I think there are few places where opportunities for improvements are as great as they are in healthcare. Who hasn’t been hit by devastating healthcare news, treated poorly, or had the impression that going through the healthcare system is like moving through stove pipes one step after the other? For an industry that works on supposedly ‘negative demand’ according to econometric norms, it’s growing like a weed as aging populations in western countries are turning financing for healthcare on its head.
You’re probably wondering why I am blogging about this. Well, there are a lot of similarities between social media and the current evolution of our healthcare consumption. Extanz and its sister company Sterena (healthcare research and communication) have always been interested in healthcare. In fact, back in 2007, we thought the two enterprises would be one, and our first client was Syndicom (a thriving online network for surgeons). Early adopters are/were rare in healthcare though, so we diversified. But healthcare is still one area where we see many opportunities for change and improvement through participatory and social technologies, business intelligence and solving big data issues. We’ll be blogging more on those topics as we enter 2012.
Last week, I read a Austin Frakt post on labor productivity in healthcare, where they stated that healthcare is the only industry that “has experienced no gains over the past 20 years in labor productivity, defined as output per worker”. Ah, what???? Digging around in the blogosphere to substantiate this claim, I stumbled on some other interesting data points and points of view, which I thought I would share here….
It’s not a ‘US only’ problem: The NHS in England has spending cuts planned over the next 10 years, which will become the equivalent of creating a 400% increase in productivity per annum, we learn from Anna Dixon. Anna continues that these improvements can only be achievable if there is a transfer of responsibility beyond healthcare professionals. Read self-care and patient empowerment. Make people smarter though technology (or hammers) and they’ll need less costly healthcare. Right? Geez, that sounds like so much like what the social media industry has been preaching to brands when it comes to consumers – empower your consumers if you want them to adore you!
The not so mighty EHR (Electronic Health Record): This has to be one of the most talked about topics when it comes to productivity in the healthcare blogosphere. This market is expected to grow six fold by 2012 to $6.5 billion. Remember ERP (enterprise resources planning) and manufacturing companies 10 years ago?? Yep. The system never fit the ways companies were operating. Now with EHRs, throwing more training at it may not be the answer, but the cost of productivity lost over the long term will ultimately be priceless, argues Paul Roemer. ERP projects were not given the choice of whether companies wanted to be sustainable. Projects were ultimately more successful though as people and processes came together early during the design phase. Dr Reece’s blog here describes reasons for poor EHR adoption rates. Studies show that EHR projects which have 40.4% adoption rate, also have a rate of failure of 30% to 50%, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. Other studies show much higher rates, more in the 50% to 80% range. It has also demonstrated that the larger the practice (more physicians), the higher the success rate. This should tell us something. Productivity gains ultimately appear when technology works through the workflow of users. Google pulled out of EMR after all last year after launching its effort back in 2008, highlighting the fragmentation of the US healthcare system. The move to ACO (accountable care organizations), increase in mergers and acquisitions, as well as the $27 billion in subsidies for Health IT is now putting EHR back in the spotlight again. Will these developments be the catalyst for better productivity through EHRs? The jury remains out. You need information technology + incentive models for all parties (providers, insurance, consumers) to support positive productivity growth.
They are many sources on these topics and while we’re not trying to be exhaustive, here are some starting places to find more information:
No you didn’t need to attend. Nor did I. But I still had a great time there because SXSW is casual and people are still very approachable. I went to hear, discuss and exchange thoughts and words about what matters. And those I did find. No, the latest gimmick wasn’t there and launching anything in such noise would probably be a mistake. Social Media Tech is only a servant for those who want to make meaningful change happen. The revolutions happening in the Middle East are what’s important; much more important than any another location or photo app. I have ultimately come to the conclusion that I didn’t go to SXSW to see more technology, and if Leo Laporte or Jeremiah Owyang didn’t find enough (
n -Ism or separation between being entertained and meaningful changes. That’s right, the point of this blog. We are experiencing a real separation between the hordes of people who want to use technology, the web and applications to turn people into uber consumers or seeking fame and the OTHER hordes that believe that those technologies should serve societal change for the better. 2011 is certainly showing strong signs of an increase in both populations.
was my first opportunity to attend Jeff Pulvers’ year round conferences. Time flew by me, with short presentations from people using social medial or technologies to make big differences. The stories of Erik Proulx (@
Twitter conversations (or Twitter parties) are a common occurrence in certain communities. Using a keyword and hashtag, a group of tweeple will congregate at the same time and hold a discussion. Generally, there is at least one or two conversation hosts or moderators who set up and help guide the discussion. The online travel community has several of these conversations on a weekly or monthly basis, the most popular being 
community weighed in on one side or the other. There was so much fallout that ZipSetGo eventually sent out a statement saying they had pulled the book from publication and all profits made would be donated to charity. Although the pulling of the book appears to have effectively ended this argument (
For a long time now, we’ve had a pretty good idea of who was influential (generally based on the strength of their blog) and such influential bloggers also tended to be influential in other online spheres, including social media sites. We’re starting to see a divergence now, however, between influencers in the blogosphere and in the social networks (namely Facebook & Twitter). So… with the increasing power of Facebook and especially Twitter, how do you compare an influential blogger with an influential tweeter? Is that influence equivalent? Transposable? One has hundreds of links pointing to her/his website and receives tens, if not, hundreds of comments to her/his blog, sustaining a focused series of committed conversations and partners. The other has thousands of followers and is often retweeted, wielding a power to draw folks into conversation. Apples and oranges? Or should the label ‘top influencer’ be given only to those powerful across all social media realms?
To date, blogging has been the gold standard for online influence in new media (see Brian Solis’ recent 
One industry we watch for influence is the travel industry. We recently came across this 
Well, for now, influence is in the eye of the beholder, or measurer perhaps, and you need to take note of the metrics used to measure influence before you accept any list of the top 50 anything. The most influential bloggers are not necessarily the most influential in the social media realm and vice versa, particularly as narrow into specific topics as expertise varies. A list of “the top online influencers” based on Klout may leave out influential bloggers, who, as mentioned, have long been considered the most influential members of online communities. Gaining respect as a blogger is a lot harder than gaining Twitter influence (we all know that many very powerful people on Twitter are uber chatty with big numbers but don’t have real influence) and considerable influence on the blogs does not come quickly or easily. With the ever-increasing power of the social networks AND the ongoing importance of bloggers, a good strategy is to look across networks, especially if a brand navigates inside niche markets.
This is not a new issue, but one that has gained even more importance over the last few weeks. Most people don’t want to do something that is wrong and get angry when they find out about shortcuts that were taken by others, as can be seen by the sanctioning of Cooks Source by the blogging community. It’s apparent that even after 
They announced features to empower user control of their ‘relevancy stream’. It’s no surprise that with the acquisition of FriendFeed last year that some of its core philosophy should finally appear. While FriendFeed may have been too feature rich and catered only to power users, it still is/was a very powerful way for users to make their stream ultra-relevant to their lives and across their identities. Facebook’s recently announced changes now promise us a better focused feed stream. We could maybe, finally, potentially, use the platform to do more meaningful stuff.
information age, it’s not who you know but what you know. Other platforms like Tweetdeck or Seesmic have allowed users to segregate streams by relevance using columns. Unfortunately, Facebook’s current ‘interestingness’ feature still makes users miss a bunch of important info.
