Cast & Curious

Tag: #hcsmPh

  • Part I: An Introduction into Aligning Social Media Strategy to your Advocacy Goals

    Social Media Strategy and Healthcare

    There’s no denying social media is here, now. Our society live and breathe social media. In fact, many experts believe social media is the “game changer” in many sectors of our society now and in the foreseeable future. #HealthXPh believe social media is a tool to positively change or improve healthcare in the Philippines.

    Ethical Issues

    Put simply, the use of social media by healthcare professionals is  strictly governed by the same professional code of conduct practiced offline. At #HealthXPh, we believe that our online self is a reflection of our offline self. Thus, #HealthXPh crowdsourced a Healthcare Professional Social Media Manifesto to guide health practitioners on the ethical use of social media. This manifesto should not discourage health professionals from using social media. In fact, health professionals now have a guide walking the path of a tricky social media.  There are numerous examples on the ethical use of social media to improve healthcare. #HealthXPh believe social media democratizes access to healthcare. It provides a venue for healthcare stakeholders to speak and be heard on matters pertaining to health. No other forms of media had this added value of “engagement” between the different stakeholders of health.

    Healthcare Social Media and its “Return on Investment” (ROI)

    One of the more pervasive perception about social media healthcare is that it is just a “waste of time”. Social media is a waste of time if you are using it just to kill time. Our value proposition  for healthcare social media at #HealthXPh is different, positive and complimentary to existing developmental strategies for health. Social media provides an alternative, fast, cheaper, broader reach platform for discussing healthcare issues. Social media demands transparency and accountability to all those who use it. Our long term goal is to democratize discussion in health, by giving the different stakeholders a platform for discussion and effect change by crowdsourcing ideas.  Positive engagement is our key and that is what we set out to ultimately measure our ROI in healthcare social media.

    Lack of ROI for healthcare professionals engaged in social media is the very reason why some called it a “waste of time”. The inability to measure social media’s ROI for health is the culprit. That’s what the goal of my topic today here, in the Second Philippine Healthcare Social Media Summit- Advocacy Track.

    Return on investment (ROI) is a business phrase that describe the benefit to an investor resulting from an investment of some resource (Wikipedia). Allow me to draw the same parallelism in healthcare social media. To clarify, the investment and benefit maybe anything of value to the investor and may not be always monetary. At #HealthXPh, we defined our ROI as the positive engagement we obtained from convening social media healthcare professionals.  This is still a short term goal and is continually evolving until we find our metrics for our ultimate goal- improve healthcare in the Philippines.

    ROI as we defined it, declutters the social media noise and allows us to focus on our social media advocacy goals. #HealthXPh as an advocacy aligned our social media strategy to our advocacy goals. Hence, a method of measuring our social media “success” or ROI, is a measure too of our advocacy’s success. Demonstrating social media success by measuring ROI fine tunes our efforts and streamline logistics to advance our advocacy goals. In other advocacies or companies, demonstrating success by measuring ROI is a way to encourage or gain support from advocacy leaders or executives.  It is thus imperative we measure ROI in social media healthcare. It is not the lack of ROI but the lack of defining our social media ROI for our advocacies. This is the ultimate goal of my talk today.

    To share to you what I’ve learned about Aligning Social Media Strategy to Your Advocacy Goals and developing metrics to measure your healthcare social media’s success!

    So are we ready to dive into social media strategy for healthcare advocacy?

    (This post is part of series on “Aligning Social Media Strategy to your Advocacy Goals“, a presentation by the author Dr. Remo-tito Aguilar, on the Advocacy Track of the Second #HealthXPh Philippine Healthcare Social Media Summit held last April 21, 2016 at the PICC, Manila.)

  • All Set for the 2nd #HealthXPh Philippine Healthcare Social Media Summit (#hcsmph) at the PICC

    We are doubly excited!

    Since #HealthXPh started three years ago, the co-founders have been creating venues for stakeholders to explore the use of disruptive technologies in healthcare. This is our core objective- educate health professionals and patients, let stakeholders explore disruptive technologies such as social media to better healthcare in the Philippines. #HealthXPh took advantage of social media platforms- blogs (healthxph.net), twitter (@healthXPh), Facebook, Google, G Hangouts, Linkedin, Periscope and the like, to achieve this core objective. We’ve spoke and sent influencers to local and international conferences on disruptive technologies. Our engagement strategy included consultancy to health organizations on matters of social media and other disruptive technologies. We even have provided insights on social media etiquettes for policy makers and institutions. Our conversion call to action endpoint is that all health stakeholders will ethically use beneficial disruptive technologies to improve the Philippine healthcare landscape.

    The success of the first #HealthXPh Healthcare Social Media Summit in Cebu last year was proof social media is taking Philippine healthcare in a sweep, whether stakeholders like it or not. As #HealthXPh’s maiden summit, we structured the conference as an introduction to social media health, providing inspiration, stories, education, advocacies and ethical dimensions to a burgeoning disruptive health technology. We’ve learned a lot of insights and opportunities from the first summit, heralding the uniquely workshop styled second summit this 2016.

    In this upcoming second summit in Manila on April 21, 2016, #HealthXPh will be bringing the discussion a step further into the healthcare social media landscape . “From click to brick” (this year’s summit tagline) will teach participants ethical, practical and hands on social media skills to level up their healthcare portfolio. #HealthXPh will hope to teach participants basic social media skill and align it with their healthcare goals. Again, as part of our engagement strategy/conversion/ call to action timeline, we want healthcare stakeholders to be at ease, confident and ethically guided with the use of social media to achieve healthcare goals.

    We partnered with top notch healthcare organizations, providers and stakeholders- DOST-PCHRD, Health Informatics, 101 Health Research, UP Medical Informatics Unit and Philippine Alliance of Patient Organizations, to host this event. We’ve prepared an A-list of speakers, pioneers in the use of social media in Philippine Health. We have pre selected summit participants, key influencers to efficiently deliver summit objectives. We hope to receive feedback and insights into the success of this summit so we can improve on our goals in the upcoming discussion platforms.

    The summit program can be accessed by downloading mobile android app, here. Here’s a preview of the summit program.

    I am inviting all healthcare stake holders- health professionals, patients, advocates, policy makers, ethicist and health disruptive tech influencers to attend this summit. We are still accepting walk ins but you will be transferred to another track if your tack of choice is already filled. So hurry!

    Summit registration is free, but you have to signup and answer questions in this link. Lastly show up early for the summit. If you received confirmation letters to attend and but will not be around before summit tracks begin, we will give the slot to the waiting list for that track.

    We will be live streaming the summit on our different social media platforms- blog, twitter, facebook, periscope and web ex. Follow summit proceedings on twitter by using hashtag #hcsmph and #healthxph with corresponding track subhashtags.  Webex, Google Youtube live,  live streaming will be provided on HealthXPh.net. The summit will be live too on Periscope.

    Disclosure: #HealthXPh is a healthcare startup co -founded three years ago that provides social media platform for discussion and exploration on the use of disruptive technologies to improve Philippine healthcare. The author co-founded #HealthXPh.

  • Social media profiles and industry guidelines for Healthcare Professionals

    (Note: This post is also published at HealthXPh.net )

    Two years ago, only a few healthcare professionals are using social media. Not so these days. The rule is , if you’re not on social media, you are the “exception”.

    The growing popularity of social media and smartphone brought innovations in healthcare. Healthcare became “social”. The classic patient- provider relationship grew into networks or communities of collaborating patients, providers and healthcare institutions. Social media provided additional tools and avenues for learning diseases, get psychosocial support or spread advocacies.

    But the ease of sharing in social media placed “privilege” healthcare information at risk of being “leaked” into public space. The ramifications of such breach in patient privacy and confidentiality is still isn’t fully understood. What is clear is it violates the patients rights and does not look very good for the healthcare provider. Thus the concern now is shifting from just “access”, to responsible use of social media.

    How do we then evaluate if any social media post violates patient privacy? How does the post breaches the confidentiality clause inherent in patient- provider relationship? In the Philippines, the lack of social media guidelines (self or institutionally driven) creates confusion. (Note: It is for this reason that #HealthXPh spearheaded and is continually advocating a crowd sourced Social Media and Medical Professionalism Manifesto. You should sign here if you support this advocacy too!)

    I once asked a provider his reaction to a negative comment  about a  seemingly “innocuous”,  run of the mill work scene (an OR picture with the patient’s belly inside the picture) he posted in his facebook timeline. His answer is classic:

    “It’s my personal account anyway. I can do whatever I want there. Besides, the privacy settings are strictly limited to my friends only. “

    There is confusion on what constitute private space on social media. Also, many believe (though I probably could not prove this now) there’s  a dichotomy between “personal” and “professional” social media profiles. There are still HCPs believing one profile does not overlap each other even though both represent only one and the same person.

    We at #HealthXPh would like to move forward the discussion of medical professionalism and social media guidelines in the Philippines. The healthcare social media manifesto is a work in progress. We are asking for your opinion. Join us this Saturday April 25, 2015 9:00 PM Manila time, as we discuss healthcare social media profiles and industry guidelines.

    • T1: Should personal social media accounts of HCPs be exempted from social media policy or guidelines?
    • T2: Who do you think should enforce healthcare social media guidelines?Government? HCP governing bodies, like PMA, PNA? Why?
    • T3: Will social media policy stifle the use of social media in healthcare? If yes, how?