Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media has been a pioneer in the emerging discipline of healthcare social media.
And now it wants to know how effective social media is in the healthcare ecosystem.
The Center announced Tuesday that it is holding a contest whereby researchers will measure and validate whether social media tools can promote health, help in research study subject recruitment and educate patients among other things. Researchers are being invited to submit abstracts for the contest, which will be held in conjunction with the annual member meeting of Mayo’s Social Media Health Network, Oct. 18-19. The entry deadline is Sept. 15. Winners of the contest will get complimentary admission to the annual Social Media Summit, the member meeting and present their findings.
Healthcare social media has been embraced by a lot of consumers, but there is some reluctance on the provider side, although some doctors are big users of it. So it appears to be a timely enterprise by Mayo to use scientific tools to analyze how effective the medium truly is. Presumably if researchers can prove their efficacy, providers may be more inclined to embrace various healthcare social media tools.
There are roughly 15 categories in which the abstracts may be submitted. They are:
- Clinical Practice
- Education (Medical Professionals)
- Research
- Patient Advocacy
- Administrative Efficiency]
- Patient Education
- Patient Experience
- Human Resources/Recruitment
- Training
- Health Promotion
- Marketing
- Public Health
- Nursing
- Quality Improvement
- Staff Engagement
- Other
Here’s more from the news release:
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“When Mayo Clinic’s leaders established our Center for Social Media two years ago this month, they gave us a broad mandate to identify beneficial applications of social media in health care,” says Farris Timimi, M.D. , medical director for the center. “They also encouraged us to collaborate with others in health care to disseminate best practices through our Social Media Health Network. We hope this research-based contest and the scientific session at our member meeting will help catalyze measurement of social media interventions and sharing of findings.”
The Social Media Health Network member meeting caps social media week at Mayo Clinic, which begins with Mayo’s two-day Social Media Residency and includes its annual Social Media Summit, produced in collaboration with Ragan Communications. A panel will evaluate submissions for scientific merit, with qualified abstracts to be displayed and discussed in a poster session at the beginning of the member meeting.
Authors of the three highest-ranking abstracts will receive complimentary admission to both the summit and the member meeting and will present their findings orally at a plenary session.
The contest rules can be found here.
