Engaging Patients Part 2

So yesterday I wrote a little about engaging patients to make behavior changes using a social media game.  Today I want to look at how using a social media platform can help hospitals engage patients with chronic disease.

The Mayo Clinic has recently improved their social media platform by building a hub for patients to communicate with each other.  It provides a place where their 500,000 annual patients can connect along with their 50,000 employees.  So how does this engage patients you ask.....Living with a chronic disease makes people more likely to contribute to the online conversation. The Patient Connect site from the Mayo Clinic reaches their target populations and gives them the opportunity to interact with not only their current and past patients but their future patients too. 
When patients get sick, one of the first things they do is look online for information.  Their are a lot of sites out there providing this information.  It only makes sense that a Hospital is the one providing this information to patients and also is giving them a built-in support system with their peers.  The Mayo Clinic provides discussion forums, news articles, blogs by Mayo employees, and a large array of videos. This format gives the patients their support system that helps them make changes and understand their disease. 
Information searches are the largest searches on the web.  Most people are looking for that second opinion or the the latest new alternative.  Hospitals can make sure their message is out there so when patients are looking for a second opinion, their name is the one that shows up.  When they do that, they should harness the instinct to share and tools to make it easy.  Make the social sites loaded with information they can use and make it mobile so patients can comment and participate using their phones.  Mobile access bumps up participation so use it and help patients to change and/or understand their disease.  Knowledge is power after all.
--The Catalyst

Patient Activation Part 1

I have thought a lot about how you could help engage patients to participate in their healthcare decisions.  The problem is that it is really behavior that needs to change and that is such a personal choice that no one but that person can choose to make.  So the question is how do we do that?

There are a lot of different methods out there that may work for some and not for others.    One that seems to work well is holding people accountable for behavior changes through their social network.  One such site is a game on Facebook called Health Seeker.  They also have a mobile app so people can play it on their phones as well. This uses your social network and challenges to help you stay accountable.  It makes people more engaging by feeling the value of progressing through the individual and actions. As they complete their missions, they work on completing lifestyle goals.