A few weeks back I attended my second HealthCamp – this one was in Philadelphia at a Jefferson University conference center. Just like my first HealthCamp, (in Washington D.C.) this was an energetic group – smart, quick and full of ideas.

I call these events “open-source” conferences. They follow the BarCamp model of user-generated sessions, and the Wikipedia definition is on-target:

“…open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for a variety of other topics, including public transit, health care, and political organizing.”

All the participants are engaged, and passionate about the possibilities Health 2.0 can make in healthcare. The energy level is high, and conversations run a network speeds.

I especially like how the agenda is set. Topics are offered, interest-levels are determined, the days schedule is determined by the group.

My highlights from this conference include:

Evolving Role of Consumerism in Health Care by Richard Toner, Project Manager at the Jefferson School of Population Health.  – A solid review of patient-centric sites like Patients Like Me, 23 and Me, and many others.

Experience That Matters: Co-Designing Improvements in Healthcare, by Yosaif August. His session looked at applying experience design techniques to the healthcare setting. This has been done in the UK for years, and now being looked at by major hospitals like the Mayo Clinic and the VA

Social Media – Don’t Be Scared! A Twitter Case Study of Polar Wisdom by the amazing Jen McCabe Gorman. Jen walked the group through her approach to  structured Social Media communications. She demonstrated that it’s possible to create processes and goals in this area – without compromising the interactions that make it work.

Here’s her presentation:

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These sessions work because there are no walls between audience and presenter. In fact many times the session leader was more of a moderator, guiding the conversations that developed.

This conference, like the one in DC, was organized by a small group of people that most of my readers already know:  Mark Scrimshire, Mary Ann Geier with help from Phil Baumann and many others. The next camp is in Boston on April 21, and the list of attendees cuts across all areas of Healthcare.

Mark is also working on the second HealthCampMD (Maryland), Ill keep you posted as details are worked out.

Not too many updates this week, most came from Tom Stitt. Thanks Tom!

For the past month, I’ve been relying on submissions from folks like Tom,  Reed Smith, and others in my network. I’m grateful for their assistance.

In a few weeks I’ll do a more in-depth survey of Facebook and Youtube, and see if any new accounts have been added.

Here are the current numbers:

216 Hospitals total
126 YouTube Channels
83 Facebook pages
132 Twitter Accounts
23 Blogs

New this week:

Allina Hospitals, Minneapolis, MN on Facebook

Blair E. Batson Childrens Hospital, Jackson, MS on Twitter

Childrens Hospital in LA, Los Angeles, CA on Twitter

Dayton Children’s Hospital, Dayton H, on Twitter

St. Joseph Hospital, Chicago, IL on Twitter

On March 3′rd I asked the question: “I currently track  187 hospitals using Social Media tools – when will we go past 200?”

The prolific blogger and Twitter user, Ves Dimov predicted that number would reached by the end of March. It was a safe bet, the submissions have come in at a steady pace over the past two weeks. Here’s the current count:

• 206 Hospitals total
• 124 YouTube Channels
• 82 Facebook pages
• 117 Twitter Accounts
• 22 Blogs

FYI the 200′th Hospital was  Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, IL with their Twitter account.

As you can see from the update list below, most of the growth continues to be with Twitter. At this pace, it should become the most popular social media tool by early April.

What’s Next?

I’d like to hear from you. What do you want me to cover on the blog and on the list? Would anyone be interested in a guest post? or interview? Let me know.

This weeks updates to the Hospital List:

Banner Heart  Hospital, Mesa, AZ, on Twitter

Banner Gateway, Gilbert AZ, on Twitter

Banner Baywood, Mesa, AZ, on Twitter

Banner Thunderbird, Glendale, AZ on Twitter

Community Medical Center on YouTube and several Blogs

Huntington Hospital, Pasadena, CA on Twitter

Lehigh Valley Hospital Allentown, PA is on YouTube

Memorial Hermann, Houston, TX on Twitter and a Blog

Norman Regional Health System, Norman, OK  on  Twitter

Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL on Twitter

Sacred Heart Health System, Pensacola, FL on Twitter

Sacred Heart Hospital, Miramar Beach, FL on Twitter

UNC Health Care, Chapel Hill, NC on YouTube

Update – April 8, 2009

Please see this post for the latest charts - Twitter is now the leading hospital Social Media site

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On Saturday, March 14, 2009,  I took a snapshot of Hospital social media activity. Using links from the big list, I  gathered the following data:

YouTube:

• Account creation date
• Number of Videos posted
• Number of YouTube Channel Views
• Number of Channel Subscribers

Twitter:

• Account creation date (first update)
• Number of Updates
• Number of Followers

Facebook:

• Number of Fans / Members

Here are some results. The original data is available as an Excel spreadsheet, please email me if you want a copy.

First, take a look at the adoption rate for YouTube and Twitter:

No surprises here, but it is interesting to see the rapid growth on Twitter. It took 26 months to reach 100 YouTube accounts, and 17 months to get the same number for Twitter. At this pace I expect crossover will happen in the next four to six weeks.

YouTube Statistics:

• There are 121 YouTube channels, with a total of 4,575 videos.
• The average number of videos per channel is 38, the median is 19
• The average number of subscribers is 28, the median is 11
• The average number of Channel Views is 1,736, the median is 629

Firsts and Mosts:

• First on board – The first Hospital Youtube channel was set up by the Arkansas Children’s Hospital on Sept. 13, 2006
  
• Number of Videos – Avera Health has 377 videos on it’s YouTube channel – more than anyone else.
• Number of Subscribers – M.D. Anderson Cancer Center leads with 575 subscribers
• Number of Channel Views – Cooper University Hospital leads with 24,383 views. This is interesting because the number was only 12,500 on Feb 2, 2009. Could it be Kelly Ripa?

Twitter Statistics:

• There are 103 Twitter accounts, with a total of 9,223 updates
• The average number of updates is 90, the median is 37
• The average number of followers is 294, the median 202

Firsts and Mosts:

• First on board – The first Twitter account was set up by St. Jude Children’s on October 23, 2007
• Most Followers – Henry Ford Health has the most with 1,489 followers
• Most Updates – Alegent Health leads with 1349 updates, almost three times more than the second most active account, @HenryFordNews

Facebook Stats:

Facebook doesn’t offer much for number crunching. You can’t even figure out when an account was created. The only stat I can track is the number of Fans or Members for a given account.

• There are 82 Facebook accounts, with the average membership of 821. The median is 163 – which tells you that a few accounts have some high numbers
• Most Fans / Members – Once again, St. Jude Children’s has the most with 33,252 fans

Want more? The original data is available as an Excel spreadsheet, please email me if you want a copy. Let me know if this is useful to you, and if there are any other statistics that we should follow.

While fun, these numbers don’t address the quality of the programs run by the 190+ hospitals tracked. And in Social Networking that counts for much more than sheer volume.  However, monitoring the growth has some value, and I plan to capture these snapshots at regular intervals (possibly monthly). In six months to year, we should have enough data to see trends.

Over the past few months, I’ve developed a set of talking points about social media. Here’s what I share with different folks at my hospital:

The 30-second elevator pitch – suitable for anyone:
Social Media is a conversation. Millions of people use these sites to connect, create trusted circles and talk to each other. Sometimes they talk about us – our hospital, our staff and their experiences here. We have to be in the room – the social media site, if we want to be invited into the conversation.

To the Marketing folks:
You can use Social Media in three ways – 1. It’s another way to promote our services and let interested patients find us. 2. You can also use it to monitor and protect our brand reputation. 3. It’s also a great tool to follow what folks say about our competition. And oh yes, our competition is starting to use it to promote their services. Do you want to be left behind?

To the Customer Service team:
It’s an easy, asynchronous way to let our customers contact us when they need help. It’s simple, cheap and a way to catch problems quickly – then resolve them before they get out of control.

To the Public Relations office:
The traditional media (TV, Radio, Print) is monitoring social media looking for breaking stories. They use Twitter, Facebook and other sites – many times connecting directly with our employees, asking questions and bypassing traditional news releases. Participating in social media is one way to monitor this activity, and promote the messages you consider important.

To the Community Outreach folks:
You invest energy working with the local community around our hospital. Social networks are a extension of our local, physical communities – many of the folks who live near us use these sites. In addition, with these tools, the definition of community extends beyond physical boundaries.

To the Patient Education / Support teams:
Our patients and many others are on these sites are looking for trusted medical information. We can be that trusted source – and yes, we can do it without violating privacy and HIPAA rules.

You get the idea. Social Media is a technology, and just like the telephone or computer, its a tool, not an endpoint. Its uses are only limited by our creativity and imagination.

What do you say?