Social Media – Get On Board or Get Run Over

One of the fastest developing areas in healthcare communication is social networking and social media. So - how can an EMR/HIS vendor use this as an advantage together with organisational IT healthcare delivery guys?

I was at a conference Thursday and Friday last week, of leading German Hospital managers, and a particular discussion with the CIO of one of the leading hospital groups could summarise his thoughts as thus:

• A year back I thought this twitter stuff was unimportant
• A few months back I was of the belief I would have to fight it and shouldn’t allow it
• Now I’m starting to contemplate how to use it, and I feel unsupported in my efforts as the EMR vendors won’t or perhaps can’t provide me with any way to hook this into their systems, with the aim of making it a whole ecosystem including and accommodating social media

And my view:

• Since today’s discussion about social media I know instinctively if we, IT professionals in healthcare, won't do anything about it, it will be done via the consumerism of IT anyway – by our users and without us…and it will kill classic healthcare IT.

Have a look at healthissocial.com – one of the new websites totally dedicated to social media and communication in healthcare.

In particular there is a point I’d like to reproduce here – that as essential as it clearly is for us, as healthcare IT providers to get on board with social media or get run over by it – the basics of communication and appropriate communication must still be fundamental to our approach.

Phil Bauman – as part of his blog “Things that matter in Healthcare social media” makes the following point:

“Silence Communication isn’t always a good thing. During conflict, for instance, communication at the wrong time can intensify violence. An angry patient might go ballistic via social media because her father died of sepsis at a mediocre hospital. “Engaging” with her at that moment might not be helpful. We don’t always have to talk. There is strategy in silence.”

So I suppose – to close – we in IT healthcare clearly have “miles to go before we sleep” if we are going to get ahead of the curve with the integration of social media – but the implementation and expectation should be both measured and balanced.