Social Media and Healthcare

Cancer is a leading cause of death, and although screening can reduce cancer morbidity and mortality, participation in screening remains suboptimal.

This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to evaluate the effectiveness of social media and mobile health (mHealth) interventions for cancer screening.

RESULTS: We screened 18,008 records identifying 39 studies (35 mHealth and 4 social media). The types of interventions included peer support (n=1), education or awareness (n=6), reminders (n=13), or mixed (n=19). The overall pooled odds ratio was 1.49 (95% CI 1.31-1.70), with similar effect sizes across cancer types.

CONCLUSIONS: Screening programs should consider mHealth interventions because of their promising role in promoting cancer screening participation. Given the limited number of studies identified, further research is needed for social media interventions.

read more at https://www.docwirenews.com/condition-center/precision-medicine-in-prostate-cancer/precision-medicine-in-prostate-cancer-abstracts/social-media-and-mhealth-technology-for-cancer-screening-systematic-review-and-meta-analysis-3/

As social becomes a core part of agency offerings, you need to have the infrastructure in place to operate smoothly at scale.

Post approvals are a small but powerful step in any social media service offering. At their worst, they can involve a lot of follow-up, creating a time suck for both you and your client. But at their best, they can create client stickiness.

Client-agency relationships get stronger when these processes become mini-opportunities for collaboration. Here’s how:

1. Demonstrate the value of social with a routine touchpoint

Social is your world, but for your clients, it’s just a fraction of their day-to-day. Approval workflows promote more active collaboration between you and your client’s teams.

2. Prevent mistakes before they happen

Maintain a strong foundation of trust by building quality assurance into your publishing process.

3. Promote collaboration in times of crisis

When a crisis strikes and your schedule is thrown out the window, post approvals help support sudden shifts in content production.

read more at https://sproutsocial.com/insights/strengthen-agency-client-relationships/

Even defenders of the agency's approach admitted that its guidance has been conservative, and at times slow.

Nearly a year ago, amid concerns about how to prevent transmission of the virus causing Covid-19, scientists were beginning to conclude that rigorous disinfection of surfaces — say, fogging them or deep-cleaning with bleach — was overkill.

Academics were warning that the risk of so-called fomite transmission was wildly overblown. In the fall, research from Israel and Italy found that the virus couldn’t even be cultured from surfaces in hospital infectious disease units. By February of this year, the editorial board of Nature was openly urging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to update its guidelines.

The CDC did so — last month.

That so much time passed before the nation’s leading public health agency took a stand on an issue that seemed patently obvious to others was puzzling. But it was hardly an isolated incident.

waiting for more certainly just isn’t an option.

If their advice is too disconnected from reality, and if they are too slow, then they make themselves irrelevant, I understand that they’re in a difficult position. However caution and indecision also comes at a price.

read the original article at https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/11/cdc-messaging-covid-19-seems-out-of-step-public-health-experts-say/

By their nature, hospitals are fast-paced environments that can induce some stress in the people who work there. Often, the roles taken on by people saving others' lives are somewhat thankless.

For this reason, Penn Medicine's Center for Digital Health created "High Five," a web-based recognition system that enables staff members to easily use social media-style memes and humor to compliment each other on anything from the routine to the extraordinary.

The Center for Digital Health -- which studies how things like the internet and other digital technology affect our health -- began exploring whether a web-based platform would be feasible in health care in 2016.

The designers believed that making it easy for staff to quickly send out a nice message in a way that is now second instinct to many would increase positive interactions and potentially serve as a tool to combat burnout.

"Keeping it fun and light was us trying to build on what folks already do naturally on social media and via texting," Lee explained. "Humor and levity can organically incentivize folks to connect and support each other. So we thought it made sense to capitalize off of that natural inclination when we were trying to build an opt-in recognition system."

High Five, named for the congratulatory gesture, is usable across multiple devices and easily accessible through a webpage that clinicians could reach as if they were working on electronic health records. Each person can search for and select a colleague from the health system, then pick from a variety of memes or GIFs containing positive phrases that were congratulatory or humorous. 

The images draw from pop culture or are health-themed and some are the same as memes used commonly on social media. In addition to the images, each message could also be personalized by an accompanying text written by the user. A reply function was also added shortly after launch.

High Five has expanded since it was launched in 2016 into several different areas at Penn Medicine such as other emergency departments, Women's Health, Pharmacy, and an intensive care nursery, among others.

Users now hail from all 20 academic departments within Penn Medicine, and 32 percent of hospital employees have exchanged 28,808 communications expressing courteous interpersonal behaviors, ranging from appreciation and recognition to specific feedback.

A new study published in NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery led by Kathleen Lee, MD, an assistant professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine and director of Clinical Implementation in the Center, showed that this system was adopted by the vast majority of those within the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) -- the first department it was fully integrated into.

"The status quo expectation in many settings in medicine is perfection without recognition, Medical errors can result in harsh consequences, while successes are not often not recognized to the same extent. This imbalance is thought to be a key contributor to clinician burnout," said Lee, who led the research with David Do, MD, an assistant professor of Clinical Neurology, and Ian Oppenheim, MD, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who helped to launch "High Five" while he was a resident at Penn Medicine.

Moving forward, the team involved with High Five hopes to expand it across the health system completely, especially with the installment of display monitors.

"We want to continue to partner with departments and groups to help further harness the workplace civility and positivity that High Five enables," Lee said.

Read More: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-12/uops-pmu121019.php

''Media” has long been part of our moniker here at MM&M – it is, quite literally, the third M of a brand that started its life and remains, at its heart, Medical Marketing and Media – but 2019 marked the first year in quite some time that we attempted to cover it on more than a semi-regular basis.

Frankly, we picked a fortunate time to start, given the flood of transformative news during the year.

But don’t take our word for it. For the final Third M dispatch, before we change calendars, MM&M asked several of the smartest folks in and around health media to answer a few questions about the people and trends that stood out during 2019. Their responses did not disappoint.

Here’s hoping for a similarly scintillating 2020.

What was the most important, most welcome, weirdest, coolest or otherwise most interesting trend or event in health media during 2019, and why?

The physicians who embraced TikTok. There are about 20 doctors (as well as residents and medical students) who are using the popular video platform to share health information. What I find jarring is the juxtaposition of medical topics with the informal nature of the videos. However, I am far from the Gen-Z audience that makes up a significant portion of the TikTok demographic.

“The value of the platform for health education was highlighted by Dr. Rose Marie Leslie in September when she created a video on the dangers of vaping. It amassed millions of views and led to mainstream media attention from ABC News, among others. Clearly these physicians are doing something right because many of them have gained tens of thousands of followers on TikTok. We’ll be watching.” – Eileen O’Brien, managing director, social media, W2O

“Authenticity. From UX design to chatbots, the bar for creating an authentic experience for the consumer has been elevated this year. Authenticity in 2019 evolved beyond the selection of a credible spokesperson for messaging—it’s about infusing it into every brand attribute, using a variety of elements (e.g., voice and visuals) to create an inimitable and trustworthy consumer experience.” – Tabytha Gil, linguistic insights analyst, Ogilvy Health

“The rise of voice search, which essentially means two things. First, with respect to the voice search queries input via your mobile phone or tablet: There are a variety of different statistics out there, but most analysts estimate that approximately 30% to 55% of all U.S. search traffic is being driven by voice search at the moment. This means that both your SEO and SEM strategies need to evolve. This is especially so for health, as voice search is already prompting many more long-tail keywords. The specificity of these keywords is an important point to note, with patients more likely to speak complicated clinical search terms rather than trying to type them.

“Second, there is an entirely different type of voice search playing out across AI-powered smart speakers, like Amazon’s Echo or Show, or the Google Home and Nest Hub. In these scenarios, particularly when there is zero UI or no screen, how can a brand take advantage of voice-driven search queries? One can easily envision this working in an unbranded example, but the billion-dollar question is how can branded search results populate in a compliant manner? The entire voice search economy will be a fascinating one to watch in 2020, but make no mistake: Both Amazon and Google are hard at work figuring out a way to monetize this smart search inventory.” – Justin Chase, EVP, innovation, and media, Intouch Solutions

“The focus on awareness, education, and support around mental health, from organizational, partnership and consumer perspectives. Second, patient influencers and advocates are driving health actions, and brands started to notice. As for the coolest event in 2019, Healthline Media partnered with wellness advocate Nitika Chopra to create Chronicon, bringing together hundreds of influencers to the first daylong event devoted to people struggling with chronic health issues.” – Ingrid Eberly, VP corporate marketing, Healthline Media

Read More: https://www.mmm-online.com/home/channel/media-news/health-media-2019-the-year-in-review/

Almost all American adults have a voice search tool with them at all waking hours. You probably have one on your person right now. For iPhone users, it’s Siri, which also is on the MacBook and iPad. For Samsung users, it’s Google Now. Last year, people completed 250 billion searches with their voices. That’s one in eight searches.

There’s no question the demand for voice search is growing significantly. But how can you ensure you take advantage of it? Here are ways to capitalize on the trend line.

Start by developing your SEO

The most common response from voice assistants is to connect a user to Google’s top results. For example, when you ask a device a specific question like, “What is Tom Steyer’s position on the economy?” it will often direct you to five results in a mobile web browser. 

Therefore, ensuring your campaign ranks at the top of Google has never been more important.

Use Schema.org

Voice assistants increasingly use microdata from Schema.org to surface results. So, make sure your pages have metadata from that site inputted. 

Get Off Twitter, and instead build for Google

Campaigns and consultants spend so much time on Twitter. But it’s worth remembering, just 22 percent of American adults are on Twitter. Meanwhile, 73 percent of them are on YouTube (the world’s second-biggest search engine).

It’s a habit and a mindset change, but spending less time on Twitter and more time on Google/YouTube, will pay huge dividends for campaigns who can prove they are disciplined.

Create an extended FAQ

What is the primary input of voice assistants? Questions.

Use AnswerThePublic.com to produce a tree of all of the questions people are asking. You should have a page on your website that answers all of those questions and more. Then use the above-mentioned Schema.org to create microdata for the page that will help voice assistants populate the information to voice searchers.

Build an Alexa skill

An Amazon Alexa skill is a voice application. Similar to how Apple has apps on its App Store, Amazon has apps that work on the Alexa and can be created by anyone. Alexa represents the potential for what voice technology, especially for campaigns holds.

On a recent trip to Seattle, I met with two Amazon Alexa staff members. They explained to me that practitioners in voice should focus on building for two distinct purposes. The first is consumer voice experiences. These are voice applications that answer questions or provide information for commands. 

The second purpose is conversational AI. These are advanced applications that make you feel like you are having a conversation with a person.

Develop CFIRs for your Alexa skill

CFIR stands for Can Fulfill Intent Requests. CFIRs populate Amazon Alexa’s database with information and are like keywords or key phrases that may invoke your skill.

Example: I was laying on my couch one day and feeling tired. So, I said, “Alexa, inspire me.” And a skill started playing and offering me inspirational quotes from Oprah, Muhammed Ali and other leaders. The creator of this skill had programmed “inspire me” as a CFIR.

These are similar to the questions and answers you put on your FAQ as well as commands and responses you want that users could invoke.

Publish keyword-rich videos on YouTube

Remember, YouTube is the world’s second-biggest search engine. Start supplying content for it. Publish answers to FAQs in video form. Publish campaign ads. And in your keywords, post the questions that voice searchers might ask their assistants. Google pulls heavily from YouTube for results, and this may cause your content to rank near the top.

Embrace brevity

Similar to people, voice assistants that talk too much and for too long can be annoying. Keep your answers brief — 29 words brief. Those 29 words are about 10 to 12 seconds. Meanwhile, make your questions a bit longer — about 9 words, as this is the average length of questions people ask their voice assistants.

So don’t get left behind. Follow these tips to optimize your campaign for voice!

Read More: https://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/how-to-optimize-your-campaign-for-voice-search

Social media marketing has essentially become unavoidable.

Finding healthcare social media success isn’t always easy. In fact, doctors often have the same few struggles. 

Statista estimates the number of social media users in the U.S. will rise from roughly 244 million in 2018 to approximately 257 million by 2023. Given these numbers, standing out from the crowd on social media is important, but it isn’t easy.

Here’s some advice to help your practice overcome the common challenges of healthcare social media:

1. Highlighting patient success stories without revealing PHI

Incorporating patient success stories into your social media marketing is a great way to promote your expertise. However, be careful not to accidentally disclose PHI, as this can lead to a HIPAA violation.

"Knowledge is the key to avoiding this"

When compiling patient success stories for social media, work with a legal professional to create patient marketing consent forms. Otherwise, only discuss patients in general terms without revealing PHI, and always triple-check content for potential privacy violations before posting.

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