So said one tweet in the recent stream from the Health IT Leadership Summit, an event I’ve been heavily involved in organizing for the last 10 months.
That particular statement came from the morning keynote by Jeff Arnold, CEO of Sharecare. Arnold, who also founded WebMD, spoke to the power of social networking and analytics as part of a broader patient engagement strategy. It was a sentiment expressed in nearly every session I attended that day, by hospital and vendor executives alike.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by the importance engagement played in the Summit’s sessions and networking discussions. It’s certainly the topic du jour of industry media and seems to weigh heavily on the minds of healthcare providers. Everyone wants to know, how do we do this? How can we get patients to truly engage, beyond tracking a few numbers on the latest digital health gizmo? How can we get providers to engage as well? Sending and receiving secure emails is great, but effective patient engagement that directly affects outcomes could be so much more than that.
If sessions and conversations at the Summit were any indication, the key will be to combine traditional patient data (like that found in an EMR), with data mined from social networks, and then filter that through big data tools for predictive analysis. Much easier written or tweeted about than achieved, I assume, but it’s a positive sign all the same.
That’s very true, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a CIO who says they DON’T care. After listening to several hospital executives speak at the Summit, I got the impression that they care immensely, but aren’t quite sure where to turn for technology and processes that will enable their organizations to interpret engagement data into actionable knowledge.
Take a look Storified Twitter insight from the Summit via “#HealthITSummit Sessions Spotlight Social’s Role in Patient Engagement,” and then let me know via the comments below which healthcare organizations seem to be heading in the right direction when it comes to social analytics and patient engagement.
