Posts filed under 'Healthcare'
By Ginger
I had the opportunity to attend PRSA’s Digital Impact Conference the past few days in New York City, and discovered quite a few new resources that I wanted to pass along, as we all try to identify the best ways to make our digital and social media marks online. Check them out when you get a chance!
SEO / Linking and Ranking Tools
- Seodigger.com - Shows how a company ranks for organic search
- Market Leap - Add in a URL and see how many links your site has versus competitors, and what their ranks are
- Yahoo! Search Site Explorer - Tells you how many inbound links there are to a particular domain name
- SEO Book Rank Checker - Free Firefox rank-checking tool that lets you see how your website stacks up to competition
- SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool - See how one certain word ranks for SEO purposes
- Search Rascal - Shows the sites that are ranked for use of one certain word, and how it changes over time
- “Link:” on www.Google.com – If you type “link:” immediately followed by a domain name (ex: link:racepointgroup.com) into Google search, the results will show you which and how many sites are linking to that domain name
Twitter
- TweetScan - A real-time search engine for Twitter that lets you find the conversations on the topics you want.
- Who Should i Follow - Enter in your Twitter username, and this tool will give you suggestions of people you might want to follow.
- TweetWheel - A tool that shows you which of your Twitter friends know one another
- TwitDer – A Twitter directory that shows you the most popularly followed people on Twitter, and the people that send the most updates
Video
- Icyou.com - Healthcare video community that brings you everything from late-breaking medical research videos to exercise tips
- Blinkx - Search online video
- Tubemogul - Video analytic tool that shows you when, where and how often videos are being watched, letting you measure how powerful your video marketing campaign is against competitors
- RedLasso – Search national and local TV and radio broadcasts and make clips to post to your site
Podcasts
- Podscope - Search engine that lets you search podcasts by typing in a phrase of spoken words
- Podcast Alley - One of the biggest collections of podcasts on the Internet – features the top 10 podcasts as rated by listeners
- Podcast Directory - A podcast search site similar to Podcast Alley
Any really great tools that you have come across that you would like to share? Let us know about the sites that you have found!
June 12th, 2008
Forrester VP and Author Outlines Four Steps to Digital Relations
By George
Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research vice president and co-author of the upcoming “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” kicked off the PRSA’s Digital Impact Conference in New York City today.
Bernoff, who focuses on social technologies for the research firm, got right to the point. “Concentrate on the people, not the technologies,” he told a crowd of about 200 public relations people during his keynote address.
Bernoff said that marketers and PR people need to understand that controlling the conversation on the Web is an impossible task. He said he wrote “Groundswell” with fellow Forrester analyst Charlene Li as a manual for using social technologies effectively. Bernoff said participation and a willingness to engage freely are the keys.
During his presentation, Bernoff outlined his four step process for engaging with what he calls the groundswell of people using social and digital technologies.
1. People. Companies first priority should be assessing their customers’ social activities. What technologies are their customers using? How are they communicating? Where can they be found online?
2. Objectives. Companies then need to decide what they want to accomplish with social and digital media relations. What are the goals? Is digital and social media the best channels?
3. Strategy. Thirdly, companies need to expend the energy up front to plan for how social and digital media relations with change relationships with customers. What are the short and long-term consequences of engaging on the Web?
4. Technology. Lastly, companies need to decide which social networks, widgets and tools are best for them and their customers.
June 10th, 2008
By Ginger
Social networks from Facebook to disease-specific sites are thriving and changing the way people address disease management. A recent report called “The Wisdom of Patients: Healthcare Meets Online Social Media,” written by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn of THINK-Health, discusses how social media is empowering and educating healthcare consumers and providers.
In a phenomenon referred to as “Health 2.0,” defined within the report as “the use of social software and its ability to promote collaboration between patients, their caregivers, medical professionals, and other stakeholders in health,” patients and providers have found a way to harness the power of collective intelligence, leveraging the accessibility of the Internet to address people’s healthcare concerns.
“When patients managing the same chronic condition share observations with each other, their collective wisdom can yield clinical insights well beyond the understanding of any single patient or physician.”
The report, which is free to download, includes a list of online health resources created by people that are working to change the way we share concerns and discover information. Some of the featured Health 2.0 pioneers: Amy Tenderich of DiabetesMine; Matthew Zachary of the I’m Too Young For This! Foundation; Jack Barrette of WEGO Health; and Ben Heywood of PatientsLikeMe.
With an imminent shortage of primary care physicians on the horizon, I have to say that I feel better knowing that these resources exist to put this valuable information right at your fingertips.
May 8th, 2008
By Ben
An article in today’s New England Journal of Medicine warns that although there are many benefits to Microsoft and Google’s potential involvement with electronic health records, there are privacy risks that people should be aware of.
Sarah Rubenstein of The Wall Street Journal reports, “Both technology giants have unveiled online personal health records that patients can use to store what could be treasure troves of data — for the patients as well as everyone from clinical researchers to marketers. But a critique in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine points out that the two companies aren’t “covered entities” under the major federal law, HIPAA, which has patient-privacy protections. Translation: They don’t have to follow it.”
The main benefit to electronic health records is that they would be quickly accessible to any doctor. This saves patients and practices a lot of time transferring records from doctor to doctor. RT Image’s Keri Forsythe, a supporter of electronic medical records wrote in her blog, “Our medical records are one of the most important items we can have. They tell our life stories – the medications, illnesses, etc., that we’ve had since birth. So they should definitely be put in a safe – and non-flammable – place.”
Just today Health Imaging News reported that WellPoint, the largest membership insurer in the United States, has notified its 130,000 insurance plan members that their personal information, including Social Security numbers, pharmacy or medical data, were accessible online to unauthorized users over the past year, because of unsecured servers being used by an unidentified technology vendor partner. This is a clear example that electronic information is not always secure – no matter how private it is.
Dana Blankenhorn from ZDnet is another supporter of electronic health record. He wrote today that “Each doctor’s office I visit, each hospital, each clinic, has a file on me. It’s behind the nurse’s station. Usually it’s on paper. Sometimes it’s in a computer. But it’s not going anywhere — control resides with the physician. And I’m not really given access to it, although by rights I should be. In these debates Google and Microsoft are stand-ins for the loss of data control to the customer.”
What’s your opinion on electronic medical records?
April 17th, 2008
