Recapping Social Health 2010 (Part 1 of 3)
This is the first in a series of posts recapping the Social Health 2010 un-conference in Austin. Part 2 covers the afternoon speakers, and Part 3 covers the breakout sessions I attended.
Yesterday was the first annual #SXSH un-conference (for legal reasons, the S-X does not stand for “south by”). Organized in two months by a small team of passionate individuals who had never met each other before in real life, the event brought together some of the leading minds in the Social Health / Health 2.0 space from around the country. As someone who is still extremely new to the healthcare industry, I can’t even begin to quantify how much I got out of this event.
Thanks again to Shwen Gwee, Dana Lewis, Reed Smith, and Tom Stitt for organizing such a phenomenal event.
I have pages and pages of notes from the event, but unfortunately I don’t have time to turn them into a full narrative, as that “other” conference is starting today. What I’ve tried to do is provide links to the resources that were discussed, for those who were unable to attend the event — mostly in outline form.
Keynote Speaker: Doug Ulman, President and CEO of Livestrong (@LIVESTRONGCEO)
Doug is a 3-time cancer survivor, non-profit and social media icon, and just a really nice, down to earth guy. He kicked off the conference, talking about his battle with three types of cancer, how he got connected with Lance Armstrong (Lance emailed him; Doug had never heard of him), and how he wished social media had been around when he was first diagnosed: “Throughout this whole experience, all I wanted to do was connect with someone who had been down the same path.”
Three reasons social media will change health care:
- Free and accessible
- Real time: can get answers to things right away; no more “I wish I would have known X six months ago”
- Patient-centered, patient driven
Cancer is 400 diseases; there will be no silver bullet. “At the end of the day, it’s people coming together and interacting, that will change this paradigm.”
Doug urged participation in clinical trials: “Only 3% of adults participate in clinical trials. If that number was 6%, we could shave years off of clinical developments.”
A patient’s point of view on HIPAA: ”This may be controversial, but…As a patient- HIPAA doesn’t matter to me at all. I’ve had cancer; I’m already discriminated against in so many ways. I already can’t get life insurance.”
Examples of how social media has impacted their work & business:
- The @LIVESTRONG Twitter page is the top referrer to the Livestrong website; ditto for grassroots advocacy page, LivestrongAction
- In one of the worst economic years we’ve seen in our lifetimes, Livestrong raised 17% more in 2009 than in 2008 (2009 was the first full year of having an active social media presence)
Highlight from Q&A
Q: “When you first started with Twitter/Facebook, did you have strategy or did you just jump right in?”
A: Someone on Doug’s team signed him up for Twitter. When Lance asked what it was: “I don’t know what it is, but they put it on my Blackberry…. There was no strategy, at all.” But “there is incredible authenticity. With Lance, there are times when he posts things, when I’m like, ‘Did he really just post that?’ But it’s real.”
Speaker: Jenn Texada, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (@jenntex)
Jenn runs social media for M. D. Anderson, and social media listening is a 24/7 activity for her. She shared some great success stories, and a was also gracious enough to show some situations where things were trickier.
Getting things up and running was tough; lots of ‘nightmare scenarios’ where explored. (“What happens when…”) It took going down to the finance, customer service, etc., departments and telling them, “OK, we have these new channels. And this is a good thing.”
The Mayo Clinic’s work in social media paved the way for Jenn to sell in her own program.
Great success story from Facebook: A man posts, “Just diagnosed with cancer, can’t talk to family and friends. Want to curl up in a ball and cry.” MD Anderson immediately shares a resource and a number he can call to talk to someone, and other patients chime in to offer support. (See the actual post: http://www.facebook.com/MDAnderson?v=feed&story_fbid=348390749910&ref=mf )
Jenn’s advice to those trying to get a social media initiative off the ground at their own company: Find the people internally who really understand communications (and hopefully really understand social media).
Speaker: Greg Matthews, Humana (@chimoose)
Greg Matthews is Director of Consumer Innovations at Humana. After spending a career helping to build and operate businesses, Greg is now focused on using social media to create different kinds of interactions with consumers – with the goal of supporting a social revolution in health. Most recently he launched the health industry’s first twitter search tool, myTPSreport.com , and designed and launched CrumpleItUp.com , where he blogs regularly.
Greg’s task at Humana, and the question that led them into social media: “How can we, Humana, build a deeper level of commitment with our consumers as an insurance company?”
Key insight (possibly one of the best insights of the whole day): When thinking about all the times when an insurance company actually comes into contact with its members, Humana (via Greg) realized, “we are part of a sickness industry” (as opposed to a health industry)
One of the questions became: “How can we engage with healthy [health-minded] communities?”
- Build our own community? “Trying to move us away from that sort of thinking”
- Asked permission to participate in Twit2Fit
- Had already been members, personally, for 6 months
- Embedded a professional marathoner in this amateur fitness community
- Training logs, tweet chats, etc
- Engagement in this community went up 300%
“One of the things that people don’t think about, when they think about social, is that gaming is a social activity.”
- Created a social game built on web-enabled pedometers for kids
- Kids got together at recess to do exercise to get their step count up (!)
- Kids were exercising with families at home to get their step count up (!!!)
- Called “Horsepower Challenge” – horsepowergame.com
Along the way, Greg demoed a very cool Twitter/geo-mapping dashboard they developed — try it yourself at http://www.mytpsreport.com/
Greg’s #1 target for 2010: communities of care
- Ex: CureTogether.com
- 6-7K members
- Over 400 conditions represented
- All about helping people to find people in a similar situation and figure out how to work through this thing that’s happening to me
- “There is tremendous power in this model… I don’t yet know how a health insurance company can play here, but I want to support it, I want to be a part of it”
Q&A Highlights:
Q: “How did you pull this all off at Humana?”
A: “A little bit of stealth, and a quick win.”
Q: “Does social gaming as vehicle for behavior change translate to adults? Is Nike+ the model?” (Kids examples include Humana’s Horsepower Challenge, and the recently launched glucose meter for Nintendo DS)
A: There are a lot of sensors out there that can provide personal data related to health. Nike & iPod is a great example. What’s missing is the experience that ties the raw data, the social aspects, and the tracking of behavior change together in one place. “I think the market is there.”
More to come: the second set of speakers in the afternoon — Fabio Gratton, Marc Monseau, and David Hale — as well as the breakout sessions I attended.
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2 Responses to “Recapping Social Health 2010 (Part 1 of 3)”
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Jamie, Thank you so much for these wonderful reflections. I totally understand having all these note and wondering how to condense them for your readers but as someone who will be presenting on this very topic in May, this is immensely useful as I am looking for social media success stories. In fact when things settle down, and if you don’t mind, I would love it if you are able to scan and e-mail me your notes. I am looking forward to your next post.
Great recap, thanks! But don’t forget to mention that your presentation was one of the highlights of the morning sessions. Will you be posting your slides? Thanks again for offering such a valuable look inside MD Anderson’s use of SM.