Get on Board the HealthTrain
Social media has changed the face of healthcare communications. No longer is online health and medical information coming only in a one-way direction from "official and approved" gatekeeper institutions to consumers. Technology and new online tools are facilitating the sharing of information between health providers and consumers, consumers and consumers, and providers and providers (got that?). This creates a new set of concerns about the accuracy of information being shared and privacy issues, but it also offers new opportunities to reach people in ways that was not possible before the advent of blogs, social networking sites, podcasts, wikis, message boards, videocasts and other peer-to-peer services.
Dmitriy Kruglyak of the Medical Blog Network and the upcoming Healthcare Blogging Summit has coordinated a large scale collaborative initiative to propagate a vision for how internet communication can change and improve the healthcare system. This HealthTrain Manifesto (based on the model of the seminal Cluetrain Manifesto) seeks to begin a conversation within the healthcare industry on how to best take advantage of the new opportunities these tools represent and how to minimize any potentially negative effects of this "open healthcare" approach.
Some of the key questions to be explored, from the Manifesto, include:
The purpose of the Manifesto is perhaps best summed up here:
The Manifesto lays out 18 Theses, or principles, that will eventually be used to develop standards to guide the application of open health media. The document goes into more depth on each one, but briefly they are:
Openness
Empowerment
Conversation
Empathy
Trust
Critical Thinking
Guidance
Control
Credentials
Transparency
Privacy
Anonymity
Scientific Validity
Conflicts of Interest
Sponsorship
Promotion
Controversy
Civility and Respect
I participated in the pre-public drafting of the document, and there is now a long list of other supporters of this initative, including bloggers and prominent healthcare industry people. Now that the HealthTrain Manifesto is out in the public domain, we hope that the conversation among all stakeholders will move forward on how we can best promote individual and public health via these new technologies.
The implications of the "open healthcare" movement for social marketing are clear. We -- the producers and disseminators of health information -- are no longer able to function solely under what Fard Johnmar calls the Command and Control marketing paradigm. We can put our messages out there, but what is actually done with them once in the hands of our audience is not under our control. We must begin to figure out new ways to engage a community of people interested in a particular issue, and empower them to make the information relevant and connected to their lives. We cannot rely on a 30-second TV spot to reach and impress the growing numbers of people who routinely use social media as part of their lifestyle and create content themselves.
Download and read the HealthTrain Manifesto (pdf). If you have a blog, write about it there. Leave comments on the central Manifesto page. Add your endorsement to the list. Let's figure out this brave new world together because the HealthTrain is speeding down the track and picking up steam.
Technorati Tags: healthtrain manifesto, open healthcare, cluetrain, health, social media