At long last, we have reached our final Social Media Week 2010 post. This one comes from Affect Strategies Assistant Account Executive, Antoniette Pemberton, who has already put some of the healthcare social networking sites mentioned in her post to use.
Social media is continuously changing the way we receive information and interact with each other. Like many, I turn to my friends and colleagues when considering a purchase, looking for a new restaurant and especially when searching for a good doctor. (As a matter of fact, all of my physicians were recommended through colleagues!) Armed with this information, I then turn to search engines and social networks for further reviews and recommendations.
The healthcare and pharmaceutical industries are attuned to these new consumer behaviors and have begun experimenting with social media platforms in order to build stronger relationships between doctors and patients.
Last Thursday night, I had the pleasure of attending the Navigating Social Media & New Technology in Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Industries event. The panelists were:
- Dr. Augustine Fou, Group CDO, Healthcare Consultancy Group
- DJ Edgerton, CEO, Zemoga
- Ned Russell, Managing Director, Saatchi Wellness
- Jay Parkinson MD, MPH, Partner, The Future Well
- Oliver Kharraz MD, COO, Co-Founder, Zoc Doc
The panel participants were passionate about improving healthcare through technology. They provided insightful tips on how patients and physicians can use social media to create better relationships. In addition, they discussed new platforms that have been recently created that provide a better experience in finding doctors, getting appointments, and even receiving post-appointment follow-ups.
According to Dr. Oliver Kharraz, “the average wait for a primary care doctor is 24 days.” Is 24 days too long for you? Want to find a doctor in or out of your network? And book an appointment online? Dr. Kharraz’s website, Zoc Doc, the OpenTable of healthcare allows you to do just that.
Now that you have your appointment, you may want to find out what other patients have the same concerns. If so, The Health Tweeder is there for you. Dr. Jay Parkinson and Dr. Oliver Kharraz stressed that physicians need to become better listeners, provide customer service and remove the burden of following-up with physicians and pharmacies from patients.
Although the cost to start a social platform is expensive, the reward is great. Unfortunately, doctors have to finance these initiatives themselves and are not monetarily compensated for their time.
The most interesting platform for me was, Hello Health, a site where doctors and patients can build relationships through a direct pay model, where patients can pay a nominal fee to speak and interact directly with a doctor. Event-goers excited about these networks had tons of questions.
- How do you get doctors to engage?
- What legalities do you face?
- What do you do with the data?
Even though the panelists could only respond on behalf of their respective companies, they all agreed that doctors need to get paid for their time (whether responding to an email or interacting face-to-face) and the biggest challenge they face with social networks is providing content in real-time, due to legal barriers.
The panel’s consensus was that people don’t need more content. Instead, brands (including individual doctors as well as pharmaceutical companies) need to create meaningful relationships with their patients and customers.
–Antoniette Pemberton
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