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

Using the Internet to Create Informed Patients

Earlier this year I spoke at the Putting Patients First conference on "Using the Internet to create Informed Patients". Here are the slides and the video recordings from my talk. The conference which was held in Mumbai aims to become an annual event where participants from different sectors of the Medical Ecosystem can meet and discuss strategies to promote and improve Patient Centered Health Care. You can read up about the conference at this link http://www.patientpower.in/

Slides
Using The Internet to create Informed Patients



Video Part 1

Video Part 2

Tripping for Sales ... June 1st Week

Crash Boom Bang!!! Well that's what we expected when we arrived in Pune late last night from our very interesting and fruitful trip to Kolhapur. Ketan had called in late in the evening to inform us that there had been no electricity in the office for over 2 hours. There were rumours that there would be none of it for probably all of Saturday. Pune had finally been blessed with rain, unfortunately it had been really heavy and a number of trees had fallen all around town. However by the time we reached there, we found Pune to be pleasant and quiet, no rain, no thundering, no lightening... The almighty probably had decided to sleep for a bit... There was no electricity in most of the city though and our rickshaw ride was majorly through darkness. and it was a pleasant surprise when we saw lights on all around Dhole Patil , for we knew this wouldn't be a dark night for us.

As I look back at the past 2 days, very interesting 2 days, a smile comes upon me. I am happy to say that we now have an authorized distributor for Kolhapur, a city where the doctor density shocked me. On an average I am assuming 4 doctors per building... Now where have I seen this before. Actually lets go back 2 days to that bus journey in a Konduskar. As I woke up, to the sounds of Aaloo Chaat blaring on the screen, I looked outside and saw an advertisement of a Mercedes Benz. I was shocked. Was I in Ludhiana.... No...The posters outside informed me ...This was Kolhapur. Our destination had arrived. I was still shocked by that advert as I got down from the bus and looked around. I saw atleast 20 boards announcing different types of doctors. Where was I. This place was like the apt place for Plus91 to set up a marketing office. Paradise... We were to say.... As we went towards our hotel in a rick... All Aditya and me did was count the number of banners for doctors we saw ... 42 ... WOW!!! After a quick check-in ...into Hotel Ranjit ... A nice budget hotel... Nothing fancy...And nothing sub-standard either... We freshened up and went to meet the concerned party. An organization by the name of Orion Computers owned by a gentleman by the name of Prasad. After a good 4 hours of discussions and negotiations, we finally came to a set of mutually beneficial terms and conditions. We agreed on meeting the next morning and signing the documents which would take an hour in the night to prepare, and took off to enjoy the city. Which meant visit some doctors to get the feel of them...

Meeting doctors was easy. Aditya's contacts were available and after a phone call, we had a meeting waiting for us. We met a young gentleman who owned a small hospital, which was housed in a building alongwith 3 other hospitals. Add to that an Ultrasound Center and a Path-Lab, and this was a typical Kolhapur building. We were impressed at the the state of the hospital, and further by the interest the young doctor showed in our products. He found clinION and Ultrasite very interesting and quickly referred us to 5 other doctors also. Post this meeting, we went to another Maternity Hospital and an IVF center before retiring for the day. Back at Hotel Ranjit, I fell in love with the French Fries. The next day was smooth. We met Prasad, we had a quick meeting, a quick signing, some discussions about commitments and Bye Bye - Ta ta - See You ... We visited the ambadevi (Mahalaxmi) temple, a few stores in search of Kolhapuri chappals, and a restaurant which is pretty popular there called Hotel Gokul... and after pigging for 2 hours we were on our way back. Bombay and Aurangabad beckon us next week, and we hope to ring on board more distributorships and more doctors ...