Happy 2013! It's always nice to settle back in after shaking off the haze of the holidays. 2012 saw some wonderful things unfold in the healthcare social media community. The Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, WA performed a cochlear implant procedure and documented the entire process with Instagram and Twitter. The Healthcare Hashtag project that Symplur has been curating continues to grow and thrive, while providing an extremely valuable resource for the healthcare community. Through the use of social media, doctors, patients, office managers, and students are changing the way healthcare communities are built, doctor/patient interactions occur, and healthcare information is distributed. In this week's Healthcare Social Media Week in Review we'll highlight five articles that have made a splash during the first week of 2013.
- If you've ever watched a newsworthy event unfold via Twitter, it's pretty stunning. Just like wildfire, hashtags are born and information is distributed. The Wax Communications blog put together and interesting piece that discusses how the 2012 flu season was predicted almost six weeks prior to the CDC catching wind of it. Social Media Now Tracks Flu Faster Than The CDC
- As social media becomes adopted by more and more people, states are taking a stand against what employers can and can't require from employees. Christina Thielst poses some very thought provoking questions about state laws and social media. Social Media Laws- Really?
- According to researchers at John Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, one in four doctors contribute to new information via social media. This is just one of the interesting statistics identified in an article from HealthDay News. Docs Often Use Social Media on the Job: Survey
- Rachael Seda of CRT/tanaka put together a very intriguing article for Waxing UnLyrical that discusses key components of transforming doctor/patient communication via social media. Seda does a great job describing the current obstacles and the opportunities that social media present for doctors and patients. Social Media: The Key to Transforming Doctor-Patient Communication
- The last article in this week's Social Media Week in Review is an infographic that takes a look at how the healthcare community is engaging via Twitter. The infographic does a great job breaking down influential tweeters, most followed medical companies, and more. Infographic- Healthcare
One of the most exciting things about the start of a new year is continuing to build on a very strong healthcare social media foundation. There are a great group of very dedicated community members that help to enrich patient communities, offer wonderful insight to new healthcare trends, relay expert knowledge in a vast amount of specialties, and help to make the healthcare social media community one of the strongest around. Here's to an engaging and enriching New Year in healthcare social media.