it empowers patients to contribute, ask questions and help lead the way to discoveries. “Patients have been a tremendously underutilized resource,” she said.
Last week, one of my readers (who is also a MPH graduate) sent me the following article from the American Public Health Association’s newsletter (APHA). The article pertains to the use of social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc) in field of public health and how it has become an essential tool to communicate to the public. Now public health agencies can utilize this form of communication to inform subscribers of possible outbreaks or updates on recent health policies.
(source: The Nation’s Health)
“We’ve tried to make social media a very everyday thing for us here,” Laura Howe, senior director of public affairs for the American Red Cross, told The Nation’s Health. “Basically, we’re trying to advance the mission of helping people prepare for and respond to emergencies. We’re really looking to ensure that people can get very quick, very effective access to the information where they can either get help or give help.”
(source: Health Care IT News)
“Scott Shreve, formerly of Medsphere, wrote a good post imploring Google to get back into the Personal Health Cloud game, a game where Microsoft HealthVault now appears to be the only game in town. Everything Scott says in his post Chilmark Research agrees with and we would even go so far as to say that Google Health has been nothing more than a distraction to the broader market. A distraction in that Google Health has really done very little to create a truly compelling platform, yet due to its size, market presence and media and market pundits belief that Google is the be all to end all, Google Health gets far more press and attention than it rightfully deserves.”