HealthyComms

19 Mar 2013

mHealth App Survey

Beginning today, House lawmakers will hold three days of hearings to determine how the FDA should regulate mobile health apps going forward. Regulation will become increasingly important with the explosion of new apps; there are already about 97,000 available now and the market is expected to continue to grow over the next few years. A recent study predicted that the mHealth market will grow to $26 billion by 2017, reaching 1.7 billion users worldwide.

But how much use are these apps really getting used? And what kinds of apps are most popular? Some on our team use at least one health app every day and some of us – who will rename nameless – have never even downloaded a health app before.

We’re curious how others in the healthcare community are using apps. Please take a moment to take our poll and share how you are using mHealth apps.

Posted by Jen Hirsch in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

26 Feb 2013

Brill’s Pill: 26,000 Words – or Less

Steven Brill’s mammoth 26,000 word TIME cover-story Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us has caused quite a stir over the past week.

Not only did the piece itself – the longest article TIME has ever run – generate quite a bit of attention, there was a second layer of buzz as The Huffington Post and New York Times Media Decoder blog reported on how Brill’s piece was originally slated to be the cover story to re-launch the New Republic in January. When the piece was bumped from that issue it eventually landed with TIME. Brill apparently had some not so nice things to say about New Republic editor Chris Hughes…

But, back to the heart of the matter. One would think that most folks outside of the healthcare industry might yawn at the thought of an in-depth exploration of the soaring costs of medical care and the complexities of billing. However, with 132,000 “Likes” on Facebook and over 7,000 tweets, the story captured the attention of…well at least those who repost items that make them look informed.

So if you are like us – constant consumers of news and information with a burning desire to be in the know – but may not have the time to delve into the 36-odd page piece, then fear not!

While there is a more in-depth conversation happening around the piece in the trade press, the main stream media is focused on breaking down the piece down to some more digestible pieces.

Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post has a great blog post; complete with graphs and charts that offers a solid overview of Brill’s main points.

If you’d rather hear it from the horse’s mouth, then watch Brill’s Daily Show appearance with Jon Stewart. Stewart joked that this was the first and only time that he recommended that his viewers buy Time Magazine; and Brill offered a synopsis of his article and his motivation for writing.

If even a 4 minute interview is too long for you then hop over to Slate and read Matthew Yglesias’ 500 word summary – that’s as concise as it’s going to get.

Oh, and if you have any questions, you can ask us, because we did in fact read the piece from start to finish…no really, we did.

Posted by Jen Hirsch in Health Policy, Media | Leave a Comment

08 Feb 2013

Stories in Paper: The Specialist, The Surgeon and the Doctor

A few years ago, if I spent two weeks around a trio of doctor’s offices, I probably never would have batted an eye at the following:

The very friendly assistants and techs at my doctor’s, who follow me from room to room clutching laptops and furiously adding information every time I visit.
That paper folder that they also carry that has years of information on my various progress and any past history.
A phone call from my regular doctor, who received a fax from the surgeon with zero instructions other than something about scheduling follow-ups.
A letter that had been faxed from my doctor to a specialist, which was then scanned and placed into their electronic record for me. Got to look at that while going through my patient history with a different assistant!
And, finally, the surgeon’s assistant providing me with a folder of paper that I was to bring back to my doctor, which they would subsequently use in follow-ups and fax over to the surgeon to monitor my progress.

Now, in the last few years, I’ve gotten a chance to work directly with some great companies and organizations who see that there are a few problems, extra steps and concerns about the above process. I was willing to let a surgeon use a really fancy tool and outstanding technology to help me correct something I’ve long sought to fix. I have to trust those state of the art tools on the procedure, but it is ironic that any record of it still requires someone to remember if you have to dial first, then scan, or vice versa.

In a few weeks, we’ll be joining our client, HIMSS, at their annual conference. That has us thinking about a lot, including the six key focus areas that will be the topics of this year’s event - Meaningful Use, ICD-10, the Affordable Care Act, Interoperability, Clinical and Business Intelligence and Mobile Health. What does that have to do with my litany of medical appointments? Well, we’re working with HIMSS on its second ever blog carnival, and the request to Health IT bloggers is to take one of those topics and give a fresh post on what lies down the road.

I look at the above scenario, and if I wasn’t around these topics all day long, I still could see that it isn’t exactly efficient. At the least, it is blatant that its a little repetitive. Putting on my HIT hat, though, all I can think of is how that process is ancient in its analog-nature – all driven by the fact that two of the doctor’s used different medical records systems on their computers, while the surgeon’s office didn’t seem to be using anything other than a color printer. Interoperability is the key to taking out steps, extra phone calls, faxes and deciphering those records to improve my care.

That’s the future, right? Making sure that not only our doctor’s tools, but the instructions and care procedures, are state of the art?

Share any experiences you may have had with your own medical paper trail in the comments below!

Posted by Dave Levy in Health IT and tagged interoperability | Leave a Comment

31 Dec 2012

Healthycomms 2012 Look Back!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,400 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 11 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Posted by healthycomms team in Admin | Leave a Comment

19 Dec 2012

Consumer Digital Health Needs Its Napster Moment

I received an email yesterday from Google Health. Remember Google Health?

This is an important Google Health service announcement. You are receiving this email because you have an active Google Health account.

As we announced in June, 2011, the Google Health service will be discontinued as of January 1, 2013. After that date, any remaining data in your Google Health account will be permanently deleted, and you will no longer be able to access or download any data from Google Health.

If you want to keep using the data you have stored in Google Health, you will need to take action before December 31st, 2012 to download it or transfer it to another online health service.

Well, I did as it said, I downloaded my file. The complete record of my Google Health profile is below. I’m not exactly worried about any privacy because, well, there’s not much to see.

That’s right, there’s nothing in it. I spend a lot of time around digital health – clients, reading, spare time, volunteering – and my Google Health record was completely empty.

Sure, I consider myself in decent shape and health. I don’t have a lot of records or claims from the last few years because I’ve kept myself, knock on wood, out of many a doctor’s office, but that’s not why there’s nothing there. Ultimately, it’s empty because I really didn’t know what to do with it, what to save and what to share. I’m sure there were many others who didn’t know what to make of Google Health before it announced it was closing in 2011.

Perhaps someday we’ll figure it out. And the answer, I think, is from the earlier days of Web 2.0.

In 2008, I went on a bit of a rant regarding a pretty infamous little service called “Napster”.

The first ever social media was music. It went from record store conversations to consumable bits that anyone could pass around their own channels.

[...]

Napster gave us the first sign, in 1999, that the users could reach each other across the Internet, without a middle man. Without the understanding that we could share, we wouldn’t. That to me is what makes Web 2.0.

The Digital Health community needs something that shows the value of digital to everyone involved in health. We learned about it for music back in the late-90s, and I’ll still argue that moment is responsible for much, much more than we give it credit for in the history of social media.

Google tried to be that centerpoint for health, but it didn’t breakthrough. Others, too, tried and didn’t pass the adoption test. That’s what we have to hope for in 2013 – something that standardizes the sharing of info about health for all patients, both chronic and “casual”. It’s an exciting moment, for sure, and let’s get ready for it.

Posted by Dave Levy in Social Media | Leave a Comment

10 Dec 2012

Why Isn’t the Patient at the Center of Healthcare’s Communication Loop?

Let’s just say I had a recent, first-hand experience with my healthcare that brought to light how accustomed the “connected and communicating consumer” has grown to instantaneous communications and gratification in everything…except healthcare. I’d venture to say that it also reaffirms that 2013 will be the year of the empowered, truly engaged patient.

During a recent routine refill, I was unable to fill a regular monthly maintenance prescription because my insurer was transitioning to a pharmacy benefit manager to mail those prescriptions in bulk periodically throughout the year.

In an ideal world, the fluid communications between my insurer, provider and pharmacy retailer would have looked something like this:

That’s me being properly informed about a change, allowing me to prepare accordingly and utilize this mailing benefit (you mean I don’t have to leave my house to get my prescription? Awesome!).

That of course did not happen. I certainly expected a few back and forths with the insurer, pharmacy retailer and my PCP – probably something that looked a little like this:

What happened instead was something that looked more like this:

The most jarring part of this entire experience that cannot be visually displayed here was that 90% of the communications were accomplished in-person and virtually, with the insurer on my cellphone, placing me on periodic holds while calling the pharmacy technician that stood in front of me – all in about an hour. A few disclaimers before going on:

Disclaimer#1: I am that millenial who cannot imagine life before smartphones (how did anyone ride the bus?!) and expects instantaneous interactions in daily life. Without push notifications and banking transfers at the tip of my fingertips, business as usual would be like trying to walk around in wet jeans – slow and painful. My consumer expectations for mobile capabilties are thus high – very high – and that certainly doesn’t exclude healthcare. I’m not alone though. As my colleague noted in an earlier post, more than half of the respondents in The PwC Health Research Institute survey expressed the desire for true mHealth capabilities as well.

Disclaimer #2: A healthy PR professional and who uses her smartphone as a crutch to life and rarely needs to interact with her healthcare providers is probably a little more analytical and critical of the communication flaws in the system as well as the speed and alacrity of those in the continuum of her healthcare.

That being said, this was certainly not a normal scenario but it was very apparent where the communication gaps occurred and is a great example of a patient’s eagerness to engage. In an ideal world, a secure network would be in place that would connect these key parties as well as all other major stakeholders in the patients care, like a private Google+ group for each individual’s healthcare. Such a secure network would completely eliminate the shuffle and allow each stakeholder in this patients “medical home” to post and pose questions to all of the key players in our healthcare and ensure that we’re all at the same page at the same time. The technology to make this a reality certainly exists.

The real question is will the policies and cross-sector coordination needed to bring this to fruition ever happen? Or is there an even better model to communicate with our providers?

Or am I just dreaming?

Posted by Victoria Khamsombath in Health IT, Patients | Leave a Comment

19 Nov 2012

We Really Want Health Tech to Be Mainstream Tech

Dave Levy (@levydr)

I love health writing and PR – but as our newest team member wrote last week, it takes a lot of time to get use to the lingo, the jargon, the needs and the understanding of health that makes it a niche part of journalism.

It isn’t just tech PR people who are experiencing this, and a conversation with a tech journalist friend of mine got me thinking: the mainstreaming of health technology news does not mean that every tech writer will be in on the big health news of the day. In fact, given that it could be a new topic that they are finding they are encouraged to write about by an editor instead of pitching the idea, they may not exactly love the fact that they are being tapped as if they are on a health beat.

When a major tech blog or publication puts up a healthcare post – talking about a new company, a study on mHealth or a prevalent trend of Internet users as they approach their healthcare – it is incredibly easy for us, as PR people, to throw them quickly onto a media list that wouldn’t differentiate their reporting from someone on a health beat. One of the things I learned this week is that this can be a mistake, because if we treat mainstream tech media like health media, we stand a good chance of alienating them and not only losing our current pitch, but perhaps preventing the future opportunity.

The Digital Health community wants to see the topic covered by the broad tech pubs, and let’s be honest, our clients do to. However, we need to take a step back sometimes and figure out if we are attacking something that has already been done or actually reaching out with something interesting, newsworthy and that can stand alone among tech coverage. You don’t always get the follow-up piece when it isn’t someone’s beat, so it’s about being smart and pitching ahead of it.

Remember, as health PR pros, we work hard to understand the entire landscape of health. Whether it is someone’s beat or not, the best thing we can always do is explain to a journalist why it’s a worthy story for them to write, and “you just wrote about this!” isn’t always the right approach. Be careful not to lump a tech reporter into the same regular outreach you may do, and, as always, relationships matter to understand just which author at a certain pub is right.

Posted by Dave Levy in Media | Leave a Comment

13 Nov 2012

1 Comment

From Zero to Healthcare

@PeterHMcCormack

As of a week ago, I didn’t know more than the average person about healthcare. Now it’s my job to be attuned to every and all of the trends and movements in the space. I’ve been interning for SHIFT for the past three months, but I was working primarily with technology clients. When an opportunity on the HealthyComms team opened up, I jumped on it. I was given a week to get up to speed, and I think I’ve done a decent job of acquainting myself with the industry, at least within the time parameters I was given.

Don’t be this guy.

Coming into a fairly daunting task, I created a bit of a roadmap for myself with tips and tricks to keep me moving along without feeling overwhelmed. So, I thought I’d share that with others who are interested in learning more about the healthcare industry, but aren’t sure where to start or how to go about it. Here’s my advice, broken into four easy-to-follow ideas.

Find a place to start. I think it’s really easy for people to get overwhelmed with trying to delve into something as expansive as healthcare, but if you pick a specific niche with which to start, it gets a lot less intimidating. My recommendation is to think about an area of focus, like electronic health records or healthcare reform, and begin there. From this singular point, you can start to branch out and learn more, expanding your healthcare knowledge web. Keep in mind, healthcare is a GIGANTIC topic that is continuing to evolve, so there’s no way any novice is going to master it all. I’d say look to the specific reasons you became interested in healthcare and go from there; don’t try to wrap your mind about everything all at once.
Utilize digestible news. Trying to jump right into PhysBizTech’s analysis of common errors in medical billing probably isn’t the best way to ease your way into the space. Begin by finding publications or blogs that aren’t intended for experts, but rather appeal to newcomers in the space. For example, most top-tier newspapers will have a health and wellness section that can give you news stories that are written so the average person can comprehend them. From here you can move into more detail-oriented stories. Furthermore, most consumer and tech sites will have a similar health and wellness section, so check out your favorite sites to read articles that should appeal to you both in terms of content and style. For example, I looked at Mashable’s Health and Fitness section, since I have a background in technology and think the intersection between tech and healthcare is super interesting.
Use social media. Once you have a better idea for the publications you like, and have figured out the reporters that are writing on the beats you find interesting, check out their social media channels and see what they have to say. Twitter, for example, is one of the best ways to find articles that are not only informative, but are also vetted by people you trust to be interesting or, at the very least, of consequence. For example, you’re currently reading something from our HealthyComms blog right now. Hopefully, if you’re still reading this, you like what we have to say. I would then recommend that you check out our Twitter handle and see the kind of articles we’re tweeting out. If we’re doing our jobs well, it shouldn’t just be our own articles, but ones that we find interesting that you might, too. Social media is a great way to move from “OK, I like ‘x’” to the next piece of information.
Wikipedia is your best friend. You may not be able to use it for citations or primary research, but there is plenty of value in gut-checking a concept, abbreviation (because we have a million of them in healthcare) or topic area in the crowd-sourced encyclopedia.Once you inevitably come to a term you don’t know, just Wikipedia it. Honestly, if you don’t have it bookmarked yet, you’re a better person than I.

These were the rules I came up with for myself to explore the space. Finding a specific place of interest that was written for my level made for the easiest entrance into the healthcare industry as a whole. From there, I used social media to branch out and further explore. I might not be an expert (yet!), but it gave me a strong and, perhaps more importantly, pleasant introduction into what can be a very complex field.

Do you have any advice for people entering into the healthcare field? If so, share it with us in the comments!

Posted by Peter McCormack in Media and tagged healthcare

10 Oct 2012

1 Comment

Will Healthcare Soon be Social Media’s New Belle of the Ball?

Kristi Eells @Kristi_Eells

The signs are there. Last year in Las Vegas, Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone stepped on the stage at HIMSS12 – one of the
largest health IT conferences in the U.S. (and a SHIFT client) – as the keynote speaker. At the same conference, HIMSS set the world record for Tweet volume at a health conference, averaging 167 tweets per hour throughout the week-long event. Not long after that, Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital in Houston, TX pushed the social media boundaries when it performed the first-ever live tweeted open heart surgery. And in June, healthcare enthusiasts started a Twitter frenzy, sending out approximately 13,000 tweets per minute after the Supreme Court delivered its ruling on the Affordable Care Act – making it the most tweeted-about healthcare event of the year.

So, when Twitter’s head of agency and brand advocacy, Michelle Barnes took the stage at this week’s Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco and spoke about healthcare’s obvious appeal to the company, I felt more reassured than surprised; and here’s why. For starters, according to Barnes, health-related tweets have increased 51 percent in 2012 so far. That’s a huge spike (but again not surprising, as proven in this infographic)! Secondly, there’s TONS of data to reinforce the value of social media in healthcare. In April, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) surveyed more than 1,000 consumers and 124 healthcare executives to develop its report: “Social media “likes” healthcare.” From a consumer (a.k.a. patient) standpoint, social media provides an avenue to create a two-way discussion and allows healthcare organizations to engage with consumers in a more meaningful way. This is validated through PwC findings such as:

42 percent of consumers have used social media to access health-related consumer reviews (e.g. of treatments or physicians)
25 percent have posted about their health experience on a social media site
61 percent are likely to trust information posted by providers via social media
45 percent said information found via social media would affect their decisions to seek a second opinion
41 percent said it would influence how to choose a specific hospital/medical facility or specific doctor
32 percent said it would affect their choice of a health insurance plan

Even physicians are proponents of social media. According to a study by QuantiaMD, 87 percent of physicians use at least one social media site for personal use, but only 67 percent use at least one social media site professionally. This is likely a result of the perception that using social media can stir up concerns about patient privacy and liability, but these numbers tell us that we’re moving the in right direction, and that there is obvious value to using social media in healthcare. From my perspective there are an abundance of benefits of using social media in healthcare – but my top five list includes: 1) patient education and community engagement; 2) resource sharing and the ability to gather feedback/insights; 3) enhanced the customer experience (see my recent post for more on this); 4) brand awareness – hospitals, physicians, vendors and more; and 5) creating awareness for top-of-mind issues in healthcare.

What’s your list of benefits for using social media in healthcare? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

Disclosure: As previously mentioned, HIMSS is a client of SHIFT Communications. If you have questions specific to HIMSS and our PR efforts and would like to reach out directly, please email healthcare@shiftcomm.com.

Posted by Kristi Eells in Health IT, Patients, Physicians, Social Media and tagged health IT, healthcare, patients, physicians, social media

HealthyComms

SHIFT Communications experts discuss all things healthcare and media.

mHealth App Survey

Brill’s Pill: 26,000 Words – or Less

Stories in Paper: The Specialist, The Surgeon and the Doctor

Healthycomms 2012 Look Back!

Why Isn’t the Patient at the Center of Healthcare’s Communication Loop?

We Really Want Health Tech to Be Mainstream Tech

From Zero to Healthcare

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