Envisioning 2.0

Earlier this year, my firm Envision Solutions and The Medical Blog Network launched the first global survey of healthcare bloggers. Today, we released the results of this poll, which will be discussed during the Healthcare Blogging Summit this afternoon in Washington DC.

Following are some key results of this survey:

- Many bloggers are writing for altruistic or personal reasons, i.e., to share their experiences or educate others

- A number of bloggers hide their identity to protect themselves, friends, family, patients and careers

- Many respondents view their fellow bloggers’ statements with a critical eye. However, they are confident most bloggers will make it easy for them to access a range of perspectives via their blogs

- About half of those contacted by PR professionals write posts based on information they receive from them

- Respondents are split on whether running advertising compromises the integrity of healthcare bloggers. However, many are willing to invite advertisers to appear to their blogs

Click here to download the full results of this survey.

Over the past year, we have witnessed significant changes in the healthcare social media landscape – especially in the blogosphere. Healthcare providers are beginning to embrace blogs as a means of sharing information and their experiences with colleagues, patients and the general public. Major healthcare organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and the publishers of the journal Health Affairs have launched Weblogs to facilitate dialogue about important subjects. These developments are cause for celebration.

However, fully embracing social media means much more than simply starting a blog or launching a podcast. It requires making a commitment to engaging in open and honest dialogue with stakeholders. Transparency and honesty are highly valued in the social media arena. However, this requirement has led many players in the healthcare system to fear it. Another reason is that many do not understand why social media is important or think those developing user generated content will have much impact on the healthcare system.
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This post also appeared on HealthCareVox.

A few weeks ago, I announced that I published an e-book, “From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage” designed to help players in the healthcare industry get a handle on social media. I’ve been very happy with the response to the e-book and honored that people like Nedra Weinreich, Toby Bloomberg, Neville Hobson, Lee Hopkins and Dmitriy Kruglyak have found it helpful and recommended it to others.

After reading the e-book, a friend of mine suggested that I submit a proposal to a Website called “ChangeThis” to expose it to a wider audience. ChangeThis is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping ideas about business, technology and other topics spread. Seth Godin thought-up ChangeThis, which is now part of 800-CEO-READ.

Over the past few years, lots of people I respect, including David Maister, Debbie Weil, Mark Cuban and Guy Kawasaki have produced so-called “manifestos” (sometimes based on previously existing material). I’m happy to announce that my proposal was accepted by ChangeThis for potential development into a manifesto.

Here’s where I need your help. The editors of ChangeThis select proposals for further development based on the number of votes they receive. It’s a bit of a popularity contest, but I can see how ChangeThis is using the “wisdom of crowds” to foreground good ideas. So, if you would like to see my e-book become a ChangeThis manifesto, please visit my proposal and cast your vote. Voting closes on November 2.

While you are there, I encourage you to visit a few other proposals I think are worth noting:

- The Natural Advantages Of Small Business: John Jantsch, author of the award-winning blog Duct Tape Marketing has developed a proposal focusing on the benefits of small business for organizations of all sizes.

- Creativity & The Chaotic Edge: Ernie Schenk asks companies interested in innovation to “reside in a creative space that yields ideas that are neither too radical and therefore useless or too conservative and therefore inconsequential . . . [and] balance themselves at their own edge of chaos.”

I’d like to thank everyone for reading and commenting on this blog and for your continued support. Once again, to cast your vote, please click here.

With all of the talk about the potential of blogs, podcasts, wikis and other social media technologies to transform healthcare, the fact is these tools are not yet in the mainstream. They take a lot of time and effort to produce properly and many physicians do not understand social media and are unwilling to devote the time to exploring it.

Those seeking reasons for this, should look no further than more mature online communications tools like e-mail. According to a new Center for Studying Health System Change study, only about 25% of physicians use e-mail to communicate with patients. Dr. Bob Centor, author of the blog DB’s Medrants, explains why:

“Many physicians . . . avoid email communication as another cost of time. . . Most insurers do not pay for email. Physician avoidance is mostly about money.”

If a September Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive poll is any indication, patients want physicians to adopt e-mail, electronic medical records and other technologies much more aggressively. 74 percent of respondents want to communicate with physicians by e-mail. 67 percent want to receive the results of diagnostic tests via this method. People crave fast, efficient communication with their doctors and the medical profession is not responding.

Let’s compare the numbers one more time. Barely 25% of physicians use e-mail for patient communication, but 74% of patients want to interact with doctors via it. That’s quite a gulf between demand and supply. Are any savvy entrepreneurs looking at this data and putting together a business plan to meet this need?

When it comes to communication, e-mail is a no-brainer. It’s fast, easy, secure and cheap. However, as with podcasting and blogging, physicians will have to be provided with incentives (financial, business, personal) before they will be persuaded to take full advantage of these technologies.

Over at HealthCareVox, I’ve been blogging quite a bit about the impact of social media on healthcare communications. Writing these posts got me thinking a lot about how to encourage people in the healthcare industry to engage social media more deeply. To assist, I decided to develop a new free e-book, “From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage.” This publication is designed to help people in the healthcare industry communicate successfully in a world where social media is becoming increasingly influential.

For more on this e-book and the ideas that inspired it, please see this post on HealthCareVox. To download the e-book, please click here. Feel free to pass it on to anyone you feel will find it useful.  (Please help the ideas in this e-book spread.  Click here to learn how.)

I am pleased to announce the launch of the first comprehensive global study of healthcare bloggers, the “Taking the Pulse of the Healthcare Blogopshere” survey. The poll, which is co-produced by my firm Envision Solutions, LLC and The Medical Blog Network, is the first systematic attempt to gather comprehensive opinion and demographic data from the global community of healthcare bloggers. Please click here to read a press release about the survey.

Some key facts about the survey:

- The 2006 edition of the survey will run from July 31 to September 29. It is open
to individuals and organizations that devote at least 30% of their blogging time to healthcare-related topics. To learn more about the survey, please click here.

- Envision Solutions and TMBN will release the preliminary results of the survey in the late fall. The final results will be presented at Healthcare Blogging Summit 2006 taking place in Washington, D.C. on December 11.

- Envision Solutions and TMBN will collect and analyze data provided by a global sample of healthcare bloggers willing to take the survey. While the data is expected to provide new insights into the attitudes and behaviors of this community, we acknowledge that we may be surveying the most active bloggers and caution against applying the data to the overall healthcare blogopshere.

I hope that readers of this blog focusing on healthcare will take the time to take the survey and post about it on your Weblogs. The more respondents we gather data from, the stronger the survey.

Thanks and please feel free to contact me with any questions about the study.

Healthcare blogs provide physicians, health policy experts, patients and others a forum  to engage in spirited dialouge about the important medical issues of the day.  Anyone looking for proof of this should  read the commentary posted on Kevin Pho’s blog, Kevin, M.D. on the recent arrest of physician Anna Pou.  Pou is accused of murdering patients under her care during Hurricane Katrina.

Click here to read Pho’s post and the commentary it inspired.

The latest version of the Health Wonk Review is up at Workers’ Comp Insider.

I’ve just finished conducting an interview series focusing on the impact of healthcare blogs over at HealthCareVox. Check out the final installment by clicking here.

I’ve been writing a lot about Google Health/Google Co-op on HealthCareVox.  Click here to read more.