Inside Healthcare Computing's 4-16-07 issue features an outstanding article on the real-world benefits of Internet social media to both the patient community and to healthcare organizations.

Quoted in journalist Kayt Sukel's 600-word piece are Microsoft's Global Healthcare Industry Director, Bill Crounse MD; Nick Jacobs FACHE, CEO of Windber Medical Center; Promedica's Carol Kirshner and myself.

(We've purchased web reprint rights to the article, which you can download in its entirety here.)

Some excerpts:

Healthcare is missing an opportunity, says Bill Crounse MD, global
healthcare industry director for the Redmond, Wash. based Microsoft
Corporation.

...Crounse says the blogs give him a platform for connecting with decision makers. "How do you connect with an audience? ... Blogs are a great way to reach the narrow constituency of healthcare professionals interested in technology and how it can improve healthcare delivery and patient safety. It's a way to have a conversation."

(Bill clearly understands that Markets are Conversations, as as advocated by those of us that evangelized professionally for online communities, back when relatively few ears in the healthcare and pharma industries were listening.)

...Carol Kirshner, vice president of nursing continuing education
company The Promedica Research Center of Loganville, Ga. agrees.
“It's about listening to your customers, finding out what they want, and
responding. Even if you can't incorporate what they want, you can at
least show them that you're listening"...

...Kirshner cites Windberblog, the blog of F. Nicholas Jacobs, President and CEO of the Windber Medical Center and Research Institute in
Windber, Pa., as one of the best healthcare blogs.

“Jacobs really believes in transparency of healthcare and puts it out there with his blog," says Kirshner. “It's one of the best examples of how blogs can build a trusting relationship with customers and the community.”

(You go, Carol.)

Michael Russell,  technology journalist and Windber's [blog strategist], says that linking the hospital's site to Jacobs' blog was a risk worth taking, even though it's uncommon to mix business and personal sites. "We felt strongly that the blog, and especially the multimedia content on it, was the ideal way for him to get his innovative ideas out to patients, professional peers, and the press."

"This has been the best year financially for the hospital in 101 years and I attribute some of that to my blog," says Jacobs. "I think more people know about us and know who we are by reading it and it's really helping us."

For those who'd like to learn more, Nick Jacobs will be speaking at the upcoming Spring 2007 Healthcare Blogging Summit, presented by Trusted.MD and our friends at Transmarx. Save the date.

—Mike Russell