Friday 6 November 2009

#hcsmeu - eats shoots and leaves.

Wish I had assigned more focussed time to it and a better tool than plain old twitter.com but managed to catch up with #hcsmeu 'Tweetup' today.

The debate on Health Care Social Media Europe focussed today on the three questions:
  1. Experiences in EU of sites rating physicians and/or hospitals? Which are the constraints?
  2. What are most effective ways to build a healthcare (provider and patient) community? Are there any ressources available?
  3. If DTC advertising to patients in EU is banned, but SM is global, can industry utilise SM to give EU patients info online (in keeping with the EC rules)?
The full list is available as a Google Doc.

It was quite hectic and I would have preferred a more standard chat interface as I had to reload the twitter search every now and then. My feeling was that there was a lot of direct unguarded talk (understandable with the 140 character limit) with the intent of defining what the social media business model would be in health. Gritty, informal and refreshing with lots of different perspectives. The medium favours this type of 'messy' discussion and, in a way, to understand what others think is a good introduction for making contacts but perhaps not about understanding the subject.

Analysing the themes of the first two questions (using the transcript) to me it looked like the following views were expressed:
  • Change seems inevitable.
  • Locality and mobility may be more important than ratings in patient choice especially in rural settings.
  • There are problems with patient feedback (in a simple 'rate your doctor' setting). How can it be made more objective?
  • A successful system needs the right design of community and the right mix of patient and professional, leadership and community.
  • Nobody pointed to very successful doctor / hospital rating sites but it was obvious there were many successful 'community' sites. [In my view mostly disease-specific.]
  • Would an emergent design be better?
  • There are difficulties with sustainable business models.
  • Difficult feedback from patients or communities can create even more problems with clinical governance.
As for Q3 I think the answer is simply yes ... but that may be me being too simplistic.

This sort of discussion needs more time and consideration than a quick hour of shooting off Tweets and leaving in time for lunch. However, its focussed nature and the fact that it endures after the event allows for additional networking between the attendees (such as pharmaguy introducing me to an example of an effective community before Web 2.0 as in DIABETES-EHLB) and analysis of comments (such as above).

Very interesting. Thanks Andrew Sprong and Silja Chouquet.

Links:

http://www.healthunlocked.com/ (example entrepreneur-led community site currently in beta testing)
Docinsider.de blog
PharmaTimes: EU drugmakers agree breakthrough on patient information. 5/Nov/2009
Imaginatik Webinar "Crowdsourcing in Healthcare"

1 comment:

  1. Hi Dean

    Thank you very much for having taken the time to review today's event, also for your participation.

    I agree that the 'quick fire' format can be a challenge, but this is more a function of the fact that contributors are full of ideas and want to share them all as much as anything else.

    As you say, the content endures at http://stwem.com/hcsemu, and the event takes place every week at noon GMT / 1pm CET

    It's important to us that we keep adding new voices. #hcsmeu is not a club (although it is a very friendly place), rather a vehicle to refine ideas and so that all of its participants may affect change in their own way within their own territories.

    Everyone with an interest in health care and social media, be they European or not, is most welcome to join us, just as you have done.

    Andrew

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