Presentation to first Phillipine health care social media (#hcsmph) conference on future of social media - Feb. 21, 2014 (Please note date on cover slide is wrong - I'm not that much of a futurist!!)

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Days of Past Futures
Social Media and Health Care: The way
forward
Saturday, 21 September 2015
Pat Rich (@cmaer)

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Who am I?
Work for the Canadian Medical
Association – based in Ottawa,
Canada
Non-profit organization
representing more than 80,000
Canadian physicians
2012 developed “rules of
engagement” about social media
for members
Comprehensive strategy of using
social media for communications
and member engagement

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The future
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.–L.P.
Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953
“And we can also truly say, “The future is a foreign country; they do things
differently there.” In considering a future time, you have to reckon with a
whole thing: a complete culture, marketplace, society, community, industry,
and all the things that shape them. Too often we don’t, we take up one
change that we think is powerful and important, and leave most everything
else like it is.
John B. Mahaffie, April 30, 2012 Blog post

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Social media tools
are no longer new
or mysterious
• Facebook >10 years old
• YouTube – just celebrated
10 years
• Twitter in common use for
> 5 years
• First comprehensive social
media guidelines
developed for physicians
and med students more
than 5 years ago

5. Health care is
changing
… and social media
enables and facilitates
1) social networking,
2) participation,
3) apomediation,
4) openness, and
5) collaboration

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The New World
 Main social media sites embedded into our culture (Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube)
 Dr. Google first choice for health information (Wikipedia for medical
students)
 E-patients using electronic tools and want to be engaged in their health
care
 Convergence of digital, mobile and social
 Global, instantaneous communication and engagement
 Explosion in number of health related apps (but few used more than
once)
 “Big data” being used to track disease trends and population-health
 Research studies showing social media tools can be used to improve
health in many ways

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A changing environment: Are you digitally literate
enough?
“Today’s medical professionals must be masters of different skills that are
related to using digital devices or online solutions” and mastering those
skills “is now a crucial skill set that all medical professionals require.”
Dr. Bertalan Mesko
The democratization of media has made every physician an independent
publisher …physicians now have to learn to manage and maintain their
identity in the public space,”
Dr. Bryan Vartabedian,
From an article by Stephen Pelletier, in the AAMC Reporter,
Aug, 2014

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Where were you when the tide came in?
 “Whether doctors choose to engage in social media or not, they
cannot ignore the implications”
 “While individual physicians are at different stages in their use of
social media, it is a journey all physicians will eventually take.
Social media is becoming so pervasive its importance as a
channel to keep current on medical findings and to confer with
colleagues is undeniable.”
CMPA October,2014 Supplement

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“We have current roles
and guidelines but times
are changing quickly. By
2017 patients and their
health care providers
are going to be
communicating very
differently.”
Dr. Darren Beiko, Queens
University urologist, July,
2013

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And yet ….
Percentage of Canadian physicians using
social media for professional use
Linked In or Facebook 8.5%
YouTube or Flickr 5.1%
Twitter 3.6%
Blog 4.5%
Source: National Physician Survey 2014

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Unanticipated
consequences
Desire to share information
overriding traditional concerns
about patient privacy and
confidentiality
Wearables rapidly ceasing to be
just personal health devices and
becoming fashion statements
Desire to share information
overriding traditional concerns
about patient privacy and
confidentiality
Narrative medicine on the upsurge
AP Photo

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Predictions
• Use of social media
by health care
professionals will
continue to grow
incrementally
• New tools will
continue to outpace
ethics of their use

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Social media are just tools
… but tools have changed history
- stirrup, plough, gun etc.
Social media are tools of the mind rather
than physical tools

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Predictions
Social media in
conjunction with
scientific breakthroughs,
societal changes and
other unknowns will
transform health care
delivery as we know it

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Salamat!