Social Media & Healthcare:

Opportunities & Obstacles

• Social media “likes” healthcare: From marketing to social business – PWC

• Driving Engagement through Social Media for Healthcare Providers

• Health Care Needs a Dose of Social Media – CNBC

• Social Media For Healthcare – Sharing is Caring

• The doctor will see you now: How the Internet and social media are changing healthcare

• How to Overcome Obstacles in Healthcare Implementing a Social Media Program

• 4 ways social media can transform doctor-patient communication

These are the articles that come up when I search for “Social Media & Healthcare”. All of them are well written & are from credible sources.

Why Social Media & Healthcare

• Social media has invaded health care from at least three fronts:

Innovative startups

Patient communities

Medical centers

• Health 2.0 movement has nurtured dozens of startups with creative concepts to revolutionize health care: tools from vertical search and social networks to health content aggregators and wellness tools

• Patient communities are flourishing in an environment rich with social networks, both through mainline social communities and condition-specific communities

• Hospitals and Academic Medical Centers are diving into the social media mix with more than 300 YouTube channels and 500 Twitter accounts. They are taking on monitoring and monetization of social media

Social Media & Healthcare – Thumbs Up

• Lexington Medical Center went outside of the box with the 2012 Pink Glove Dance,

a video competition, using YouTube, where the prizes are awarded as donations to

breast cancer charities, to attract attention to itself, engaging practically the entire

state of South Carolina

• The fascinating idea of using Twitter to share live broadcasts of surgical procedures.

The first was a tumor removal operation that took place in 2009 at Henry Ford

Hospital in Detroit

• Seattle Children’s hospital excels on Facebook through their highly visual cover

image and posts. They also encourage active blogging and have 4 separate blogs

that appeal to different audiences including a blog for autism, teens, and medical

reports

Social Media & Healthcare – Thumbs Up

Social Media Today recently posted an

article applauding the social media

efforts of Johns Hopkins. The buildings

were under construction and the social

media team created an interactive

Facebook tab to learn about the

buildings, take a video tour, and even

take a quiz about the building’s

construction, "that page drove over 20%

of new Facebook likes”

Social Media & Healthcare – Thumbs Up

• Healthcare like Finance are two of the highest regulating and monitoring industries

making organizations slow to adopt social media

• According to a 2011 survey by AMN Healthcare only 8 percent of physicians said

they use social media at work to connect with patients

• The 2011 Deloitte Report shows that only 14% of U.S. hospitals are using social

media and social networking as an external facing marketing & communication tool

• Interestingly enough in that same Deloitte study, 60% of physicians surveyed and

65% of nurses are interested in using social networks for professional purposes

Social Media & Healthcare – Opportunities & Obstacles

• HIPPA Privacy Concerns

Communications between health care providers and their patients are subject to the Health

Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

A safe and easy way for doctors to use social media is to spread good health information, address

common medical questions and share interesting developments in the medical world

Promoting wellness is a win-win; medical information relevant to many is provided without specific

medical advice for a patient's medical condition

According to Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic’s Director for Social Media, aside from posting general health

information, it is also important to offer content that invites patient involvement

They do a ‘Myth or Matter of Fact’ feature each week in connection with their Saturday radio

program in which they post a frequently heard saying about a disease or condition &

then invite users to say whether they think the statement is true or whether it is a

myth. The answer is revealed on the page after radio program airs

Social Media & Healthcare – Opportunities & Obstacles

• Education Obstacle: Not knowing how to use social media tools or being overwhelmed by the lingo and regulations

can be intimidating

Providing education and opportunities for health care professionals to learn how to best use and incorporate social media in their work is an important first step

Mayo Clinic, a pioneer in using social media in health care, launched its own Center for Social Media after so many hospitals and physicians turned to them for social media advice

Technical health jargon makes it difficult for consumers to connect with their health. There's great information on medical charts, but consumers can't read them, so why not create a visual health report? A 20-page whitepaper about hypertension is useless, but a personalized infographic that's intuitive and simple can help them visualize a story about their individual health

Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, thinks engaging with patients via social media is a great way to empathize with those who need comfort, not just provide health news

Users love photos and [success] stories, [especially those] that showcase team’s compassion and ability to go above and beyond for a family

Social Media & Healthcare – Opportunities & Obstacles

• Time

Obstacle: Social media adds one more thing to a doctor’s already busy schedule

The doctor-patient relationship relies on communication

New technology is changing how we communicate with each other, just as the telephone and email

did, but faster

The effort is however worth it, Lawrence Shapiro, Ph.D., President of Talk to An Expert, Inc., a

HIPAA-compliant e-therapy company that launched quite recently, says “online therapy will help

serve the nearly 3 out of 4 people who have mental health problems but do not currently get any

kind of help,”

“It is particularly important for people who cannot get to an office for conventional help because

they are housebound, in remote areas, physically disabled, and so on. Online therapy lowers the bar

for people who need help.”

Social Media & Healthcare – Opportunities & Obstacles

• Benefits v. costs Overall physicians using social media have found the benefits outweigh the costs

Dr. Swanson uses her blog and YouTube videos to address common questions parents ask, allowing her to focus more time on the unique medical issues of her patients during their office visit

Dr. Alice Ackerman, a pediatrician and college professor from Virginia Tech University, discovered, it doesn’t take a huge following to make a difference. After a year of blogging she had an average of 4.5 readers per day

One day a reader sent her the following tweet – “Dr. Ackerman is the person who changed my mind once I read her blog and her links. I had no idea that info existed.” If you only make a difference in just one person, isn’t that enough of a benefit?

The obstacle is insurers don’t cover the time and energy doctors put into using social media to help their patients

By demonstrating the business case for social media beyond traditional marketing and communication, one can showcase real value

Social Media & Healthcare – Opportunities & Obstacles

• The middle ground and the bottom line: social media and healthcare can go hand in hand

• Most hospitals and medical institutions provide healthcare social media policies for their physicians and staff, and as long as these guidelines are respected, social media is a great tool to bring patients and doctors together

• The world today is technologically driven, and it’s in our best interest – whether you’re a physician catering to your patients’ queries or an individual seeking proper medical treatment – to keep up with these advancements, especially when it comes to accessing healthcare

• The Internet needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and in the case of healthcare, it’s in everyone’s interest to proceed with caution and skepticism

• Also, not every activity is about ROI. However, business for healthcare can be generated depending on what all you view as business. A happy consumer that recommends you or ends up being a loyal customer is business. So is attracting potential consumers via your informational social presence

Social Media & Healthcare – Conclusion

So are we saying that there is no ROI from social media activities?

Is there anyway we can generate leads from social media?

Is it only for engagement purpose?

Can we measure the ROI from social media, if any?

Social Media & Healthcare – ROI

Social Media & Healthcare – Social Influence in Purchase Decision

Social Media & Healthcare – Social Influence in Purchase Decision

Key Point when it comes to

reaching decision makers

and influencers

Success Secret 1: Capitalize on Existing Demand

More than 11,000 groups

for the Healthcare Industry

Hot leads related to

medical devices, patient

advocacy, etc.

Success Secret 2: Inducing Demand

Discussion initiated on LinkedIn resulting in an inquiry

How do you do this?

Research

• Identify Quality LinkedIn groups

•Approx. 11,000 LinkedIn groups for Healthcare Domain

Reach

•Scout for Conversations across all identified Groups

•15-20 discussions are initiated daily on each LinkedIn Group

React

•Start discussions to engage target audience in Groups

•React and Respond to their enquiries

Success Secret 3: Target your Exact Customers via LinkedIn Ads

Exact Job Designation

Targeting Criterion Age

Industry Targeting Criterion Skills &

Expertise

Job Function

Targeting Criterion Seniority

Success Secret 4: Revive Passive Customers & Remarket

Reach new customers and

existing customers who

haven’t converted via LinkedIn mail

Incentivize them to convert

Constant follow up

Success Secret 5: Loyalty Building

Have an Existing Database of

Customers already?

Use them to influence their peers via the power of LinkedIn

Groups

All aspects of the Group – from creation, to nurturing, to monitoring are handled by

our team

Some Examples

Success Secret 6: Content is King

Create a Fully Branded Company

Page

Engage with Target Audience

via planned Content themes

Leverage the Power of Customer

Recommendations

Success Secret 7: Measure, Measure and Measure

No. of Leads Identified

Referral and Direct Traffic Redirected to the Website

Size of the Sales Funnel

Size of the Social Community

Key Metrics

Thank You