We’re pleased to introduce our newest staff member, Ron Petrovich, who began work yesterday as a manager in the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media.
Ron’s background is in television; after serving as news director for local TV stations in Milwaukee and Indianopolis, he most recently worked at Medstar, a producer of television and new media medical and health information.
You can connect with Ron on Twitter at (@RonaldPetrovich).
Over the last several weeks we have been focusing on staffing and other development issues for the Center. As we start to get staff on board, we’ll be working through the process of selecting the remaining members for the External Advisory Board (which is a big job because we had 120 highly qualified applicants for the remaining 12 spots) and making plans for our first events through the Social Media Health Network.
Watch for further announcements in the coming days and weeks.
Saturday’s edition of White Coat, Black Art, a weekly CBC Radio program hosted by Dr. Brian Goldman, is entitled Social Medicine. I enjoyed getting to talk with Dr. Goldman about our Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media and about physicians and other medical professionals being involved in social media.
You can listen to the program online here, or at 11:30 a.m. today it will be rebroadcast on CBC Radio One.
Mayo Clinic today announced formation of the Social Media Health Network, a group dedicated to using social media to promote health, to improve health care and to fight disease. Through educational conferences and webinars and development of social platforms for sharing training materials and resources, this international network will help members learn from each other and effectively implement social media programs.
The network is associated with the newly formed Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media. Victor Montori, M.D., medical director for the center, describes the goals for the network and how it is consistent with Mayo Clinic’s history:
Besides Mayo Clinic, charter members of the network include:
- Bon Secours Health System
- Inova Health System
- Mission Health System
- Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre
- Swedish Health Services
If you would like to know more about how to join the network, call 507-538-0492 or contact the center by email.
The mission for our Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media is to
Lead the social media revolution in health care, improving health and well-being for people everywhere.
We’re pleased to announce today the formation of our external advisory board, a 25-member group of fellow revolutionaries, to help us fulfill that mission. Members will provide advice and feedback to our center leadership on various programs and initiatives, and will be a source of ideas for worthwhile projects. They also will contribute content for this site and their perspectives on health-related developments in social media.
Our goal is to have a well-rounded board with diverse backgrounds, capabilities and interests that encourages a wide range of applications for social media tools to improve health and the health care system, and to bring perspectives from other industries and government to the conversations. These are volunteer positions, although members will receive free admission to events sponsored by the center.
The first 13 members selected for one-year terms are listed on the Advisory Board page. These are among the pioneers in applying social media in health care and humanitarian endeavors. We’re honored that they are willing to serve.
We want your help in nominating and selecting candidates for the remaining 12 positions to give us the well-rounded board we’re seeking, reflecting diversity in all its forms.
We’d like to have representatives from state, local or federal government, public health, medical and scientific journals, hospital and nursing associations, disease-oriented organizations and patient foundations, medical associations and specialty societies, and of course physicians. While we have a pair of patients among our initial members, we’re open to more. And we don’t want to limit nominations to the foregoing categories: we hope to also have representatives from other industries (such as the technology sector) that are more advanced in application of social media than health care has been.
Together with an internal advisory team we’ll be recruiting from throughout the Mayo system, the external advisory board will be an energetic force to help accelerate thoughtful adoption of social media to promote health and improve health care.
Here are three ways you can help:
- If you are interested in serving, please submit your application according to the process outlined below.
- Please spread the word to help us gather a strong field of candidates. (Maybe use the sharing buttons below, or post to your Facebook profile. Or you could even use old-fashioned email.)
- Encourage people you know who would be good board members to apply.
Application process:
- To become a candidate for the board, send an email by clicking this link. In addition to your contact information and a bit of biography, make the case for your candidacy. Describe in 200 words or less why you are interested, the perspective you would represent and the contribution you would make as a member of the board. The application deadline is October 15, 2010.
- Creative means of application also are welcome and encouraged. For instance, you could write a post on your blog giving the rationale for your candidacy, or upload a video to YouTube making your multimedia case. Just be sure to either send us the link via email or tweet it using the #MCCSM hashtag.
Update: The application deadline for advisory board members has passed. We are now reviewing the applications to select the additional members.
One of my Mayo Clinic colleagues had a great observation this morning about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and how it relates to patient involvement in health care and our work with the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media:
While I was running this morning and listening to NPR on my iPod, I heard this incredible interview with Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen on working with disasters.
The whole interview is interesting, but the last sound bite — if you scroll down — is what caught my attention for a connection to what he is saying and your work/goals with the Center for Social Media.
He basically says that when you have a major public event, never again in the future should we not plan on public participation. He says you can do it through social media, among other ways, but you either “involve them (the public) or they will involve themselves.”
Is that not a connection to what we are saying with harnessing our patients’ voices through social media in order to learn how their illnesses are affecting their lives and how we can treat them better or participate with them? They’ve been involving themselves for some time now w/their online support groups, for example, but we are in the infancy of hearing their voice in that way …
Love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks much, Traci
Many health care professionals express angst about social media and concerns about the quality of health information patients get via the Web. But Admiral Allen’s observations (and the connection to health care that Traci made) are right on target. As Traci observed, the reality even goes beyond what Admiral Allen sees as the lessons for disaster planning.
It isn’t just a matter of “involve them or they will involve themselves” when it comes to health care. Patients are already getting involved in using social media to help them cope with conditions and find answers. Not all patients, but a growing number.
The real question is: Will medical professionals join the conversations that are already happening, to listen to and learn from patients and also to share their medical and scientific expertise for the benefit of the community? And will we help patients who aren’t yet participating get involved?
Through the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media we will be encouraging this positive engagement from the medical community. The only way we can have a health care system that truly meets patient needs is by involving patients and their families.
In many ways we have been having segregated conversations. Patients are having their discussions online, and many of the health system reform and quality improvement discussions among medical professionals have traditionally taken place without direct patient involvement.
Through the Social Media Health Network, we plan to help bring these conversations together in a much more regular, systematic way by encouraging health care providers and organizations to engage openly with patients and their families.
If you would like to know more about how to join the Social Media Health Network, call 507-284-5005 or contact the center by email.
Below are links to several news articles and blog posts about Tuesday’s announcement of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media:
- Minneapolis Star Tribune: Mayo Clinic to open social media center – 7/27/2010
- KAAL-TV: Mayo Turning to More Social Media – 7/27/2010
- Rochester Post-Bulletin: Mayo Clinic create Center for Social Media – 7/27/10
- 33 Charts: Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media: What it Represents – 7/27/2010
- MedCity News: Mayo Clinic looks to train other hospitals in social-media use – 7/27/2010
- KTTC-TV: Mayo Clinic creates Center for Social Media – 7/27/2010
- I Crashed The Web: Mayo Clinic launches a Center for Social Media – 7/27/2010
- Wall Street Journal: Health Blog Q & A – Mayo Clinic’s New Center for Social Media – 7/28/2010
- Kaiser Health News: Mayo Leaps Into Social Media Marketing – 7/28/2010
- Conversation Agent: Leading an Industry: Mayo Clinic Rolls out Center for Social Media – 7/28/2010
- Fierce Healthcare: Mayo Clinic aims to accelerate online presence with new social media center – 7/28/2010
- CNN Health: The Chart – Mayo Clinic starts social media center – 7/29/2010
- iHealthBeat: Mayo Clinic Launches Center To Help Groups Adopt Social Media – 7/29/2010
- Twin Cities Public Television: Almanac – 7/30/2010
- PSFK – Mayo Clinic Announces Healthcare’s First Center for Social Media – 7/30/2010
- Scienceroll – Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media – 8/2/2010
- AHDI Lounge – Mayo Clinic Embraces Social Media in a Big Way – 8/2/2010
- NewStatesman – Mayo Clinic launches social media centre to connect doctors and patients – 8/2/2010
- For Immediate Release – Lee Aase on Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media – 8/5/2010
- American Medical News – Mayo social media project reflects deeper interest by doctors – 8/9/2010
- Shari Weiss – When Mayo Clinic Openly Values Social Media, Can Rest of World Be Far Behind? – 8/8/2010
