Healthcare Organizations are All a-Twitter

Just a Tweet Away | Articles & Archives | Healthcare Informatics.

Key article in the May, 2009 Issue of Healthcare Informatics.

AxisPortals’s favorite passages:  

I don’t want them just to know what our strategic plan is or what our IT plan is.  People like to work with people, and so this is a mechanism of letting my personality show, along with what we’re trying to accomplish as a healthcare organization, and as an IT organization.–Will Weider, CIO Affinity Health System, and Ministry Health Care.

And

Some might argue that e-mail is sufficient for staying in touch with employees, and that social media is just another obligation for already busy executives, but Weider, who receives hundreds of e-mails every day, says he can better manage his time with sites like Twitter by more quickly sorting through messages.  By limiting posts and direct messages to 140 characters or fewer, the site forces users to communicate as efficiently as possible.

AxisPortals Aphorism:  Social media personalizes communication, and supports institutional growth and education.

Health 2.0

The February issue of Healthcare Informatics surveys the top tech trends for 2009.  Take particular note of the “Health 2.0″ sidebar in the patient portals section:

“[H]ealthcare companies are looking at how other Web technologies–such as blogs, Wikis, and social networking sites–can play a role in patient interactions . . .Web-savvy healthcare organizations are studying ways to adopt technology to interact with patients to self-manage, and to interact with one another in social networking situations . . .’This is about being inclusive, and allowing people and providers to collaborate in new ways.’”

This is the sort of observation that tends to make AxisPortals very happy, because it promotes general business understanding that Web 2.0 technologies and approaches aren’t strictly social and aren’t just for kids (more on that in my next post), but are fundamentally part of the way we live now, and must therefore be fundamentally part of how we concieve of business now, as well.

Web 2.0 Central Concepts

AxisPortals Aphorism: Web 2.0 is good for healthcare, and it’s good for the health of every business.

Technology in 2009: Other People’s Resolutions

 

Remember when New Year’s resolutions always had to do with dropping a few pounds, jogging, or blowing the dust of the exercise bike?  

No more.

Technology plays such a large role in our personal and corporate identities now that the “tech resolution” is widespread. 

Here are few worth pondering, borrowing, or recognizing with a wry grin.

1. Law Technology News:  A great collection of lawyers’ personal and professional technology goals.  Favorite excerpt:  “To work hard to use technology to maximize the quality of my life.”  Amen. 
2. CIO Resolutions:   Practical advice for decision makers.  Best of the bunch:  “Manage people as well as tech.” 
3. DataMotion’s Resolutions for CIO’s:  More practical advice. ”Get ahead of the curve and implement efficient technologies that empower your employees to work remotely and securely” gets AxisPortals “that’s my favorite” vote .  Yes.  It’s far past time for all of us to embrace the ROWE!
4. Spark Readers’ Resolutions:  Off-the-cuff contributions from blog readers.  Spending less time with technology is a common theme, here.  AxisPortals can relate, but thinks “spending technology time more wisely” is a better approach.  Still, if you aren’t sure what that big orange thing in the sky might be, or you find yourself texting your family members while you’re all in the same house, it might be time to holster the cell phone, drop the mouse, and back slowly away from your laptop.

AxisPortals Aphorism:  You should be able to access your tech at the pool or at the beach, but sometimes often it’s healthier to unplug and dive into the pool or walk barefoot along the shore, savoring the moment.