Social media finds its niche
The Mayo Clinic believes strongly that social media has a place in medicine; it has been podcasting since 2005, hopped onto platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter as they came online, and even went so far as to create its own Center for Social Media two years ago.
The clinic is now urging other health care professionals and the public to embrace the idea of social media in the new book Bringing the Social Media Revolution to Health Care, which contains 30 essays examining the issue from different perspectives.
Questions about privacy, the type of information distributed via social media and the purpose of embarking on social media use are some of the most commonly asked, according to Dr. Farris Timimi, medical director of the centre.
“We always say, ‘once it’s in the cache, you can’t put it in the trash’ to remind people that once something is public on the Internet, it’s out there forever,” Timimi says. “We tell them to think carefully about what they post. We also stress that these are tools for medical education and engagement, not medical practice — we’re not prescribing medicine by Twitter.”
What can be done, he suggests, is to create clarity and a conversation around all of the medical information out there. For instance, there are 22 million unique articles alone about heart failure — his area of practice — in the Mayo Clinic’s database. Blogs or videos can help distil the key points into more easily digestible content.
In many cases, he suggests, online communities have formed around specific diseases or ailments, and they are actively searching for credible information. Content aimed at those specific communities may not get millions of clicks or views, but they are there as a permanent resource for those looking for answers.
“It’s a moral obligation to meet our patients where they are with the content they need,” says Timimi.
He and Lee Aase, the director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, say engaging in social media also pays off for health organizations.
“Many workplaces have access to platforms like Facebook and Twitter blocked, because they’re worried about productivity,” Aase explains.
In fact, he says studies show communicating via social media about work can allow employees to bypass restrictions of time zones or geography, boosting productivity by as much as 25 per cent.
Aase points out the financial costs involved are relatively low; most social media platforms are free to use, many workplaces are already computerized, and equipment capable of recording video is no longer particularly expensive or difficult to use.