Health NewsTwitter Snips - August 31
What is Twitter and Why Scientist Need to Use It is the title of a blog post worth reading. It makes the case for Twitter in a variety of ways. It points out for example that it forces an economy of words (Twitter restricts you to 140 characters), and my experience is that if you avoid garbled abbreviations you really do end up a sharper writer able to get to the point. Not a quality generally found in the science community. Can you convey meaningful information? Check the tweets listed here and look at the authors of those posts and you'll find there is real information to be found in there. As the blog post mentions, the Library of Congress is archiving tweets so they see some value in a selection of tweets. Twitter can bring people and researchers together, bring about a greater exchange of information, reach out to the public (who fund most basic research in one way or another ) and supplement, if not replace, some of the somewhat cumbersome ways researchers often communicate science news.
The links below are all checked, are all safe and are all people or organization we follow or who follow @mikesgene or @GenomeAlberta.
We encourage you to dig a little deeper into science and social media to see what can be gleaned from people who are active and in the know.
Thanks to Mary Canady (@Comprendia) and Bora Zivkovic (@BoraZ)for pointing me in the direction of the blog entry noted above.
@bakercom1 Killer Patents http://bit.ly/drItSw If you think patents are bad in computer technology, look at what they do in medicine. by @sjvn
@billschrier Sometime this month, the 5 billionth device will plug into the Internet - in 10 years there will be 20 billion - http://bit.ly/bbmqB1
@bonnerj Great post on using infographics for teaching science and health, with a great curated list of infographics http://nyti.ms/cxilth
@DaveHancockMLA Challenge-engage educators + students to create quality, commitment, results + relevance for today's world + future #abed # ableg Emerge2010
@dgmacarthur UC Berkeley legal decision could affect return of genetic results to research subjects: http://bit.ly/dqy6XY
@DBast I have better access to academic journals as a University alumnus than through #GoC. From knowledge student -> Knowledge worker w/o tools
@Duncande Makes me crazy! Is DNA responsible for the creative nutcase? - "Creative mMadness" The Scientist - http://t.co/BiHSPAC
@edyong209 Genes and culture: OXTR gene influences social behaviour differently in Americans and Koreans http://bit.ly/a7iSeV
@GenomeBiology Wheat genome made available today. Congratulations to Neil Hall and team http://bbc.in/bKpHiz #openaccess
@Imparo Social media could be civic election game-changer http://t.co/WKYu1i8 #yycvote
@idtdna Gene map opens way for more apple varieties http://ow.ly/2vSmv #sequencing #DNA #genome
@Intersection_ Updated List of Policy Fellowships For Scientists & Engineers http://t.co/lDetb6e
@LIFECorporation Life Technologies Announces Agreement to Acquire Ion Torrent http://bit.ly/cIzfmq
@_modscientist_ Hey @_Lavaland_, i'm playing with your DNA today! You're gonna help me optimize SNP genotyping by RTpcr
@MyThum More than 100 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile phones
@pearlf Cambridge-based PatientsLikeMe now has over 45,000 patients on its social networking site, patient communities, http://bit.ly/a9uiGL
@phylogenomics Key issue: genome and metagenome data is not very useful without metadata about samples, methods, etc #HMP2010
To save you a little time in trying to figure out who is really behind all these postings, we always provide you with crib notes to help you out:
More on the Social Media Side of Health Care
Last week there was some discussion on Twitter about a Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions report called Social Networks in Health Care: Communication, collaboration and insights. It is a U.S. report that looks at the use of social media in various parts of U.S. health care sectors including patient groups, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, physicians, cancer centers, and government. It is a fairly high level discussion but it does conclude that the social media pickup by health care in the giant to the south of us, is growing steadily.
How do we rank up here? Not great I'd say but a lot of notes on Twitter and in my Inbox has given me a little more insight into what is out there. If you go to http://www.genomealberta.ca/blogs/Mikenomics_.aspx you'll see several blog entries outlining some of what I've found so far and as promised here is a little more to add.
The Sick Kids Foundation has a Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sickkidsfoundation For those still grappling with the myriad of social media sites out there, Flickr is a photo sharing site where you can share pictures of you, your family, company, association or just about anything else you can think of. We use Picasa for Genome Alberta photos (which right now includes some of the early entries into our digital art contest ) but the idea is pretty much the same. They have a YouTube channel with some good videos in there. We have linked or embedded some of the videos as part of our GenOmics stories but not all the videos have embedding enabled. Not a great idea in the social media world unless you have a pretty good reason. Sick Kids - The Hospital has a Twitter account at @SickKidsNews and there is an account for Building SickKids at @Build_SickKids AND SickKids Foundation is out there at @sickkids . So if you want to find out what is going on at Sick Kids you have lots of options - probably too many options because I do my best to follow what I can keep up with effectively and if I was interested in Sick Kids, that is too many to add to the list for one place.
I received a comment from Toronto Rehab that drives home something any organization needs to think about as they create their social media strategy. Content. You need dynamic content to keep people coming back to you whether it is your web site, Facebook pages, or an internal site. To create the content you need people and that is where the rubber hits the proverbial road. Creating new content is time consuming. Doctors, clinicians, and researchers are busy people noted David Akermanis from Toronto Rehab, and our experience here at Genome Alberta echoes that, so you can't just walk down the hall and ask for a posting or an interview. On our GenOmics site we chose to integrate other news sources to maintain content people want to come back to, and there are a host of tools and analytics you can find to make it easier. In the end though it takes time and people to write the material and keep it relevant.
Another social media tool that was brought to my attention are Care Pages at http://www.carepages.com/ These pages can be set up by anyone, seem to be secure and are not necessarily public. They allow patients to share stories, support each other and can be used in conjunction with any hospital or hosptital stay. You can see an example from Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton but here is a screen shot as well:
Genome Alberta for the Tech-savvy Teacher
This is the time of year that school teachers in Alberta are back in schools starting to plan for the arrival of students early next week. I know the teachers will be attending important meetings. I hope there will also be time for the important planning of the year ahead. News over the summer indicates that some Calgary area schools are gearing up to make a lot more use of computers in their classrooms. University of Calgary research just announced that tech-savvy students have an advantage, but only if their teachers are tech-savvy too. The Genome Alberta website is a major landing site for tech-savvy science teachers. Let me tell you why it should be for you as well.
Digital Art Entries Posted
We have the first two entries in our contest where we are looking for digital art that explores how society is handling the new world of biotech sciences. Genetics, metabolomics, synthetic biology, and many, many other areas of biotechnology have the potential to challenge our societal, ethical, and legal sensibilites. After all, many of our laws around patents were created long before anyone dreamed of maunipulating genes and even the manner in which different segments of society and cultures define life is being challenged by the technology.
It isn't always easy to articulate where we are pushing the envelope nor is it easy to see into the future and predict where the science is taking us. That's why we decided to turn to art as a way to let people express their thoughts on the world where biotechnology meet or perhaps even bump into each other. There won't be a right or wrong entry so let your imagination be your guide.
We kicked off the contest at the beginning of August and the first 2 entries were posted today and are online at our Picasa photo sharing site. Voting will be live this weekend so be sure to go to our home page on Monday for details.
If you want to enter the contest here are a few links you should check:
We're running this contest leading up to National Biotechnology Week in Canada. Entries will be accepted until September 16th and voting will close on September 24th at the end of National Biotechnology Week. There are modest cash prizes for the top 3 entries and all submissions will be considered for us in our print publications and on our various online sites.
Teasing Out Health Care and Social Media
We've had some pretty good response since a chance encounter on Twitter got a conversation started around how health care organizations in Canada are using social media. The U.S. Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions put out a report called Social Networks in Health Care: Communication, collaboration and insights. I posed a question on Twitter about the Canadian experience, put up an initial blog post, and from there we've had some good interaction and examples. The first one steered my way, was about Sunnybrook Health Care Centre and now we have a few more.
Sick Kids Foundation was one of the first sites that was passed on to me. They are on Twitter as @sickkids , Facebook and YouTube. It is a pretty 'me' centred presence on Twitter, but the Facebook pages cover more ground and both sites are pretty active so they can't be way off base. Given the nature of Sick Kids I would have expected more in way of pictures but because it is Sick Kids Foundation and not the hospital that could be the reason. That also leaves me wondering where the Sick Kids Hospital is - no social media presence I have found yet. Same goes for the YouTube presence. As touching as some of the stories are, you can only trot that out so many times as a reason to donate before it loses impact. A behind the scenes look at hospitals, diseases, and patients is more likely to keep bringing people back.
Mount Sinai Hospital is on pretty much the same company as Sick Kids though at least it is the hospital that is putting itself out there as well. They are on Twitter as @MountSinai and YouTube but it is the Foundation that is on Facebook. The YouTube material give a little bit of an insight into the scientists but not any great insight into the science but it works for me. Videos worth adding into stories we do around kids and science and what makes a scientist tick. The Facebook page has a poll on it to do a little crowdsourcing for what to target in fundraising but with so few votes on it will they really listen? And if they don't, what was up with the poll at all? Foundation and hospitals may be separate corporate entities serving different roles but when it comes right down to users searching social media for information what are they really looking for? Cool information on how to donate? Are we really out to search for hospital foundations? Or is it the hospital itself we care about and once there if we find options for donating to the Foundation, sure. But I think it is the Sunnybrook example that I posted yesterday that is of far more interest and use to the people who use hospitals or want to see a strong health care system,
Scarborough Hospital is out there on Twitter as @ScarboroughHosp and Facebook. The Twitter account is pretty busy but the last Facebook posting was July 2nd. This illustrates a real problem for health care organizations who go into the realm of social media - dynamic content. There has to be a reason for people to come back to a site. That means the information has to change regularly, there has to be news that really is new, and someone to keep it going. If you become popular enough and the user community does it for you - great. If you're still building ( like we are on GenOmics ) either someone has to keep the content moving or as we have done, automate as much as you can to keep it dynamic.
Toronto Rehab rolls out the usual suspects of Facebook , Twitter, and YouTube. I'm sensing a pattern here but if keeping material fresh and having the staff to monitor it is an issue then you don't want to be spread too thin. There are a lot of tools out there to make the job easier and there are a wider vareity of sites out there that are great places to share, connect, and tap for information, volunteers and supporters. What tends to happen is that someone says "we should be on Facebook" and that is as about as far as the discussion goes around best tools, and from there everything is narrow focussed.
The last example that got posted on Twitter is an interesting one. The University Health Network consists of Toronto General, Toronto Western and Princess Margaret Hospitals and collectively they are on Twitter as @UHN_News They don't appear to have a social media plan but they are willing to take a step beyond telling us how they are the best. The use of the word 'News' alone is an indication it might be a little different experience. For instance the web site has a story about summer grilling and what that does to nutrition, an ask the expert story on sleeplessness, and similar features. The Twitter stream has information that isn't just about them but isn't all that active. The YouTube channel doesn't embrace quite the same philosophy and you can give it a pass (though they are a little more creative than some and look like they may have had fun creating the content) When you can't generate enough of your own content to keep people coming back for more trading on the value of 'news' is not a bad option. It is what our own GenOmics site is all about. We couldn't generate enough science news on our own but by accepting the fact that there is biotechnology news, events, and people outside our organization we created a pretty good site. UNH could probably do something very similar if they took the extra step.
I would take you through some of Alberta Hospital's ventures into social media but there isn't one. In fact even hospital web sites are almost non-existent. I'll give them top marks for having better contact information, direction and hours than anyone else but if you really want to intereact it , isn't in the cards.
Still looking for more examples and hopefully some that aren't all about hospitals. Research facilties? Pharmaceutical companies in Canada?
Let me know.
The Sunnybrook Side of Social Media in Canada
My call for example of Canadian examples of social media in health care didn't go unnoticed or unanswered. That's the good news. The not-quite-so good was that most of the new followers interested in the discussion are not from Canada and that only 1 new example of Canadian health care involvement in social media has emerged thanks to Lee Rego.
The Sunnybook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto has links to its Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr accounts well displayed on the home page.
The Facebook page seems to be fairly active, has lots of information, a tab to make it easier to donate, and is cross-linked to its YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter pages. They also have 533 'Likes' but given the number of people who come and go through the hospital I'd like to see more. (and in shameless plug feel free to visit GenOmics to add a 'Like' to our page ) They had an iPod giveaway recently and the top posting right now is a video of tips to get your through the Emergency Department faster.
The Twitter page @SunnybrookHSC is very active, seems to genuninely engage their followers ( 2700 of them ), has information and links of value, and not surprisingly we share some of the same followers. Canadian life sciences twitter accounts are still relatively few and far between so it tends to be a group that knows who and what to share.
The YouTube channel for Sunnybrook has a fair number of videos, some of which we may be able to share/embed on GenOmics but overall it is pretty corporate in the look and feel. Hospitals are about patients and more videos from patients about health care, doctors, nurses etc. would raise it up a notch beyond the well packaged product.
What really makes Sunnybrook rise up in the new health care reality in Canada or even in comparison to many U.S. hospital sites though, is "MyChart". I'm not connected with Sunnybrook in any way so I don't have an account to dig deep inside MyChart to see how well it works. From the outside it is a good example of where the Canadian health care sector can put social media to work, without viewing our universal health care system as an excuse NOT to be involved. It all comes back to what hospitals are really about - the patients. Making them better once they are inside the system, keeping the system cost effective, and with the old ounce of prevention, hopefully keep them out of the system in the first place. MyChart gives patients web-based access to their clinical notes, test results, prescription information, online appointment booking, e-mail access to participating doctors, an online way to submit concerns and complaints, and has general health and disease information. About the only thing missing from the MyChart pages is a Forum or open comment section like they have on the Sunnybrook Facebook page or something like http://www.patientslikeme.com/ I've looked around the 'net a bit and can't find any other Canadian examples quite like it.
Social Networks in Health Care: the Canadian Experience
Last Week on Twitter, I came across a link to aDeloitte Centre for Health Solutions report calledSocial Networks in Health Care: Communication, collaboration and insights. It is only 9 pages long and a free download so you can't expect an exhaustive analysis on the entire health care sector or across all social networks. In fact it does take some rather odd shortcuts at times such as the Impact chart where the Small Business Owners line for selected examples shows Foursquare as the significant activity. Small businesses are embracing a lot of tools but I think they haven't quite yet got to the point where Foursquare qualifies as the most significant activity.
Despite a couple of similar oddities the report does conclude that "social networks are playing an increasingly prominent role in health care" and I'd say from my experience speaking at conferences in Canada and the U.S. and from what I've seen online that is definitely the case.
The report does however beg the question for those of us living on the topside of the 49th parallel. Where do we stand?
It is an American report and makes no mention of the Canadian experience. When I reposted the Twitter link and added the question, Deloitte Canada's Twitter account @DeloitteCanada picked up on the comment and suggested it become a broader topic for discussion so here's a blog post to see what we can pull in.
- For a start, think of social media and social networks in the broadest context. It isn't just about who is on Facebook or Twitter, or which organizations have a blog. There are social networks that cater to a health care niche audience. I've had my genome sequenced and as a result I am a member of the 23andMe and deCode social sphere that you can't really break into unless you've had your DNA whirled and twirled and sequenced. Sermo is a physicians only site which according to the Deloitte report is used by 1 out of ever 6 U.S. physicians. Patients Like Me is a site that won't pop up in a lot of social media minds but it has become an important place to share stories and find information. Our own GenOmics site breaks the social media mold somewhat and doesn't fit neatly into some of the categories we generally tend to lump into social media.
- We also have to apply the same broad context when defining health care. The niche sites of 23andMe and deCode or the Genetic Alliance have very specific social network functions but are becoming increasingly important in health care. The Huntington Society of Canada is on Twitter and may have little relevance if you have never had contact with the disease but it serves a vital role as do similar associations, foundations or support groups. Hospitals, provincial health care services, physicians, and nurses and all related professional associations would also fall under the health care banner. The Mayo Clinic uses social media extensively in the U.S. and even has a Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media but you will be hard pressed to find such an extensive effort in Canada. The Deloitte reports suggests that 700 out of the 5,000 hospital in the U.S. have a social media or social networking presence. That isn't a tremendously high percentage but if we could do a similar survey up here we would in all likelihood lag well behind.
- Finally there is the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors that fit into a health care discussion. The regulatory framework they live with in Canada and the U.S. can make it difficult to participate in social media but the Deloitte reports suggests that 33% of the Fortune 100 companies that operate in the pharmaceutical sector have a blog. At conferences here in Canada I have heard pharmaceutical companies suggest that "why would anyone read a blog, let alone write one.... they are dangerous" and after day 1 of a two day conference on social media in Canada, the pharma attendees didn't bother to come back. There are ways to make it work and there are benefits to be had.
And those benefits are the final consideration in any report, and which was not really in the scope of the Deloitte report. No matter what the numbers or the level of participation in social media, what are the benefits coming back to health care. In a private health care system it could be a better bottom line but in Canada it may be harder to measure. However more trust from the users of the health care systems, a better idea of how money is spent (whether it is tax money or charitable donations ), and the somewhat intangible idea that "there are patients like me" out there, all are areas where social media can shine. Social media can also be an important tool to make the system better, to provide a feedback mechanism, to raise funding, and to exchange information.
So where exactly does Canada sit?
Deloitte opened the door when they tweeted "To discuss next week: #healthcare & #socialmedia in Canada, sparked by a Q from @mikesgene re: @DeloitteUS report http://ow.ly/2sDav ^AJ" and it would be interesting to see if we can produce some solid Canadian examples, or if Canadians even care. It would also be great if Deloitte Canada could produce a similar report to the U.S. one.
Leave a comment below or send a Twitter comment to @mikesgene and/or @DeloitteCanada and pass long numbers, examples or ideas.
Hope to hear from you.