It seemed helpful the first time the Check-Up doubled as a book club, so to continue the link sharing, here are another five resources to check out when you are looking for news in the digital health space.

Newsmap

There is never enough time in the day to keep up with trends and news. However, sometimes tracking down the big story is worth your time, and luckily there’s a really cool tool called Newsmap to help by visualizing news stories like a word cloud. You can even drill down the topics into certain verticals, like health, to get a category specific view of the news of the day.

5 Ways Social Media Helps Promote Good Health (Mashable)

Mashable is a go-to news source for just about everyone online because they often break many stories related to social media, technology and online culture. In addition to those short pieces, Mashable retains a bunch of contributors who offer longer guides to different corners of the Internet. For a can’t miss one on how digital media can help improve your health, Alexander Howard’s piece from early July is a great resource.

Former FDA Official to Pharma Marketers: Don’t Expect Much Regulatory Guidance on Social Media (eMarketer)

Health communicators in the U.S. have been tracking the future of FDA regulations for the digital space very intently since last November’s hearings. In an interview with eMarketer, Peter Pitts, a former FDA official familiar with the existing DTC guidelines, gives some disheartening news: any guidance from the administration is likely to only address “long-hanging-fruit issues,” and not move forward into some of the bigger questions.

‘Twitter Doctors’ Lists Medical Kings of Social Media (Social Times)

There are many ways to gauge influence on Twitter (like the awesome Edelman creation, TweetLevel), but you can never go wrong by checking many different sources. Twitter Doctors breaks down just those medical professionals who use the microblogging service, and is easy to sort based on followers, retweets or influence. Read more at Social Times for some more information on who the highest rated medical Twitterers are.

Ask Wolfram|Alpha about Medical Drug Treatments (WolframAlpha Blog)

Wolfram Alpha is not a traditional search engine, per se – It bills itself as a knowledge engine, and the data it gives back are not links to other sites, but detailed results that help to answer the query right there. On its own blog, the WA team recommends a new thing to look for on the network: medical and drug treatment data. Check out the results for what happens when you search for “drug treatments diabetes” to give it a whirl.

Seen any other good articles or resources? Be sure to keep the sharing going by leaving it for others.

For people who live with chronic disease, proper management of medications and lifestyle factors is important for keeping symptoms under control. Many people find it helpful to keep reference material on hand and a “symptom diary” to help them determine triggers of disease activity, efficacy of medications, and other factors that influence their disease and quality of life.

As technology has improved over the last years, there is another tool that most patients have that can simplify disease management: their mobile phones. With apps and other widgets, they provide a variety of information at one’s fingertips no matter where they might be located. As a result, a number of apps have been developed for various smart phone platforms to help users manage their disease.

Asthma Tracker (BlackBerry, $4.99)

Good asthma management skills are important for keeping the chronic lung disease controlled. Asthma Tracker for BlackBerry provides several tools for asthma management, including a list of common asthma medications, common asthma triggers to avoid, and a graphing tool to show how users’ asthma levels measure against “normal” levels. This data can then be shared with one’s doctor, who can evaluate whether the current asthma treatment protocol is working or needs to be changed. (BlackBerry is an Edelman client)

GI Monitor (iPhone, Free)

Symptoms of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, which cause inflammation in the digestive tract, can worsen in the presence of various foods or lifestyle factors, such as stress or lack of sleep. GI Monitor for the iPhone enables users to easily keep track of symptoms, medications and foods eaten. This data can be visualized on a line graph which can then help users identify patterns of symptom activity and eliminate problematic stimuli. The app also provides research updates, fundraising initiatives and a way to note questions for future doctor’s visits.

OnTrack Diabetes (Android, Free)

Diabetes management depends on keeping the body’s blood glucose levels as close to normal as possible. Strategies include proper diet, exercise and medications, including insulin for those with type I disease. OnTrack Diabetes for Android devices enables users to track lifestyle factors and medications as well as blood pressure, weight and blood glucose levels. Users can then export data as graphs and reports in a variety of formats to allow for viewing in the database software of their choice.

Blood Pressure Tracker (Windows Mobile, $19.99)

High blood pressure, or hypertension, affects one in four Americans and can lead to a number of serious health problems, such as impaired vision, heart attack or stroke. In order to get an accurate blood pressure measurement, it can be helpful to take measurements at different times for several days. Blood Pressure Tracker for Windows Mobile helps users manage regular blood pressure readings and export data for use in other databases. (Microsoft is an Edelman client)

glutenScan (iPhone, $1.99/month)

People with celiac disease must avoid gluten, a protein found in foods such as wheat, barley and rye. If accidentally consumed, gluten can cause an inflammatory reaction, and if consumed over a prolonged period of time, gluten can damage the small intestine, leading to further health complications. glutenScan for the iPhone helps people with celiac ensure their foods are gluten-free with information on more than 30,000 food products. Users can even use the iPhone’s camera to scan the UPC code of a food product to bring up its ingredients or look up the manufacturer’s contact information to ask them about a product’s ingredients.

What apps have you seen that enable patients to take better control of their health?

Image credit: liewcf

There are many reasons we end up creating a deck for ourselves or a client. Sometimes it is for an important stakeholder meeting, other times, it’s to introduce a new plan or strategy. Either way, once those events are over, that presentation may find itself buried on a server somewhere, never to be seen again, far from the social Web.

Why horde information, though? Did you know that there actually is a place where you can share your decks with a wider audience? SlideShare is basically a YouTube for visual presentations, and not only is it a place for you to share, it’s also a place to find other people’s ideas on all sorts of topics – including the future of health communications.

Edelman Digital has recently gotten more involved on SlideShare in the last few weeks, and in honor of that, we went digging to find some of the most interesting presentations out there relevant to the health and digital spaces.

Healthcare Napkins

There are some amazingly creative presentations on SlideShare, designed to simplify complex ideas into easy to digest ideas. One of the most interesting may be this visual “back-of-the-napkin” breakdown by Dan Roam explaining the Healthcare Reform debate of the last year.

GP and Specialists Study

Although the research is several months old, this study on pharma and physician participation in online health information and social media in the United Kingdom still provides several insights into the universal concerns of healthcare communication online. There are several interesting charts in here on the different levels of participation among the specialists and general practitioners who were surveyed.

Happiness as Your Business Model

Tara Hunt’s clever and engaging discussion of looking at economics through the eyes of psychology is not only is fascinating, it also shows off a few other cool things about how visual information doesn’t have to be boring. A presentation doesn’t have to be all bullets and lengthy slides to get a point across – sometimes, simple is better, and Hunt does a great job at proving that.

How Facebook and Twitter Are Changing Healthcare

In both a forward and retrospective look, Kevin Clauson, a professor of pharmacology at NOVA Southeastern University, breaks down the landscape of healthcare and digital media. Looking at the change of culture, business and delivery of information, Clauson’s presentation shares several examples that may serve as good case studies.

Six Digital Trends to Watch

Edelman’s Steve Rubel and Dave Armano took some time out of their hectic calendars to get together and create an incredibly valuable presentation on what’s next in the digital realm. These two thoughtleaders within Edelman have some great ideas and foresight into what we’ll have to plan for in the future.

Social CRM is a new frontier of digital marketing that has recently been getting a lot of attention.

To paraphrase Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light, social CRM is a business strategy designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation and provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. Basically, it’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.

Consumers continue to adopt social technologies at a blinding speed – and often organizations are unable to keep up. Why? Rapid adoption of social networking enables users to connect with individuals and communities who share mutual interests, increasingly leaving organizations out of the conversation.

As digital PR practitioners, it’s our job to ensure that our clients are able to keep pace with the warp speed by which social media is evolving. Social CRM is a prime example.

If there is a reputational crisis, are we equipped to speak to our stakeholders on the platforms where they are engaging most? Can we help our clients increase the accuracy of their target marketing while at the same time slash their direct marketing costs? The answer is yes, and the reasons lie in Social CRM.

To help understand the importance of Social CRM, considering the following facts:

• According to a study conducted by the Society for New Communications Research, 59% of customers use social media to “vent” about a customer care experience.
• By far the most popular social media platform is Facebook. It’s hard to overestimate just how quickly it’s growing; from Jun 2009 to Jan 2010, the average number of hours spent on Facebook doubled from 3.5 to 7. The second most popular website (in terms of time spent) averages 2 hours per month. It’s popularity, combined with some key benefits described below, make it one of the most important Social CRM tools.

Leasing vs. Owning Data

For decades, marketing departments have spent untold time, money and energy in building and maintaining sets of complex customer databases. These databases were the engines of their direct marketing campaigns, smart management of the data was a distinct competitive advantage. In the past few years, this paradigm has been turned on its head. Rather than owning data – which includes mining, organizing, maintaining, etc., companies can now lease data directly from social media platforms, namely Facebook. This removes the onus and the responsibility of owning data that is continually becoming outdated, and provides companies with a new-found nimbleness. They can focus on building the relationship with their stakeholders, rather than running after their new contact details.

Micro-targeting

One of Facebook’s most significant benefits has always been its ability to micro-target messages directly to target audiences. For some time we’ve been able to target based on sex, geography, and interests. Now, Facebook also allows marketers to target based on user searches, what ads they click on, and keywords in their status updates. This is a Holy Grail for those of us in the healthcare industry – we can now send ads directly to users who we know, through their actions, have very strong ties to a condition such as diabetes, cancer, or chronic back pain.

Crisis

Every company must be ready to react in the face of a reputational crisis. Social CRM is a crucial tool when dealing in crisis management. By establishing a presence in social media, whether it be on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook, a company has a pre-existing two-way medium by which it can communicate its messages to the public. Ideally, it will have already developed a fan base of customers, shareholders, policy experts, etc. who will be able to pose questions and receive answers directly from company spokespeople. To not have an established presence online gives power to others to tell your story in their words, and can be a major liability.

Causes

Sponsoring a cause is an excellent way for a healthcare brand to gain traction in the Social CRM arena. This is especially true if the product is not very sexy. By attaching a brand to a larger movement, we attract a different, potentially very passionate following, and we can gain a great deal of positive exposure by supporting the cause. For example, Huggies (client) launched the Every Little Bottom program to help struggling families in need of diapers.

Mobile

Along with building on the loyalties of customers, social CRM programs can also have more direct cost saving affects. Kaiser Permanente launched a program that sent appointment reminders via mobile phone to its patients. The program resulted in a significant decrease in no-shows, and during the one-month pilot, Kaiser saved over $275,000 in no-show costs at a single clinic.

Privacy in Social CRM

Across all social media, and in particular in healthcare, privacy is a major issue and something we need to keep a very close eye on. A group of U.S. Senators recently sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, stating their concerns with micro-targeting and how it may infringe on the public’s privacy. Facebook has since increased the privacy of its default settings. Before launching any Social CRM programs, we must always consider the risks of the perception that our stakeholders’ privacy is being invaded, and be ready to manage these risks.

How do you think Social CRM can play a role in health engagement?

One of my long-standing rants about digital communication and technologies is that sometimes it gets wrapped up unfairly into an umbrella term of “social media.” In fact, there are many forms of digital that are inherently not social, and those are worth exploring as well.

One item that fits well into that category in the health space is the notion of electronic medical records (EMRs). The active online Health IT community often discusses the concern that we’ll be behind in efficient patient care as long as we continue to avoid digitized health records.

To give you a different topic to think about this Tuesday, here are a few interesting things to consider when it comes to the role EMRs could play in improving patient care. If you have something to add, feel free to comment so we can keep building this list of resources.

The “20 Year Lag”

The article I always seem to keep coming back to in the EMR debate is a Wikinomics piece from March 2009. Jeff Perron very plainly states a fascinating juxtaposition of using paper-filing systems to organize vital information: “Am I to believe that our libraries did, almost 20 years ago, what our health care system is starting to do now?”

The Benefit

It’s easy to try and guess the benefits of an electronic records system, but it’s better to check out this case study from Dr. Owen O’Neill of a Minneapolis orthopedic surgical practice. The initial return appears just to be in staffing and management of the facility, but as you read on, you’ll note how O’Neill pointed to the improved quality of patient care, reduced risk of transcription errors, and better access to information after-hours. Even better, his partner noted how the physician quality of life also improved.

The Privacy Concern

Privacy has been the buzz word of the last year, and personal health is among the most sensitive of topics. While it’s easy to question why health systems are far behind other public sectors, the strongest reason to be cautious with implementing electronic records is that patients have to trust the security of their digitized records. They have to believe that a secure system in “the cloud” or in health system servers will keep their personal information safe.

New Technologies to Help

The tablet computer revolution has moved many to start looking for practical applications of the devices in the medical space. One such suggestion is leveraging those technologies to streamline the EMR process. There would be a few kinks to work out; as one author noted, if they can’t type on a tablet faster than they would normally write, the dictation apps better learn medical jargon. There is at least a notion that these devices could replace the physician’s clipboard.

Will They Solve Every Care Issue?

Late last year, a study showed that EMR adoption rates were still quite low in the United States, and there had yet to be more than modest differences in the quality of care between hospitals. Most notably, one concern is that some of the systems that may be able to use EMRs most effectively are those who see many poor patients. Yet those same hospitals rely on federal funds more than others, and EMRs may be lower on their implementation list. A digitized health system has clear benefits, but they certainly won’t solve everything.

Image credit: John Norris

Community can be a very powerful force in health. It is the central notion behind the idea of public health and wellness, but it is also a little bit of a juxtaposition. Many people view their personal health as a private matter, but as the online movement drives right into the world of patient communities, this line is increasingly becoming blurred. It’s partially the same reason: community support can help make health public, and as such, more manageable.

Last week, as a part of Digital Capital Week here in Washington, several thoughtleaders in the digital health space got together to discuss how open information and public channels change the role of patient’s in their own health. Led by Dr. Val Jones of Better Health, Susannah Fox from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Maya Linson from National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, and Erin Enke from TogoRun led some great conversations on the role of digital in the public health revolution.

A few interesting discussion points came up, so here are five different things to think about regarding the landscape of digital health.

The Chronic Disease Question

There isn’t some statistic from recent research that demonstrates that a majority of people with chronic health conditions are active online, but, as Susannah Fox commented, the evidence suggests that those who do participate are very active. That means that digital doesn’t necessarily help get to the wide audience related to some disease or health condition, but the people online who you could reach are likely heavily engaged.

The Sharing Factor

It may be surprising to find out where the results of a health query end up going after someone turns to the public channel to find health information. As Fox noted, 2/3 of people who search for health information online (a universe which we understand to be nearly more than 4/5 of Internet users) share what they find. The question is with whom – and it appears to be friends and family, not medical professionals.

Credential-Free Doesn’t Mean Trust-Free

Erin Enke made a point that seemed to resonate well through the live and Twitter audiences (you can go back and check #DigitalHealth for the latter): when patients participate in health communities, they don’t have medical credentials, yet still earn the trust of their peers. That may also mean, though, that when approached by a PR or marketer, they could be surprised by the role they’ve earned through the trust of the community.

Overcoming The Credential Concern

A great question was posed to the panel towards the end of the session: is self-policing within patient communities enough to overcome the vetting concern? If anything, primary sourcing information is not really that prevalent on any health site (only three percent of health sites clearly source information with date), user-generated or professional. Communities rely on trust because the Internet changes the value of primary sources, the group must rely on authority to determine validity.

When Patients Talk, But Staff Can’t Respond

In a HDCU a few weeks ago, we touched on the different ways hospitals leverage social networks and digital media. Maya Linson brought up a really interesting point: many facilities block access to social networks like Facebook and Twitter on employee terminals. Patients, though, may not realize this as they air their concerns of questions on the channels, and then further get frustrated by a lack of response. It’s not enough that we live our health in public, but now that we’re more open with it, a response is expected.

Image credit: badjonni

One of the best reasons to be actively following Twitter and connecting with other smart people around professional and social networks is that you often will come across lots of great links to the newest studies or fascinating blog posts.

Thanks to a great Edelman Digital team (most hat-tip worthy: a great Community Manager who loves to share), I find myself with stacks of of articles about new developments in online health and communication. So many of them are fascinating, but they may not be enough for a full, focused Check-Up. But, as a midday reading list, this collection is quite useful.

In the nature of sharing, here are five links related to Digital Health from the last few weeks worth a bit of your time today. What links, stories, blog posts or new networks have you seen recently?

The Health Tweeder

As we keep learning about the way people discuss diseases in social networks, an interesting tool to check out is The Health Tweeder. It is a nifty visualization of the content on Twitter that discusses different disease states.

The 1st Canadian Pharma Ad on Facebook?

A great catch by the folks over at Marketing 4 Health: an ad for a Canadian pharmaceutical company (King Pharmaceuticals) was spotted in the sidebar for some Facebook users. Of course, every country faces different regulations for direct-to-consumer marketing, but the author is right to give credit to the organization for innovating within its governments guidelines.

Future of Health: Heart Powered Tech

Could your heartbeat be used to provide power to run other electronic devices in your body? For the answer, check out this great story shared by PSFK.

The (Questionable) Link Between Health and Wealth

I’m a sucker for a good infographic, and I’ll be darned if this isn’t a great one shared by GOOD. The question at hand: is there really a link between the wealth of a country and its population’s health? The math says there is, but that’s only when looked at via life expectancies; the author of this post goes beyond the generalized to share a few more insights to consider.

Hello Health

In the past, we’ve mentioned the divide that exists between patients and physicians online. Hello Health is trying to change that, making a shared network where the two groups can co-exist and connect. The group also presented at the recent Health 2.0 conference in DC – a perfect fit for the patient-empowerment movement.

Clinical trial recruitment requires targeted messaging to specific patients. The online space is ideal for reaching these kinds of audiences across geographies,. As a post from EyeOnFDA’s Mark Senak noted, YouTube provides one interesting method to reach them, but the digital medium goes well beyond the opportunity he discussed. In fact, it’s potentially really useful  for fast response since it can be easily updated as information changes.

Edelman has clinical trial recruitment experience, and our offerings include digital tactics.

Search

Most people start their online experience with search engines, and this provides a perfect opportunity to find appropriate patients for clinical trials when those patients are looking for treatment information. Keyword ad buys (search engine marketing) can also be geo-targeted, only reaching people in the markets where the trial is occurring.

Video

YouTube is the #2 search engine, and people enjoy getting information in video format. Videos provide a unique way to educate people about clinical trials and can include real patient testimonials. Pfizer has recently begun a YouTube channel dedicated to clinical trial recruitment called Pfizer Clinical Team.

Online Communities

Patient communities abound online and can be a great audience for clinical trial recruitment for specific diseases. Several sites, including PatientsLikeMe and Inspire, offer ways for pharmaceutical companies to raise awareness of their clinical trials.

Physician Outreach

Patients are only one of the critical audiences in clinical trial recruitment. Another is physicians. Several properties are geared towards the physician audience, such as Sermo and Medscape, and provide opportunities for clinical trial awareness and recruitment.

Advocacy Organizations

Don’t forget your advocacy partners. Almost all of the advocacy groups now have multiple digital touch points with their constituencies and may be willing to provide information about a clinical trial in their email, social media or website properties.

Image credit: Sermo

Twitter has certainly been my point of discovery around many topics, so I was really grateful last week when Bryan Vartabedian shared a great resource from Ed Bennett that I had never seen before. Bennett, who works in the University of Maryland Medical Center, has taken the time to compile a fantastic database of US hospitals and the different digital media that each uses.

Bennett has cataloged 730 different hospitals in this list, and the information sheds a good amount of light on the different reasons health centers are venturing into social media. Based on his data, here are five points to consider about hospitals and how they use these channels.

The Embrace of Twitter

Most of the growth surrounding Twitter happened in the middle of 2009 (likely thanks to that Ashton Kutcher/CNN battle), so it isn’t too surprising to see that Hospitals really started to embrace the status-based medium in the middle of last year. Up to that point, it seemed that many hospitals had been steadily joining YouTube before the prominent rise of Tweeting.

Self-Promoting Content

When it comes to the type of content that these health centers are sharing, it isn’t surprising to see that much of it is promotional about the facility. The content for an entire Twitter feed or YouTube channel may involve advertising spots or stories of health recovery from within their walls. In no way is this exclusive to how hospitals use digital media, but it is certainly a simple way to make sure that positive content around each organization is available.

Children’s Hospitals Posting Often

Bennett broke down his research into geographic categories, but he also split the data in a few extra verticals. Most notably, he has dedicated a full section to children’s hospitals from around the country and the different channels you can find them. The nature of content involving children may tend to pull at the heartstrings, and since young people are involved, the plethora of channels from these institutions are likely due to the fact that there is better audience fit online than general centers or intensive care.

A Lack of Blogs

Even though a major hospital blogger is often on the top of my “must read health blog” lists (Running a Hospital from Boston Beth Israel’s Paul Levy), it doesn’t seem to be the norm. According to Bennett’s research, only 94 of the 730 “digital” hospitals run full-fledged blogs. The balance between producing content, building an audience and maintaining a consistent publishing schedule are the likely barriers that push health centers towards a lower time-investment channel like Twitter.

How Could Foursquare Be Involved?

Bennett didn’t include it in his research, but there may be one more place worth checking out when it comes to health centers in the digital space: Foursquare. Hospitals, just like offices, airports and restaurants, offer a little bit of diversity of places to check-in to the location based-game. Unlike the other channels, health center venues on Foursquare probably weren’t created by the institution themselves, but that hasn’t stopped them from showing up for patients or employees to fight to become the mayor. Should Hospitals start paying attention to these channels, too?

Image credit: taberandrew and Paul Keleher

The regulatory concerns that drive much of the health industry’s hesitation in entering the digital space are not the only factor we face when it comes to online programs. Another reason health care communication may be still catching up to other industries is that, at first glance, it may not seem like many of the right target audiences are active online – especially if organizations are hoping to reach older publics.

While there certainly is a comparatively lower overall usage of online properties among older Internet users, these groups also represent the fastest growing populations on those same media properties. Just because it doesn’t seem logical that the senior set has not fully adopted digital communications doesn’t mean they aren’t getting there. In fact, access to broadband speed in the home tripled among people over 65 between 2005 and 2008.

The ways older publics are increasingly using the Internet may provide unique ways to interact with them, around health information or in general. As proof, here are five ideas for you to consider regarding older audiences online.

Personal E-mail

A 2009 report from Pew noted that the most common activity among the senior-aged groups using the Internet is e-mail. This likely isn’t a surprising result for anyone who’s ever received an e-mail from a parent or grandparent – or potentially even helped establish the account for them in the first place.

Tracking Personal Needs

While the “fervent user” base of wired seniors (over 65 years old) may be narrow, there are some interesting findings about the places they most actively visit. E-mail is the most common, but the next responses also offer some insights into how this group operates. It seems these users are likely to be a little more personal in their searches, using the engines to identify resources about their hobbies and health information as the second and third most common activities after e-mail.

Facebook’s Increase Among Seniors

Now approaching 500 million users worldwide, it’s hard to find demographic groups that aren’t on the world’s most ingrained social network. This includes 9.7 million people over the age of 55, the overwhelming majority of whom joined between January 2009 and January 2010. Why could this matter for your program? Given the late start and state of Facebook as they have registered, their personal networks may be tighter and include fewer, but more intimate, offline contacts.

Connecting with Family

The trend in both e-mail and social network usage by older publics is most notably tied to the most important reason they may be online: to connect with family. In the Pew study mentioned above, most seniors reported that the Internet improved their connection with their loved ones. Not only something to recognize regarding the motivations of this public online, but this is potentially something that can be channeled for successful outreach.

The Boom to Be?

While there still is some growth to go in adoption among the current generation of seniors, it won’t be very long at all until veteran Internet users lose a valiant battle with time. The growth of Internet usage doesn’t necessarily have to be in new networks, but the fact that the most connected generations continue to expand up and down every demographic. As the first members of the Baby Boomer generation retire, they do so with a comparatively immense knowledge and participation in these networks above those just older than them. While still a long-term plan, being prepared for this shift will be a smart strategy for any program.

Image credit: homecaregivers