Remo Aguilar
When I started blogging, I was looking for health care blog(s) to emulate and do a case study. I’m venturing into the health care niche, specifically here in the Philippines. I suspect there’s scarcity of health care blogs in the Philippines, save for a few (e.g Parallel Universes; Doktorko Blogs) who bravely paved the way for us new comers in this specific health care niche. The emergence of this new social media (which has been so successful in other Filipino blog niches like IT) has yet to reach its “full term” for delivery here in the Philippines. In fact, it was just blossoming up and exploding that most of us, hardly had any time to catch up. Given the then low (6%) internet usage in this country and the even smaller (just a hunch) social media usage by MDs and patients for social media here, this new venture seem to be a huge challenge.
Having said that, I really don’t have any idea where or how to start. I just know I need to start blogging and the rest will shape up as I go along the blogging way. And of course, I looked outside for my “template”. I jumped reading surveys from bloggers outside Philippines, the US specifically. Health care professionals, entrepreneurs, institutions and just about every stake holder in the medical field, jumped into the bandwagon of medical blogging as a emerging social media in the first world. For them, the potential is so enormous and the experience is so exciting it will be years before saturating the health care niche market. The emergence of blogs as a social media in health care is unstoppable!
So where should we start here in the Philippines? I mean yes, the internet is limitless and its boundaries non existent. But can we really apply information taken from their situation or issues to our specific health care concerns? Maybe not. But this what makes this new social media more exciting.
I guess it’s all about perspectives, of seeing opportunities rather than obstacles. The dearth of health care blogs should never looked upon as an obstacle but rather an opportunity to expand horizons and extend our mass base for our health care advocacies. As Entrepreneural MD has pointed out, it might be just the the solution to a boring medical practice. Who knows, it might be another solution to the diaspora of Filipino MDs!
Next: Taking a look at the results of 2006 Global Online Healthcare Survey by Envision Solutions, LLC; The Medical Blog Network(Trusted MD) and how it may apply to Filipino Healthcare blogs.
Up coming: Let’s look at the reasons for the “dearth” under microscope and how it is applied to the Philippines.
(Thanks to Dear Kitty for the cartoon!)
