A few months ago, I was lucky enough to be able to write a guest post on Amber Naslund’s Altitude Branding blog that was all about how we think about social media at Humana. At the time that post was written, our social media “un-committee” was about 4 months old. Now that we’re approaching our collective first birthday, I wanted to revisit the Altitude post, and to share a bit more about how we think about social media in our Fortune-100 enterprise. This is the first of three posts on the subject.
Humana made the decision to step – lightly – into social media last year. But the interesting thing is that it wasn’t really one decision, but many . . . perhaps dozens of decisions, happening all at about the same time. And when you think about it, it’s really not all that surprising that in a company of 29,000 people operating a complex business, the benefits of using social media became obvious to lots of us. Or, at least, too enticing not to try.
For those of you who don’t know our company, we’re one of the bigger health benefits companies out there. Here’s a pop quiz: How many of you love your health insurance brand? Nobody? OK, how many of you find your health insurer easy to work with? Ahh, yes. A few more, but still not many. How many of you find the health system easy to navigate? Crickets again.
Can you imagine why we might want to make a deeper connection with consumers? Why we might want to collaborate better with doctors and hospitals to make sure that our members get the best care for a reasonable price? To connect healthy people with programs that will keep them healthy? Then you can imagine why social media started to appear on everyone’s “solution radar” in 2008.
How it started
For me, it started with a realization that I couldn’t keep telling people that social media was a solution unless I started actually living it out. So, I started doing the usual stuff – blogging, setting up a facebook page and even a twitter account. You can read more about it here and here .
But things really took a turn when our team got some good press from the social media campaign for freewheelin. That led to a presentation to Humana’s executive committee, and a directive to create some kind of company-wide platform that we could use to help bring together Humana’s social media activities into a common place. After having done some pretty low risk exploration, we figured that the first thing to do would be to lay out a set of principles to live by – and the Town Square was born.
The Town Square is a concept that says every department in the company can get a “lot” on the town square, and build whatever kind of building suits their business needs best. It’s the place for Humana to understand, explore and use social media to take its business forward. It’s not about tools or technology; it’s about a new model for interaction and collaboration. It’s for our customers, yes, but not JUST our customers. It also applies to the way we work with doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, employers, the government and – yes – each other.
Tomorrow: The Town Square
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
There have been several articles on the Internet lately about both real and artificial Christmas trees being hazardous to certain people’s health. Most of these articles are mainly concerned with the electric lights, or candles, we so love to place all over our trees, but there are other kinds of dangers as well.
Does anyone in your house have allergies? Be careful how you store an artificial tree and, for that matter, ALL of your holiday decorations. Cardboard boxes can be sources of mold, not to mention fabulous dust-capturers. Store your tree and all of your ornaments in strong plastic containers with good tight seals. The original box might seem to be the best container for your artificial tree, but that box is probably made of thick cardboard. Find another way to store your tree; thick plastic trash bags are good, especially if it’s a plastic that’s been treated so it repels insects. Even the tiniest of little bugs can and will contribute greatly to an allergy! Mold attracts both bugs and mice.
Some doctors recommend that people with severe allergies wear a mask when getting seasonal decorations out of storage. Better safe than sorry!
One would suppose that a real Christmas tree would be much better for allergic people, but that’s not always so. Live trees are prone to pollen or mold, not to mention their sap, or oil. It’s a good idea to wash your real tree’s trunk at least once a week. In fact, it’s an even better idea not to keep your live tree for more than eight days; the longer you keep it, the more it gathers dust and mold. It also begins to die the moment the ax touches it, so don’t plan to keep a real tree beyond that week, plus or minus a day or two, but NOT more than 10 days. After that, no matter how carefully you tend it, it’s a fire hazard. Yes, even before the needles turn yellow! As you take your tree down, don’t forget to wipe clean everything ornament that was hanging on the tree. It takes a lot of time, yes, but for the allergic person, it’s well worth the time and trouble.
A house with a lighted Christmas tree is one of loveliest of all possible sights, and if we are all careful and sensible, our Christmas trees will be an asset, not a danger, to the health of everyone in the house.
Take lots of pictures!
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
The iPhone can be a powerful tool for tracking calories burned, but what if it could also be used to help your doctor diagnose you?
For example, what if the iPhone could be used to shoot CT scans to remote locations to speed up the diagnosis process? Peggy Rowland, over at Blisstree, wrote about a new University of Virginia study that shows just that in a post called: iPhone Going Medical?
Or what if your doctor could use the iPhone to help diagnose a condition and prescribe medication during an office visit? Last February, my friend John Moore at Chilmark Research, wrote about Epocrates helping one in four doctors with their daily diagnosis duties in a post called: Dr. Love, iPhone & Epocrates App
Steve Jobs touted that the iPhone was revolutionary back at Macworld 2007, and it appears to be a true statement in the realm of the doctor / patient diagnosis process. What do you think of the iPhone going all medical, and what else could it possibly do?
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
It’s cold and flu season so we all should know by now that washing your hands helps prevent the spread of disease, but my Google reader brought up an article in the BBC titled Shame ‘boosts hand –washing rate’ that was really wild.
A London university used sensors to monitor reactions to hygiene messages displayed to people using service station toilets. I had to laugh at this. In my head, I had an image of Hal from 2001 a Space Odyssey scolding people who didn’t wash up properly after using the facilities or a flashing red light and siren going off when someone stepped out the door without washing his or her hands.
I wasn’t too far off. There weren’t any talking robots or sirens, but there were messages on LED signs near the entrance to the bathrooms with mottos like “Water doesn’t kill germs; soap does,” and “Don’t be a dirty soap dodger,” etc…
Around 250,000 people were studied using online sensors to compare use of the toilets and the soap dispensers. The results are kind of disturbing. There’s definitely a difference between the sexes. Only 32 percent of the men washed their hands after using the facilities, compared to 64 percent women. It kind of makes me want the siren or the robot.
The message that made the most impact with participants was the message stating, “Is the person next to you washing with soap?” This caused an increase of 11 percent in women and 12 percent in men. I guess a little peer pressure can be useful at times. According to the to the London School’s hygiene centre, washing your hands with soap could prevent nearly 1 million needless deaths a year from common preventable diseases.
Don’t make us break out the killer robots and sirens people.
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
I realize how late I am in getting this out, but I want to share it nonetheless. I was able to sit in on the State of the Health Blogosphere panel at BlogWorld Expo, and it was a unique experience for somebody representing the online efforts of a “payer” in the health care system.
The panel consisted of the following patient and provider bloggers:
Take Aways
Here are some of the things I took away from the panel, in no particular order:
Credibility counts. Credibility is huge within the medical blogging community. People seeking health information online are looking for it from credible resources. They’re looking to share experiences and build trusted relationships over time. Being transparent with any kind of sponsored arrangement is a big deal within this community.
Mainstream acceptance. Kevin Pho talked about the merging of social and mainstream media, within the health community. Most people don’t surf blogs for medical information. Yet, this could change as med-bloggers become accepted by mainstream outlets; Kevin mentioned that he writes for CNN.com.
Blogging vs. social media. It seemed the panel looked at blogging as their primary medium of interest. I got the impression that it wasn’t desireable for med-bloggers to syndicate information on Facebook and Twitter. The SERMO professional network was also brought up as a possible threat to med-blogging, which surprised me. My point of view is that all forms of social media can fit together in some way, but I didn’t get that from the panel.
Where Do Payers Fit?
I asked what role payers can play in the future of the medical blogosphere. I thought Kevin Pho had a great response. Basically we need to continue to be human beings. (My words not his) Payers can be part of the conversation as long as we’re open and honest about our point of view. Health care is such a complicated topic, that it’s going to take a lot of listening and a lot of understanding to figure it out together.
Keyword being together, because we’re all in it together.
What Do You Think?
I would like to get your thoughts on the medical blogging community. Is there a place for it? Does it matter? And do payers belong? Please let me know what you think in the comments below.
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
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