Remo AguilarIt was a happy day of surprises for the #HealthXPh community as it officially launched the tweet chat and Google Hangout as platforms for health collaboration. For a community less than a month old, #HealthXPh’s tweet chat’s upsurge of activity (we hit 560+ impressions!) delighted us to no end. Big thanks to our friends and colleagues at #hcldr and the Filipino physicians for supporting the launching of tweet chat.
The live tweet chat started on time while a hangout (instead of the scheduled Hangout on Air) started some 45 minutes after because of technical difficulties. Once the conversations on hangout rolled however, it snowballed into one live, highly interactive discussion on emerging technologies. We actually went into overtime by some 30minutes or so!
Since we’re utilizing all medium as a platform for collaboration, I’m answering the questions/topics in a blog post, here in my blog.
[box style=”yellow question shadow” ]T1. What is #HealhXPh for core collaborators?[/box]
HealthXPh is an enabling platform of collaboration for all the healthcare stakeholders -physicians, patients, healthcare institutions, academe and policy makers in the Philippines. It will engage all of these stakeholders to take a more active role in owning issues that affect their health. It aims to give stakeholders a new tool to increase reach beyond what mainstream media can in the discussions about health.
[box style=”yellow question shadow” ]T2. What emerging technologies do you find important and relevant in healthcare?[/box]
The mobile sms because of its reach and widespread use in the Philippines is still on top of these emerging technologies. With adaptation and maximization of its use to further healthcare programs and discussions is of great potential for an archipelagic country like the Philippines. I currently use sms to remind some of my distantly located patients of their follow -up schedule and specialist referrals.
Social media also plays an important role for me in my clinical practice. This is mainly for patient education and collaboration with fellow physicians. I get queries from potential patients on facebook, twitter and sometimes Google+. All my social media interactions are aimed at encouraging patients to see a physician personally for their health questions and concerns. While facebook and twitter may have the farthest reach, I’m particularly interested with Google+ and all the app services attached to it. It’s potential as a platform for use to health is enormous. Most of these services, is free. Of course, blogging is an effective social media platform to further healthcare discussions and raise awareness. I’ve been blogging since 2006 and that spurred my interest into social media as a platform for collaboration in health!
I do not consider email as an emerging technology nowadays but for the past decade, it has been a great tool for me in health. Research, training, discussions, updates, and lately to communicate with patients has all been quite a success.
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T3 What do you think are the obstacles to the use of emerging technologies in healthcare?[/box]
Many healthcare stakeholders in the Philippines adapt slowly to emerging technologies when it comes to health. Technical knowhow seem to be an apparent stumbling block. However, if you observe the use of emerging technologies in other segments of our society- business, entertainment and politics, this stumbling block seem negligible. Socially this is can be tied up to a bigger, more fundamental reality to Filipino’s priorities. Health and all other services attached to it, remains low on our priority scale. This is the behavior we wanted to change. With social media as a platform, #HealthXPh could hopefully effect a positive behavioral change to all stakeholders for a collaboration on health.
Closing Thought (CT): What’s one thing you’ve learned in todays discussion that you can take to your place of influence to help a patient or colleague tomorrow?
Foremost in my intention is to enlighten interested colleagues and patients regarding social media use in healthcare. Enlighten primarily mean allaying fears of physicians regarding social media usage and issues. The other is to come up with simpler “1-2-3 how to steps” for adapting to some social media tools they can use.
