Social media for physician practices?

Anne Zieger, editor of FierceHealthIT and other publications, is running a contest of sorts on LinkedIn: Design a social media marketing and communication system for a medical practice. It’s part of a LinkedIn discussion group, and it looks as if she’s doing this on her own, not as a representative of any publication.

I’m not sure of any prizes, but it sounds like there might be a business opportunity there for the right ideas.

See, just because I’m skeptical of Twitter doesn’t mean I don’t see value in social networking sites. In fact, here is my LinkedIn profile page.

Health 2 point uh-oh

Health 2.0 naysayer Dmitriy Kruglyak has posted his most pointed criticism of the genre to date, calling out Matthew Holt et al for starting up a consultancy, Health 2.0 Advisors in what Dmitriy believes is opportunistic cashing in on others’ lack of a sustainable business model.

I’ll let others duke it out over the merits of health 2.0, but I’ll just say I was at the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco two weeks ago and at the Medicine 2.0 Congress in Toronto two months ago. You’ll recall I blogged twice about the Toronto conference, on Sept. 4 and again on Sept. 11. This was not meant as a slight to the San Francisco crowd, just the reality of being on an 11-day, four-city trip while also facing deadlines for my actual paid gigs.

The Toronto conference was much more academic in nature, as the meeting even had published proceedings. The San Francisco one was more about real-world applications and the hunt for the elusive revenue-generating plan.

If you want a taste of the San Francisco conference, video production house ScribeMedia.org has just posted a highlight of the opening session, namely Dr. David Kibbe’s “Great American Health 2.0 Motorcycle Tour.”

The senior health IT advisor for the American Academy of Family Physicians travels the country on his Honda Goldwing—at least until the fuel pump gives out near Chattanooga, Tenn.—talking to people at TelaDoc, American Well, PatientsLikeMe, change:healthcare, Google Health, Healthline, MedHelp and Kosmix. He also drops in on New York Times columnist Tara Parker-Pope, who says she doesn’t like the term “health 2.0” to talk about personal wellness and empowering patients, then visits with a new kind of medical practice called Hello Health and stops by a Tennessee MinuteClinic.

Watch the video here:

Yes, there’s a lot of good that can come from interactive health sites, but a lot of questions still to be asked about many of the ideas and companies. I leave you with one more video to help keep things in perspective:

Then again, it might take a nation of millions to hold back health 2.0. The jury is out.