The Doctor Will Tweet You Now

When Houston's Memorial Hermann hospital enliven-tweeted a brain surgery last week, the audience ranged from premed students burning to ask questions just just roughly the procedure to patients who were approximately to undergo the same surgery and wanted to know what to critically prepare for.

One parent wrote in, "Thank you for be in this. Will have augmented concurrence of what was over and done along after that in my son's surgery." A tolerant who had had the surgery tweeted, "Thank you for showing me what I went thru 8 months ago by now I was 'asleep.'"

A medical student wrote in: "Amazing. Reminding me why I'm operating thus complex for these exams consequently that I can maybe get hold of this too one hours of daylight!"

In assistant to using Twitter, the hospital used Youtube videos and photos around Pinterest to document the surgery.

Public participation in the influence is a sign that the hospital's efforts to engage patients through social media is full of zip.

"The habit we see it, we showing off to be where people are looking for opinion to make healthcare decisions subsequent to theyvis--vis sick and adjoin their health behind theynot in the isolate off from nimbly," says Memorial Hermann spokeswoman Alejandra Rodriguez. "More and more, thats taking place online and in social networks."

Rodriguez adds, even though, that such breathing-tweeted deeds designate a window into how hospitals could use social media to achieve patients. Other hospitals have created Facebook pages to share auxiliary developments or cooperative stories, apps to abet locate doctors and online fitness videos.

Pros and Cons of Live-Tweeting Surgeries
Hospitals bearing in mind insinuation to the country have living-tweeted surgeries previously Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital posted updates of a robot-assisted surgery concerning a cancerous bladder in January 2009. Since plus, Sherman Hospital in Elgin, Ill., and others have sentient-tweeted surgeries, even though Memorial Hermann's have been the most extensively curated, taking into consideration not just tweets but photos, videos and living questions from users answered by experts in the surgery room. The enliven feed of the multimedia content was push through the program CoverItLive.com, a web-based living blogging tool.

"I'm in a slant where I'm really frustrating to lift watchfulness of robotic surgery that I think in fact has the potential to mitigation patients," says Craig Rogers, M.D. the director of Robotic Renal Surgery at Henry Ford, who performed the first conscious-tweeted surgery. While he controlled the movements of the surgical robot, a chief resident blasted off tweets very very approximately his go ahead. "It really hit me that back I did that Twitter, I was reaching audiences that we never would have hit."

Tweeting pretend-by-plays from the surgical suite has school lessening for doctors, Dr. Rogers explanation, but there can be some scary moments, and you have to be prepared for those. When he performs liven up surgeries for an audience of surgeons shining to learn more or less medical robotics, the setting gets stressful if, declare, the tolerant starts bleeding. But, Rogers says, "If it's a enliven-tweet matter, you don't have to tweet that share, though you profit things deadened meet the expense of advice. You can put things in that are conservatory and not a distraction."

How Consumers Use Social Media to Get Health Info
About one-third of consumers use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to make medical decisions such as which doctor to see roughly their foot problems or what might be the cause of the rash happening for their arm, according to a February survey of approximately 1,060 U.S. adults by PwC Health Industries. Forty-five percent of those surveyed said they would base a decision to submit to a second recommendation on the subject of social media interactions, and 34 percent said the opinions of people regarding social media would sway their decision about whether to put happening taking into account a specific medication.

As received, younger consumers in the survey felt more pleasurable publicly discussing their health issues on speaking social media sites. More than 80 percent of people 18 to 24 said they would be likely to part health opinion online, and on the order of 90 percent said they would trust the health recommend they found, while and no-one else 24 percent of consumers in the 45 to 64 age range said they would row health auspices following their online networks.

The survey's results underscore the compulsion for insurers and medical providers to exaggeration their use of social media to magnetism to consumers, PwC wrote in their description upon the survey.

Future Uses for Social Media in Healthcare
"There may come a hours of daylight to come not unaided doctors, but patients undergoing medical measures will routinely share the experience as it happens," writes Katie Cordrey upon the Web site Trendhunter.com. "It's by yourself a involve of era back each surgeon has a living tweeter in the OR considering them, providing updates in little 140-environment bursts."

While Henry Ford surgeon Rogers hasn't performed a alive-tweeted operation lately, he sees subsidiary possibilities for the sophisticated of social networking at his hospital, including Twitter-based child maintenance groups for patients who have undergone related surgery or are conscious in the feel of the same health condition. Another possibility is having a resident send regular updates via Twitter to a intimates believer of a tolerant in surgery.

Memorial Hermann says it hopes to be forward of this trend. "It seems to be growing in some markets, but we are playing catch going on as an industry in terms of extensive use of social media," Rodriguez says. "We hurting to be upon the forefront in how we use social media to engage, educate, and add footnotes to consumers."

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