Livestrong CEO: Social Media Will Change Health Care Forever

I was fortunate enough to witness the inaugural conference of #SXSH yesterday in Austin and the incredible discussions on social media best practices and strategies for the health care industry.  The event, the brainchild of four twitterati rock stars, was real evidence of the power of social media for the public good.
          It was wonderful to  meet many people I admire on Twitter and discover how much online dialog accerlates real-life relationships.  And the event? No attitudes. No hierarachy.  No silos. Just possibility and the power of collaboration.
          In fact, this was probably the first conference I've ever attended where I actually wanted  to attend the networking event.
          Key words:  Authentic.  Transparent.  Real-time.  Collaboration.  Accessible.  Relate.  Innovate.  Champion.  Create!
          Livestrong CEO Doug Ulman opened the day with an inspiring talk about the role of social media in transforming health care. He compared the state of social media at the time of his own cancer diagnosis (remember Eudora?) and how it is now where on-line communities can help ...."patients make better informed decisions in real time."
       Doug, who knocked me out (I'm laughing at talking at once above) with his great warmth and sincerity,  gives three reasons why social media will change health care:

• It's free and accessible
• Information: available in 'real-time' (not something you find out six months AFTER you've selected a treatment, for example)
• Patient - centered and driven.

       "Social Media will change health care forever, " Ulman said.  "At the end of the day, it's people coming together and interacting that will change the paradigm."
       
       Ulman was just the beginning.  Additional highlights included:

• Jenn Texada, who discussed the both the rewards and challenges of monitoring social media activity for MD Anderson, the national cancer facility in Houston that serves more than 100,000 patients a year.  
• Greg Matthews, changes the game for Humana with an "innnotation team" that developed a pilot program of gaming for kids that monitored their activity levels with a pedometer.  Result:  a 35% increase in activity level.
• Small group discussions with Ed Bennett, University of Maryland Systems, and Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, http://www.33charts.com/
• Two extraordinary afternoon speakers, from Fabio Gratton, co-founder and chief innovation officer of Ignite Health.  His case study on #FDAsm: great example of technology solving problem of too much information through data aggregation.  
• Last address we were able to hear was the genesis of n the Pillbox system for rapid identification of pills http://pillbox.nlm.nih.gov /via @doctorblogs by David Hale (@lostonroute66).  Hard to grasp but until he developed this webpage a visual identification system (online) did not exist.  Talk about an incredible public service!!

        This was just a fast overview of some of the conference highlights.  If you'd like more in-depth reading, cut and paste #SXSH into your Twitter search feature and every tagged posts and links will appear.

        More to come.  Happy weekend all!

        Jody

Photos courtesy of Barbara Peyton, Barbara Peyton and Associates, Montgomery, Texas.