Images of a cash-strapped NHS don’t quite seem to fit with social media, especially given the ever increasing workload on healthcare professionals providing little time to engage. However, a community on Twitter has started taking the topic on and there is a great deal of exciting discussion happening. While we know NHS social media does not mean (see the Facebook ‘lying down game’), the #nhssm community does offer suggestions of what it could mean…
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Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
Why privacy issues won’t put people off Facebook
Friday, July 30th, 2010The 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?
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What can healthcare social media learn from the coolest brands on Facebook?
Wednesday, 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?
Could doctors looking at your Facebook improve treatment?
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010Are healthcare professionals looking at your Facebook page? The most likely answer is ‘no’, since GPs, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals (HCPs) are busy enough as it is without wanting to look up their patients on the internet. However, doctors in the UK are now being encouraged by NICE to ask patients probing questions about how much they drink. If doctors are rewarded for meeting targets, what is to stop them from looking at Facebook or running Google searches for patients they are most concerned about?
Fear over Facebook: Do not panic!
Monday, March 15th, 2010Last week’s media coverage has again brought peoples’ fears over online chat rooms and networks – and Facebook specifically – back to the forefront. The general public has often been suspicious of the internet, with genuine concerns of never quite knowing who you are talking to or who is watching, even with the strictest privacy policies. But are the latest headlines something to worry about and should companies and professional organisations be fearful of engaging?
NHS workers unfairly suspended for Facebook game?
Friday, September 11th, 2009The stereotypical doctor is austere, authoritative and certainly not the kind of character who would play pranks while on duty. So when NHS workers in a Swindon hospital were suspended this week for taking amusing photos of each other as part of a Facebook game, they betrayed this perhaps rather outdated view on how doctors and healthcare professionals should act. But did they really do anything wrong?
