Social Media and Healthcare

Social media bombards users with memes, cat videos and political squabbles. 

For thousands of women facing an aggressive form of breast cancer, Facebook recently brought another, less common offering: hope. 

“We were having a really, really difficult time finding patients,” said Casey Bales, project manager for triple-negative breast cancer research at the IU School of Medicine. 

She coordinates clinical trials – studies in which patients receive drugs or other treatments to try to understand their effects on health outcomes.

The breast cancer trial, begun in 2014, wasn't going well. Three years into the study, less than 40% of the patients needed were enrolled. 

“The trial was in jeopardy,” Bales said last week.

It was saved in 2017 when Facebook posts from the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer and IU researchers about a trial using genomics – the study of genes and their functions – to find weaknesses in cancer tumors appeared.

Indiana University researchers and the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer used the popular networking website and Instagram to recruit participants for a clinical trial. The first-of-its-kind social media effort jump-started a once-moribund effort that led to a Dec. 13 announcement that doctors say could save the lives of patients with triple-negative breast cancer. 

Recruiting through social media has become an important tool for physicians and medical researchers, who can sometimes have difficulty finding patients with specific forms of diseases they are trying to study. 

“We are implementing social media efforts pretty much on every new trial,” Bales said.

“Social media gives us an opportunity to leverage communities and resources to interact with a much broader community than we've been able to reach before,” the report said. 

Lisa Hayes is a survivor. 

The 62-year-old Indianapolis woman was diagnosed 12 years ago with triple-negative breast cancer. 

“I didn't even know (at the time) there were different kinds of breast cancer,” she said in an interview last week. “I just thought breast cancer was breast cancer. That's a scary feeling, to know you had a very aggressive kind of breast cancer.”

Hayes endured surgery to remove cancer, eight rounds of chemotherapy and 33 rounds of radiation. She now leads R.E.D. Alliance, an advocacy group working to reduce late-stage diagnosis and death rates for black women with cancer. R.E.D. stands for Reaching to End Disparities.

Her cancer is gone, but Hayes has wondered whether it might come back. She did not participate in the recent clinical trial but said the research is important to her and other survivors. 

“It's great news to hear what they have done,” she said. “It gives hope and promise to everyone coming behind me. It's very personal to me, in that respect.”

Read More: https://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/20191222/facebook-helps-clinical-trials-for-iu-vera-bradley

Dr. Rose Marie Leslie is hoping to reach teens with a message about the dangers of e-cigarettes. So she’s started posting regularly on TikTok, the popular short video app, and has collected a large following.

Leslie, who goes by @DrLeslie and is a family medicine doctor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, has amassed more than 300,000 followers on the platform in recent months. Most of her TikTok videos offer insights on health issues that impact teens, ranging from how to talk to doctors about birth control to why it’s a bad idea for a group of friends to share a lollipop.

She’s best known for getting real about vaping and vaping-related illness. The issue is more urgent than ever for many parents, with surveys showing that vape use at an all-time high among teens amid an outbreak of a life-threatening vaping illness. 

Part of the problem, according to medical experts, is the teens aren’t aware of the risks because public health organizations aren’t communicating with them on the platforms they use.

That’s where Leslie comes in.

Leslie doesn’t talk down to the viewer, but instead shows side-by-side images of a vaping-related lung injury and a normal lung biopsy, and discusses the root causes.

In one video, she shows her followers what vaping lung illness really looks like under a microscope. “That is terrifying,” she says in the video.

Leslie says she gets a lot of messages from teens who have stopped vaping because they watched one of her videos.

“I expected it as a primary-care doctor who’s often talking to teens about the health risks associated with something like vaping that’s perceived as cool,” she said.

Greater engagement on TikTok than other platforms

Leslie is just one of the doctors who have recently started popping up on TikTok. Far more physicians are on Twitter and Instagram, which are more popular with older generations.

But those who have taken the TikToK plunge say they are experiencing far greater engagement on content there than on other social media platforms.

Jefferson Health’s Dr. Austin Chiang, one of the most active physicians on social media, recently joined TikTok after reading about how it’s taking off. 

Chiang uses TikTok primarily as a platform to talk to other young doctors about issues that matter to them, like the cost of medical education or the sacrifice of giving up their 20s to spend nights and weekends in the hospital.

Chiang says he already sees the most engagement on TikTok, which is used by more than 700 million people daily, according to its owner ByteDance.

Chiang and Leslie are also using TikTok to combat health misinformation.

“I’ve heard the criticism that doctors and other medical professionals on social media are somehow less credible, or won’t be taken as seriously by their peers,” said Sherry Pagoto, a behavioral scientist and professor at the Department of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut. “But I think that school of thought is going to be a thing of the past.”

Pagoto notes that medical experts need to meet teens where they are, rather than sticking to the older methods of advertising on television or Facebook.

“It would be great for public health organizations to follow the lead of these medical professionals on TikTok,” she said.

Read More: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/29/doctors-use-tiktok-to-talk-to-teens-about-vaping-birth-control.html

The healthcare industry sees technology as a source of inspiration for progress and innovation.

Health care is a complex system that is resilient to major changes but vulnerable to butterflies, where even a small amount of inputs has dramatic consequences. While future health trends are being discussed in the industry, some are most useful.

The health information technology market is expected to reach $390.7 billion by 2024. Processing 30 billion health care transactions cost almost $250 billion a year. Healthcare spending in the United States will amount to $5.4 trillion by 2024, which corresponds to an annual average of 19.6% of GDP. 

As more and more healthcare providers outsource various administrative functions, these three trends will benefit the medical companies as part of their marketing strategy for 2020.

1.  Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things is not only an executive fridge that orders its owner’s favorite food itself, or a service kettle that boils water on demand from a smartphone.  These are smart bracelets, sensors, which you can remotely monitor your health.

IoT has advantages that make healthcare more reliable, efficient and faster. IoT-enabled devices enable remote monitoring, unleashing the potential for superior care. 

The following examples show what healthcare can do with IoT.

• Real-time location – medical devices such as wheelchairs, scales, sprayers, defibrillators, monitoring equipment or pumps are detected by sensors and easily detected by IoT. Other IoT devices help monitor the environment.
• Wearable accessories are often used to monitor the user’s health for medical reasons, such as heart rate, blood pressure, calories burned, etc. The manufacturing industry is expected to have 240.1 million people in 2021.
• Improved patient data and real-time tracking. The future for effective care is higher than ever before. It is now up to health care providers to make the best use of this technology.

In other words, in a few years, the world around us will become the Internet of Things.

2. Automated Medical Billing

They eat your wallet space, get easily lost, and when you try to find them, you realize you’ve already thrown them away. With medical bills, you always want to be very careful not to lose such important receipts.

Introduction of an automated billing system for medical services.

Let’s be honest, no one else wants to deal with paper receipts. Fortunately, medical bills are currently processed online or in the cloud. This new software allows your healthcare providers to effectively monitor and optimize their medical bills and payments. They will be able to review their insurance at any time without the risk of insurance errors, as the software will already report possible errors in advance. This increases the security of their records, so third party billing services are very popular. This is something that medical companies should consider for the coming year.

3. Patient Experience

A business that is constantly evolving is equated with clients that are also constantly evolving. The medical business is no exception. If you work with a professional and experienced medical invoicing outsourcing company, this will provide you with the best way to lead the way in identifying future trends and strategies related to the success of your RCM.

However, be careful with the use of personalized experience, sometimes users may have too complex instructions and directions. Improving patient experience begins with clear messaging and information, especially on practice-specific topics.

Read More: https://getreferralmd.com/2019/10/3-healthcare-marketing-trends-for-2020/

Patient's interests and behaviors shift during the holiday season, and thus, so should your healthcare marketing. 

The holidays provide an opportunity to be creative with your messaging and to strengthen the provider-patient relationship during a season filled with holiday cheer and a spirit of giving.

But the holidays can also mean a break in routine, which opens the doors for some mistakes. To make the most of your holiday healthcare marketing, read on for common mistakes doctors and dentists make around the holidays and how to avoid them.

"First, there was crowdfunding, now there’s crowd-diagnosis"

Where people turn to strangers on social media to get a diagnosis — including for STDs.

This trend has been growing in popularity, but the authors of a new study say diagnosing STDs using social media can often be unreliable.

• Thousands of people post in an online health forum seeking a “crowd-diagnosis” of their sexually transmitted disease (STD).
• A new study found people have turned to Reddit for help getting an STD diagnosis.
• Experts say this isn’t a great idea, since other posters may not have a medical background or all the necessary information to give a definitive diagnosis.
• But there are online sites like CrowdMed where licensed medical professionals may help people who are worried about a possible STD.

People with serious mental illness face barriers to mental health treatment and are often reluctant to seek professional help.

Especially, if they have a co-occurring disorder, meaning they may struggle with any combination of addiction, depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc., according to Buivydas.

“Many people are instead seeking support and information regarding their illness via the internet, especially on social media,” he says.

Pinterest, a well-known social network where people can find inspiration and ideas for interests and hobbies, made a move to remove posts related to self-harm. As a result, user reports on that type of content decreased by 88%.

Pinterest also launched a feature called “compassionate search” where users can combat stress and anxiety through healthy journaling and meditation. Additionally, when a user searches for the tag “self-harm” or anything similar, it leads them to healthy they’ll find 10 new coping exercises that can help them work through difficult emotions and feelings.

Similarly, back in April 2018, Instagram tackled their growing issue of drug-related hashtags.

Users were using hashtags like #opiates, #fentanyl, #oxycontin, and more to sell drugs. After mounting pressure from the FDA, senators and health advocates, Instagram removed those hashtags and any post or message related to those hashtags.

"Today, social media is the biggest outlet for people to seek support groups and like-minded individuals. But, sometimes those ‘support groups’ and like-minded people are doing more harm than good."

“These individuals may have conditions that can affect their ability to actively participate in their communities and/or build positive social relationships. Social media allows people with and without disabilities to connect with friends and family who are near and far. People struggling with serious mental illness can use social media to communicate with friends, find peer support, or receive health-related information. Indeed, social media can also support people with severe mental illness and their care teams as a positively oriented tool to find support and connect with events and opportunities in their community.”

Read More: https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/news/social-networks-move-behavioral-health