Perficient has created this series, “Responding to Healthcare Consumerism with Social Media” in order to identify the benefits and drawbacks of using social media and collaboration tools in healthcare, explore the doctor and patient communities currently interacting online, outline social media’s impact on the quality of care, and use current innovations to predict the future of social media collaboration in the healthcare industry.
Many have advocated for increased use of social media in the practice of healthcare. However, healthcare social media advocates have been criticized for the lack of privacy and the partial picture of the patient that online interaction provide. They argue that such a model would limit the quality of care.
I agree that not all patient and doctor interaction can occur in traditional social media outlets. However, new technologies are rapidly filling the current void to extend social media channels into a private, communication-rich online environment where patients and doctors can interact. Using these advances in technology, I envision a world where traditional social media outlets, such as Twitter and Facebook, become a starting point for healthcare communications that can be fully integrated into care using advances in collaborative technology. For example, a patient could ask a question in a traditional social forum, which becomes an invitation for further correspondence with a physician. A doctor at a healthcare facility can reach out and respond by direct message, email, portal, phone call, and potentially an office visit. The new office visit could be a traditional in-person visit, or a modern interpretation we’ll call the “cyber visit”.
A New Model for Delivering Healthcare
It is true that modern medical coding is needed to support new forms of doctor and patient communication, but social media has the power to revolutionize health insurance as well. Let me introduce you to Hello Health. Hello Health is a paperless primary care practice based in Brooklyn that uses social media to communicate with patients. Hello Health touts “healthcare freedom” through the use of web-based patient communication, practice management, and electronic health records. Instead of using health insurance, Hello Health requires a monthly enrollment fee. With this fee, you can send an instant message to a doctor via a secure, HIPAA certified messaging tool. An email response from the doctor is free, and patients are charged an additional fee for a “cyber visit”. You can also get an appointment to come into the office, or you can pay for an actual house call.
Hello Health has differentiated itself in the healthcare market as a low cost provider of highly interactive health care. Collaborative technology is at the core of their plan. Modern portals, like the ones at Hello Health, are revolutionary vehicles for providing high quality care in a collaborative environment. Portals can be used to set appointments, view test results, request prescriptions, and facilitate communication with your doctor during “cyber visits”. These technologies provide convenience and, according to our previous post, Increased Access to Data Increases Patient Satisfaction, increase patient satisfaction because they provide patients with what they are looking for in a modern healthcare provider.
Healthcare in the New Age
Powerful portal solutions fill the “patient information void” that so many healthcare professionals fear when considering these new socially-enabled forms of healthcare. One example of a modern portal solution is the IBM Patient Empowerment System. This recently revamped patient portal acts like a social network for participating patients. The portal provides a platform where physicians and patients can work together toward their combined goals of better health. The system also cross-checks patient interactions against past medical records to check for important events, such as potential drug interactions.
Social technologies are also being used to enhance the quality of care for diabetic populations in low income areas. In a joint effort between Microsoft and the University of Miami, a group of diabetes patients were given computers and trained on the Internet. They were then able to communicate with doctors and nurse practitioners via portals. The portal was used not only to transmit data about weight and self-administered blood sugar tests but also as a virtual classroom to learn about nutrition, exercise, and diabetes care. Patients were enabled with the ability to send instant messages and email to their healthcare providers and to discuss their disease with other diabetes patients via discussion boards. This technology shows promise for providers and health plans who are interested in managing chronic disease, especially for the uninsured. I can imagine a similar application doing wonders in rural areas as well.
However, one void still remains. How would a “cyber visit” accommodate care that must take place in person, such as listening to a patient’s heartbeat? There’s a recent invention for that too! I read a blog post from Dr. Joseph Kim that announced one of the latest inventions in telemedicine, namely a scope-to-scope application by 3M, which gives physicians the ability to hear actual heart and body sounds in real time from any distance, even space. Using this technology, and similar technologies that are surely on their way, doctors can provide care from across town, deep into rural areas, or even to astronauts at a space station.
To wind up this series, I’ll provide you with some final thoughts. Just as many of us use social media in the early stages of the sales consideration cycle, social media is a tool that can be used to engage patients in the early phases of healthcare. Healthcare organizations can fill the need for high quality healthcare advice online through the creation of content that increases awareness of both better health and the healthcare organization in question. These healthcare organizations can interact with current and potential patients via traditional social media outlets similar to Palo Alto Medical Foundation. However, once deeper communications between patients and physicians are needed, innovations in collaborative technology can be used to provide a revolutionary, and cost effective, new way to respond to healthcare consumers.
The future of a social media enabled healthcare system is already here and being tested by revolutionary organizations at the cutting edge of science and technology. By increasing the power of their collaborative networks, healthcare providers of this digital age can reach out and enable healcare consumers. They will reap competitive advantage as a result.
