How does a Website help Promote a Gynaecology practice

This is a simple presentation with some ideas for any Gynecologist who may be setting up a website for them self. Medical Websites are an important first step towards promoting Information Therapy. They help creating digital identities for doctors, and start the ball rolling for Digital Medicine to flourish. All the cooler stuff eHealth, Telemedicine, EHR's, Healthcare Gaming, HealthMaps and mHealth will be easier to implement on a large scale if all doctors had digital identities.  N.B. and a Disclaimer: The Health IT Plus91( http://www.plus91.in) of which I am a co-founder has an initiative called Websites for Doctors which Works hard to ensure that All Indian Doctors (a tad short of a Million Doctors) will have a Website in the years to come.   How does a Website help Promote a Gynaecology practice

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Do's and Dont's for Physicians on Facebook

So finally Social Media has hit the spot with doctors. Its the first form of technology which Doctors have adopted worldwide on their own( without pressure, incentives or kickbacks.)

Recent statistics show that while 87% of the physicians surveyed reported using Social media for personal purposes, a significant 67% also claimed to be using it for Professional use. Social Media has ushered healthcare into an exciting world of free expression and multi faceted communication

There have also been some unfortunate cases coming to light, where doctors have been penalized for overdoing it on Social Media. Also 45 % of the organizations surveyed claimed to have no policy for Social Media. In this article we'll look at some do's and don'ts for Physicians so that they can use Facebook safely and not let it cause legal problems for themselves in the future.

1. Don't talk about your Patients - Talk about yourself, your cases, your peers ... But don't talk about your patients. Their privacy is protected by law ...

2. When you talk about yourself, your cases and your peers, make sure you are not identifying your patients

3. Dont practice medicine from inside Social Networks. Avoid the common traps of responding to seemingly harmless medical questions. The ones which go like "How many days before ..." or "What do you think ...."

4. Try to avoid getting drawn into negative discussions on a public forum. On facebook you can hold a private discussion with a colleague on "How you feel your hospital needs to improve ?" in the privacy of personal messages and chats ... Avoid this on your wall..

5. Try to create a facebook page for yourself or your practice. With this in place, you can avoid having to accept friend requests from patients, redirecting them instead to like your page.

6. Dont post objectionable content. Physician or not, inebriated pictures and vulgar comments are not cool. Even if they seem to be for a particular phase in life.

7. When something objectionable is posted, accept it , apologize for it and remove it.

8. Set your Privacy Settings on various networks appropriately to safeguard your information and content. This helps you protect yourself when Rule No 1 is crossed.

DO have fun, be transparent and DO voice your views. DO  provide tips on where to gain trustworthy information online and offline , DO make connections but make sure you follow the above 8 points.

Further Readings:

A Wonderful Article with Do's and Don'ts for Nurses using Social Media

Facebook for Medical Practices and Doctors 

AMA Policy: Professionalism in the Use of Social Media

Facebook Page on Digital Healthcare 

Facebook for Medical Practices and Doctors

Facebook has seen unprecedented growth in the last 4 years. From a small community site, specific to colleges, it has overtaken Google to become the favored haunt of the webophile. One of the reasons for this has been the number of applications that are built on Facebook, but a bigger reason is that because "Everyone is On Facebook". Lets face it, if you want to know what someone did last Sunday, or last month, Facebook is a bigger help than any friend that you have.  Coming to the point, the last year has seen a serious growth in the number of doctors creating Facebook profiles.

Now I've spent a considerable amount of time helping doctors embrace technology for different reasons. Some want technology to help manage their clinic, some to help manage patients also, some simply want to use it to connect to friends and family far away while some other want to use it to see if it can help them learn more. Facebook is a brilliant technology for just keeping in touch, and to make regular announcements. Not too regular mind you.

The presentation below delves into the Why's and How To's of setting up a Facebook Page for a Medical Practice. It also provides some examples and contains a video showcasing samples of very effective techniques.

Facebook Pages For Doctors and Medical Practices

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Note:
As with all professions, Medical Professionals have started slowly empowering themselves using the benefits of technology. Over the years, I have analysed how each medium would benefit a doctor given his specific needs, and of course had to reason on factors such as the learning curve, investments on time  and mindsets.   Social Media is one such medium. This article is part of a series of 4 where I delve into how Doctors can use different Social Media avenues for different purposes.

You may wish to check out Websites for Doctors to start off with creating a digital Identity for yourself. By my calculation, its the largest provider of Medical Websites in Asia