We post any pre-reading and summary posts of the chats here for you all to read. We also blog during the week on all matters of tech, strategy, commisioning support and patient experience use of social media.
YouTube currently has over 1 billion unique users per month with over 4 billion hours of video watched during that period. In the UK YouTube is now the 3rd most popular site with UK internet users watching 184 million hours of content. Those figures are all well and good but does YouTube figure as highly when we talk about healthcare?
Without doubt google is the number one search engine but perhaps you didn’t know that YouTube is ranked second. Certainly this well-known video would have you believe that statistic. Of course some such as Rose McGrory are sceptics and might dispute this finding. In terms of health I would dispute it myself.
There is no doubt that patients find it incredibly useful for posting vlogs, providing peer to peer support, talking about campaigns that affect their daily lives and using video to better understand treatments they are about to embark on. My real unanswered questions is whether healthcare professionals view it the same way? A report last year in the USA by iHealthBeat indicated that physicians are now turning to Youtube to help educate patients and other physicians but is that the same in the UK? My own medical team and I will often share videos that are either of practical use to my treatment or about opportunities that might one day have an impact on patients like myself. For example 3D printed kidneys as a way forward for organ transplantation.
There is no doubt that the NHS has turned to video as a means of communication. The NHS Choices Channel has had nearly 13.5 million views. The world renowned Great Ormond Street Hospital Channel has 225,000 views which compared very favourably to the USA’s Mayo Clinic channel’s 10,000 views. So where are all these views coming from? I suspect once again it is patients that are driving this traffic and driving the demand for more video content but what do the healthcare professionals think? My questions to you are simply these?
Is video perceived as an important communication tool for you?
Do you regard YouTube as a vital part of your social media menu?
Do you think youtube will always be more patient than physician focused?
To finish your pre- reading I thought you might like to check out this:
Thank you to everyone who has tested the app so far! Your feedback has been really valuable and we’ve been able to (hopefully) correct a number of bugs already. That’s why we’ve released an updated version of the app for both Android and iOS devices and extended testing until the end of this week to catch more of your great feedback.
We’ve also produced a screenshot-by-screenshot set of instructions of how to get the app on either an Android or iOS device. You can find them in pdf form below:
Once you’ve had a play around and set a few notifications to help you learn and use the Five Ways please fill out our 15 min survey and tell us what you think!
Sometimes 140 characters isn’t enough. That’s why links in tweets are so important. Those links take the reader onto further information, often text based, to continue the point or expand on an idea.
But text based communications often still full short of the range of tone, volume and homour a human voice can produce.
Multimedia is richer
Links to multimedia help over come this. As our bandwidth gets wider, our devices faster and our connections faster and more reliable the rise of video and audio streaming continues at a pace.
Video and audio contain much of the richness of human interaction that in real life conversations hold.
Podcasts
Tonight we’re going to be talking about one form of multimedia content – podcasts. Podcasts are short, medium or long audio files in which a person or people discuss their given subject or air their views. Here are a few health related ones:
Over the past couple of months Colin and Alex have been working with the Somerset public health team and the nef (new economics foundation) to develop an app to help people learn and use the Five Ways to Wellbeing. Now you have a chance to help them make it better!
What are the Five Ways you ask?
Well, The Five Ways to Wellbeing can help you to learn how to look after your wellbeing. They’re based on evidence from across the globe and are:
1. Connect 2. Be Active 3. Take Notice 4. Keep Learning 5. Give
The project used state-of-the-art research to find out how to improve everyone’s wellbeing throughout their lives. nef then developed the Five Ways to Wellbeing to help communicate its key ways of improving your wellbeing.
The task Colin and Alex have undertaken is to boil this down into an app to help you look after your wellbeing and make the Five Ways an enriching habit. And they’ve got half way through their task. Your help is now needed!
This week we’re getting out our crystal ball out and having a look to 2015. How will the NHS be using digital communications and IT differently then? Will the NHS be using them differently?!
To help us structure the chat we’ll be asking the following four questions over the hour:
How will social media be used in 2015 to help long term condition (LTC) patients?
How will social media be used in 2015 for accessing health information?
How will social media be used in 2015 for transactional care?
How will social media be used in 2015 to help the public navigate the NHS?
Join us at 8-9pm tonight (Weds 17 April) to give us your views and hear what other people are experiencing across the system. 2015 is closer than you think!
