The author of a report which features the personal details of 100 million Facebook users says he released the information to highlight the privacy issues associated with social networking. This has received widespread media pick-up because it is captivating, and a classic attention-grabbing scare story. But it is not the massive scandal it might appear to be. People who don’t want to share their personal lives online don’t. And people who are happy to be open about their information online aren’t going to stop using social networks just because of this report. Facebook scare stories are nothing new (as we said in a post not long ago). So is this a complete red herring? Should we care in the field of healthcare communications?
Read the rest of this entry »
Why privacy issues won’t put people off Facebook
July 30th, 2010How effective are Flash games at educating patients?
July 27th, 2010A new Flash game called ‘Privates’, made by Channel 4, has launched in the UK. Players control a squad of condom-hatted soldiers who run around the pubic region shooting sexually transmitted diseases with anti-viral bazookas (yes, really – watch the ‘Privates’ trailer if you want to see for yourself). So is this dumbing down to an absurd level, or does this kind of thing actually work?
Read the rest of this entry »
What can healthcare social media learn from the coolest brands on Facebook?
July 21st, 2010Recent blog posts over at Ignite Social Media show some great insights into what’s big on Facebook right now. For pharma and healthcare social media, Facebook offers quite a lot of opportunity, not least because of how easy it is to moderate comments and how ‘low-risk’ this is when compared to something like Twitter. While the only health ‘brand’ in Ignite’s top 50 is Breast Cancer Awareness (US), there is still much to be learned from non-health campaigns. So what are the brands with thousands of followers, who post hundreds of pro-brand comments on these pages, doing right?
In defence of healthcare communications
July 19th, 2010Our blog post last week ‘NHS White Paper: What the patient-centric approach means for healthcare communications’ ignited some debate on Twitter which we want to respond to. You can see the tweets people sent about the post on the page itself and our thoughts on these below.
Read the rest of this entry »
NHS White Paper: What the patient-centric approach means for healthcare comms
July 13th, 2010Press coverage around the publication of the NHS White Paper has been at best skeptical of the coalition’s reforms and at worst damning. Regardless of your opinion however, there is one point on which all must accept… that people are taking more responsibility for their own health, and that empowering patients – chiefly through choice – is a predictable and necessary course. For healthcare communications, this is highly significant. If patients are empowered to make decisions, who will inform and educate them about these decisions?
Read the rest of this entry »
2010 Communiqué awards: A reminder of the impact and potential healthcare comms can have
July 13th, 2010Never has the saying ‘perception is reality’ been more true for healthcare communications than it is today, particularly given the publication of the NHS White Paper and its focus on outcomes and choice for all. Everyone is a potential stakeholder and the stakes are high. Each year the Communiqué awards commend excellence and best practice and we are reminded how healthcare communications can meet these challenges and deliver real improvements in healthcare information dissemination, provision and choice.
Read the rest of this entry »
What is the real future for newspapers?
July 8th, 2010Rupert Murdoch has just launched The Times paywall. Arch rival BBC Online is soon to launch its redesigned site. And a ‘Save the Daily Mirror’ Facebook page has launched as even more staff are cut. Last year most commentators predicted a slow death for newspapers. Indeed, 166 newspapers in the US ceased printing from 2008-9, and hundreds of UK journalists lost their jobs as their papers got shockingly thinner. So are newspapers really going the way of the telegram?
Google’s search for Parkinson’s cure: A role-model for pharma
July 6th, 2010Wealth can’t buy health, but can technology? Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, thinks it can and is using the search engine to try to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease, which his genes say he has an 80% chance of getting. Online clinical trial recruitment and health research is already progressing at an impressive rate, but this is different, and could end up being an important model for pharma and healthcare industry.
We’re becoming an ‘appy nation
July 1st, 2010It seems that no business is truly innovative unless they have a novel way of reaching out to their customers. Recently, Apple’s iPhone applications have opened up a new world of reference tools, games and ways to interact with each other. However, apps in the health space are a more exciting and potentially life saving prospect with medical reference guides, diagnosis tools and live GP consultations (coming to an iPhone near you soon).
