Posts Tagged ‘Doctor’

Effective Social Media Use in Healthcare Marketing

Wednesday, February 5th, 2014

imageSpoken about the same, first stumble happens when they take an attempt to engage with their fans or audience without identifying their content needs. This further leads to the foundation of an inappropriate conversation. Therefore, there is no substitute for valuable content! When it comes to the consumer base, they want in-depth information. What needs to be understood by this segment is that there is an ocean of information out there, and when people get sick nowadays, they want information right away. Interaction with patients and consumers is important, but great and right content is the key!

The Healthcare Segment

Apart from all the challenges and limitations, Healthcare segment can be amplified in a great way as it includes a lot of processes from patient relations to content shared to managing health records etc. Many doctors can already be seen wearing Google Glass, patients equipped with latest technology support systems and nurses with iPads.

Social Media and Healthcare

imageThis still remains unexplored, Social media for healthcare can garner increased communication, treatment efficacy and provider efficacy; which in turn will portray the organizational transparency. Already a good amount of doctors, family members, patients and healthcare specialists are using social media to result in more impactful treatment. Consumers are also found to use social media platforms to find and later share information about health plans, medical treatments and doctors.

What does Social Media have in store for Healthcare Industry?

Social Media is strongly transforming how doctors & patients operate and interact with each other. Although theimage matters related to the security concerns, confidentiality, misinformation and data review come along with anything related to healthcare, Social Media can modify the complete experience for everyone linked with it. With patients, consumers and everyone stepping in to the online space to discuss their health, medical experiences, seek opinions, research and share their symptoms or ailments; it becomes all the more important for healthcare professionals to tap into this wonderful resource and connect with them on social platforms in order to add their expert voice to these conversations.

Social Media will change the way health related communications happen.

An effective social media strategy for a healthcare brand should aim towards accomplishing goals in few categories, namely:

  • – Communications
  • – Information Sharing
  • – Clinical Outcomes and,
  • – Speed of Innovation

A few things you need to regularly keep a tab of:

imagePatients that share their views or opinions freely online followed by people who comment on everything, or update a status even about their cold to health related articles. There are cases when patients end up getting basic advice from medical professionals that happen to be in their network. This can help a brand get qualitative feedback or report about their services too.

Doctors are also engaging proactively and believe that social media presence improves the quality of care through constant line of communication.

Blogs written by healthcare professionals can be integrated with social media accounts too. A systematic content management system can further influence people to post content to blogs or websites.

Hosting Google Hangouts with previous patients or those undergoing treatments is a very innovative way where technology helps healthcare segments. Doctors contribute to a patient-centric model of healthcare with such technological innovations. Loyalty and satisfaction is built in the process too.

A successful social media strategy would help a healthcare brand in revamping their communication, service and feedback.


Prescription of a Strong Social Media Strategy for Healthcare Industry

imageHealthcare organizations should develop a social media strategy that leverages social media in healthcare marketing to help influence the customers & at the same time accomplish strategic healthcare goals.

Keep in mind that just as your patients have their own individual wants, characters and a voice; similarly your social media strategy should be unique to your organization. Healthcare professionals are empathetic and caring individuals. It’s time to demonstrate that strength to a larger, online community.

What should Healthcare Brands do to leverage Social Media? image

  • – Follow your customers and engage with potential patients
  • – Provide value to consumer’s perspective. Providing value here means providing useful information
  • – Be active on Social media and leverage its potential
  • – Be a resource to those looking out for information related to healthcare
  • – Enable doctor searches, online scheduling, and relevant information
  • – Connect with loved ones of patients as its not only the patients always, but there are those who care for them too, active online
  • – Connect with patients or consumers through online communities
  • – Build discussion forums
  • – The content you create, make it share worthy. Ensure that it can be forwarded, printed or posted to patients
  • – Network with those potential healthcare employees with your social media presence. Basically, you can bring your brand to life for potential employees.
  • – Follow relevant hashtags & handles
  • – Twitter chats help you listen to perspectives on key topics & also offer a chance to raise awareness about what you as a healthcare brand offer
  • – Listen: know what your patients are doing by diving into some of the user generated content
  • – Regulations: yes, you need to take care of the content that goes up there. Don’t forget to review it by your legal, regulatory & medical teams
  • – Be open-minded and creative, plan & test your ideas

imageIn the long arc of people’s journey to better health, healthcare segments strive to become more supportive and relevant through social media. In this case, what healthcare segments will win is their respect and loyalty followed by their behaviors that will change to improve their overall health with the strengthening of healthcare brands.

There is no pre-defined rule as to how we should engage with patients on social media, but we cannot deny the fact that there still lie barriers in the pharmaceutical industry as to what one can talk about online.

The elements of engagement that Healthcare brands need to know in order to understand the content needs of their audiences are:

Value can be provided by creating content that solves consumer problems. Listening to their complaints or suggestions and adding a personal touch to conversations generates value for your brand.

Efficiency of a healthcare brand depends on their ability to respond to customer inquiries, comments & questions both off and online without any delay followed by designing mobile friendly content that can be accessed by patients on the go.

Trust is built through the expectation of complete honesty from a healthcare brand by consumers. Delivering accurate advice, displaying successful customer recovery stories, testimonials, nutrition advice, health-tips, fitness routines etc. is a part of it.

Consistency includes the fact that whatever you communicate through offline and online platforms should at no point collide with the real customer/patient experiences.

Relevance is injecting a highly targeted content to patients or consumers which goes a long way in building an emotional connection and consequent click to action.
3 things you need to know!

imageA tweet or a post is not a diagnosis!
Always remember that any information that you post on Social Media should not be considered as a medical advice by your followers or consumers. It is not a replacement for a consultation with a doctor as one on one consultation with health care professionals is still primary & legible.

imageSchedule the communication!
For a better level of patient privacy, a healthcare brand should ensure that comments made on any of their social platform should not appear online before it is reviewed or approved by internal team of professionals.

imageSet the limits; be clear with your stand!
As a healthcare brand, clearly establish where your organization stands in regards to social media engagement by patients or consumers. Designing a strategy to improve your capability to leverage the enormous reach of social media platforms to connect and learn from the online community is vital.

With patients going online for their healthcare solutions etc., it becomes very essential for your healthcare organization to create a social media strategy where you prepare your staff to listen, engage & measure social media. Are you ready to join your patients in the social media world?image 

You can also have a look at another blog ‘In the pink of Health on Social Media’.

It is very important for the healthcare brands to identify and understand the consumer behaviour before they make  any attempts for social media engagement. Does your healthcare brand have a clear social media policy established? Do you think we have missed out on something in this post? Do tell us about it in the comments!

Bloggerati of the Fortnight: Sunil Deepak

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

sunilCurrent Position and Organisation: Head, medical and scientific support at Italian Association Amici di Raoul Follereau – AIFO

Areas of Expertise: Medicine, history, art, writing, research, photography

Educational Background: University College of Medical Sciences (UCMS), New Delhi, India

Blog Name: Chayachitrakar

It is not always that one finds a doctor of high repute and stature who has an uncanny passion for art, environment, films, music, photography and archeology. Add to this repertoire, a genuine inclination to read and write. Sunil Deepak is one such individual who is a classic textbook amalgam of science and nature. What sets him apart from many in his field of work is an acute eye for observation.

His blog, Chayachitrakar, in its most rudimentary sense, is a photo-blog that is presented in quite a unique fashion. The blog employs 3 languages to communicate to its audience, namely – English, Hindi and Italian. The name of the blog (in Hindi) literally translates into ‘painter of shadows’ and justifies its name followed by actions. As Sunil puts it across himself, “My challenge is to find 3 images on the same theme for each post. To look at hundreds of images till I can find something that unites them is a wonderful exercise.”

Dr. Deepak has been traveling around the world for about a quarter of a century and by the sheer nature of his profession and association with an international organization, he has been able to visit the remotest corners of the world. From there on, it becomes only obvious for someone with a passion for photography to capture the stills and take away a piece of Earth every time he gets a chance.

In this blog of his, besides some of his other professional and personal blogs, Sunil reaches out to the audience and bridges the language gap between cultures by going multi lingual. The most appealing part about the post besides the photographs itself, is the title and description given out. First in English and then followed by Hindi and Italian gives it a unique touch. He in fact, takes it a step further in the ‘comments’ section where he replies to each comment posted by graciously replying in the same language. Aesthetically, the blog is quite well laid out and a simple non-flashy presentation makes for a good stay on the page for a first time visitor.

For a doctor whose main areas of work are leprosy and disability to maintain a photo blog that gives insights into the very fabric of diversity in man and nature, it is indeed commendable and this rightfully entitles Sunil to be our Bloggerati of the Fortnight.

Click here to read more about our Blogger of the Fortnight series.

In the pink of health on social media

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

HIPAA-PhotoWhile medical marketing is something which needs to follow a lot of guidelines and regulations, health awareness and patient engagement are possible areas where social media can be employed. With exploding usage of social media, a time where your doctor’s twitter handle is part of your emergency kit is not far away.

A real case in point being that of a simple tweet from a user suffering a heart attack that led to hundreds of tweeter responding to it and guiding him on how to stabilize himself before paramedics could reach him. With unlimited resource available on the internet, help can be only a tweet away.

While internationally lot of pharmaceutical companies along with prominent hospital chains have taken to social media, in India the scene is little different. Not many pharmaceutical companies have really taken the plunge. Although it must be said that the legal aspect of pharmaceutical marketing could be a barrier yet there is still a lot of scope for them to explore social media like their multinational counterparts.

On the other hand, for super specialty hospital chains armed with a marketing plan like any other FMCG company coming up in India, the scope of using social media platform is good. In fact, Apollo Hospitals already has a Facebook page with more than 58000 people while Max Healthcare Hospitals group has some 57000 people on its page.

The areas where social media can be majorly playing a part are:

  1. Awareness
  2. Fund raising
  3. Helpline and assistance

Building Awareness

With more and more people logging on to the internet in search of authentic information, social networking platforms are fast becoming the research center for any subject. Keeping this in mind, hospitals across the world have realized the need of educating people about primary healthcare methods hoping that this would build a loyalty towards the institution if and when the need arises.

An example of this can be seen on Max Healthcare fan page that utilizes videos to provide information about healthcare to be taken during pregnancy during late 30s. Such critical information might not be available directly, hence, the it becomes critical for an authentic source like Max Healthcare to provide it.

Preg 1
Max Healthcare Video Series

Internationally Johnson & Johnson has a YouTube network channel JNJHealth with a video library of over 500 videos and over 6 million views. The channel is sub categorized in to various aspects that dwell on better understanding of health issues. With user based stories forming a major part of the library, the emotional connect that the channel brings in is incredible.

JNJHealth
Johnson and Johnson Healthcare YouTube network

Another route explored internationally for building awareness is the live tweeting of surgeries from prominent hospitals. While this may sound very frivolous to general audience, it is amazingly high value information sharing that the medical students can look towards in order to understand complex procedures.

Live surgery
TwitPic shared during an open hearth surgery at Houston Hospital

Organizing Fund Raisers

Medical fund raisers are always an issue. While many would spend thousands on a trip, few would come out to provide to the local hospitals. This is a problem not just in our country, but across the globe. UCSF Benioff children’s hospital in San Francisco came up with an innovative plan to get the community support in fund raising.

In association with University of California, it ran an eight week fund raising campaign in association with www.causes.com and Facebook. Several Silicon Valley stalwarts along with celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and MC Hammer, who used their twitter network to spread the word, lent their support.

Teams were made of followers and supporters, put together by selected leaders who formed the groups through their personal networks and then competed against each other for the grand prize of getting to name a prominent section of the hospital.

The UCSF Benioff Children’s hospital had already amassed $375 million towards the estimated $600 million when last reported. It not only shows that people are willing to help when approached in correct manner but also that find raising need not always be a pleading process. All one needs is a creative plan that is well executed through proper channels.

UCSF2
UCSF Facebook driving the fund raiser

Helping Handle

Like any other brand that has used twitter, hospitals and medical service providers are looking at using Twitter as a real time helpline that can address the patients’ emergency call. The idea can be extended in case of accidents where reaching doctors or hospitals would be difficult. In such case tweeting out for help and having a hospital respond to your call would act as a major assistance.

Although such a major helpline has yet not been setup, a rough estimate shows that already about 500 hospitals are on Twitter in United States of America alone. In India, major hospitals have setup their twitter accounts. With a little more planning and careful monitoring, a helpline setup can be easily put in place.

Getting healthy, socially

While another aspect that can be touched upon is the creation of online communities where people can come and share their experience, this is one area that many practitioners are not very keen on. The simple reason being that, while sharing your experience can give a lot of courage to someone going through the same illness, the conditions may be very different and hence the treatment plan. If not supervised properly this could well cause a complication. Although, if a monitoring and supervision module is put in place, this alone is one field that medical fraternity can look towards in order to raise awareness.

Social media is a way of life for most people in today’s date. It is not something that will fade away. If only, it will get more integrated in our lives and thus, leading to more and closer association to our everyday living. Thus, hospitals and medical institution should look at integrating this channel in their overall 360 degree marketing campaigns.

Bloggerati of the Fortnight: Dr. Kumaresh Krishnamoorthy

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

KumareshHealthcare facilities and pharmaceutical products are a very touchy area for most marketing specialists, especially when it comes to advertising and promoting them. Talking about various developments in the field of medicine, hospitals and healthcare however, is not.

Dr. Kumaresh Krishnamoorthy, who dons many hats when it comes to his illustrious career, is currently a Senior Consultant in ENT and head and neck surgery, Neurotology and Cochlear Implantation at Nova Medical Centers, Bengaluru. Besides, he is also a visiting consultant at the Apollo Hospitals.

Dr. Krishnamoorthy explores the world of healthcare by sharing some valuable tips and information about various medical conditions, procedures, treatments et al alongside his other updates on his blog http://drkumaresh.blogspot.in/ with special focus on his area of expertise. For a medical student or someone with an interest in the field of medicine this blog is quite a repository of handy details with an outlook that is akin to that of a medical journal. Ofcourse, it also has Dr. Krishnamoorthy’s personal tryst with various other topics, directly or indirectly related to medicine and his experiences. A few of them are even testimonials of his proven credibility.

The blog also contains images that are linked to his Facebook and Google+ page of various medical treatments and ailments alongside addressing the latest developments that are happening around the world, not necessarily restricted to just medical affairs. Dr. Krishnamoorthy’s blog, although a specific industry-centric one, has definitely made it a point to prove that a doctor by profession does not necessarily need to always talk hospitals, drugs and health but also have a wholesome grip of other aspects of surrounding conditions and situations that go into creating a healthy living scenario. All this entitles him to be featured as our Bloggerati of the fortnight.