YouTube - Changing Health Behaviors: From Facebook to Smartphones

YouTube - Changing Health Behaviors: From Facebook to Smartphones

Margaret Morris with Intel Digital Health Group covers 3 theories and research into how to apply them to helping people make healthy choices:

• Emotional Awarenes
  Facilitating awareness of behaviors through mobile therapy - can your phone be your psychologist?
• Social Psychology
  People are very affected by what they think other people are doing - how can we tailor messages that will motivate people to make the right choices?
• Loss Aversion
  Loss affects us twice as much in a negative way as gain affects us in a positive way - how can we use this "stick" to help people change?

Click the link above to see the video.

A few additional thoughts. Changing behavior is a very difficult "thing" to do. What do you do to help you "change"?

Can Health Care 2.0 Be as Easy as Craigslist? Craig Thinks So | Fast Company

Can Health Care 2.0 Be as Easy as Craigslist? Craig Thinks So | Fast Company

For two years, the American public has been a spectator to the congressional fights over the changing health care industry. Now, regardless of what happens on Capitol Hill, a large slice of country will be actively involved, as consumers and producers, in health care’s evolution. Click the link above to read more.

The work that the Government is doing to create a path for data to be made available to enhance innovation is really progressive. I'll be sharing information as I find interesting tid bits.

Holly Blog Templates! If you can't read it, don't use it!

I was updating the template for one of my blogs.  Wow!  That took much longer than it should have.  It is so easy to get lost in the choices and it takes time to figure out how to change the exact text or back ground that I am looking for.

While doing this I remembered a rule that I always used when creating marketing materials when I was running brands, but had some how forgotten.  "If you can't read it, don't use it."

There are so many pretty font styles and colors.  You don't want your pages to be too cluttered, so you just make the font a little smaller.  There is almost always more that one wants to say than their is space.

At the end of the day, marketing materials -print or digital- are intended to communicate.  If the communication is hampered by the style, color, size, or space, the stop and figure out something else.

I really wanted to use what I thought was a cool chique black and grey template.  WHAT A MESS.  It was really hard to read.  When I would "share" a story to curate, the text came in black  Which was very difficult to read on a dark gray background.

Finally, I just gave up and made it very simple, white background with black text.  Sometimes the tried and true is the very best solution.

Anyway, what really made this whole ordeal funny is that I had a comment pending (from Oct. - sorry @epatientdave).  He really made me feel that all my work was worth it with a comment he made about  how awful the template was.  He thought something bad had happened to his computer when he viewed my Digital Health Revolution blog.  Sooo glad I had already updated the template before I read his comment.

Glad to share a funny and somewhat embarrassing story about myself.   Would love to hear about comical blogging stories from you too!

(Summary of) AMA Policy: Professionalism in the Use of Social Media

Physicians today are struggling with how best to engage in social media dialogues.  They need to be present to dispel some of the myths that are propagated in the space.  However, they also must be careful in how they engage.  They AMA has some handy guidelines that were recently released.  Hopefully this will help to provide some guidance and encourage physicians to jump in!

AMA Policy: Professionalism in the Use of Social Media

• Know patient privacy and confidentiality standards
• Use privacy settings when using social media
• Maintain patient-physician boundaries
• Separate personal and professional content online
• Tell professional friends if you see inappropriate content
• Recognize that your reputation follows you online and off line

Read full story

Would love to hear your thoughts on physicians use of social media.  Have you seen anyone doing it well?  

Thank you!

Sunnie

Michael A. Snyder, M.D.: Healthy Eating: 10 Tips to Help You Eat Smarter

Michael A. Snyder, M.D.: Healthy Eating: 10 Tips to Help You Eat Smarter

For the average person looking to lose 10, 20 and 30 pounds, it's all about finding the right tools and leveraging them, to help curb emotional eating or poor dietary habits. Fad diets don't work long term because they ask too much of the person. But small practical changes do work.

Here are some simple tools from Dr. Michael A. Snyder, weight loss surgeon, for losing weight and keeping it off that I have seen work time and time again.

Health technology is a tool for improving healthcare not the solution

I had a very interesting conversation with a dear friend of mine yesterday.  An opportunity has arisen to partner with a company that will work with us to use a daily text as a vehicle to reach the teens and engage them in healthy behaviors, something that my friend and I are passionate about.  My friend presented the concept to her colleague, a physician, and his immediate reaction was  negative.  At first I was surprised and then I realized the issue was the way the information was presented.  The technology of texting was presented as the solution not as a vehicle.  After some good discussion we came to resolution.  Our conversation brought to light a challenge that is facing all of us who are working in healthcare today.

Health IT is s a vehicle, a channel, a tool.  Not the solution.  Technology is only one piece of the immense ecosystem of caring for people.

We would never position Outlook as the solution to all business communication, would we? (Maybe Microsoft would, but we know better).  It is a tool that helps us to communicate in an asynchronous fashion.  It is not solving all the communication problems that occur in business or the only way to communicate in business.

It is no wonder that many healthcare providers including lots of physicians are "fed-up" with all of this talk about HealthIT. We get so excited about all the incredible new technology products out there.  We discuss every tiny detail using terms that only technology or Health 2.0 gurus get.  Open source, HTML 5, 2 factor authentication, single sign-on, EMR, PHR, EHR, HL7, add in HIE, REC, LEC, a whole new language, who wouldn't be lost?

Where is the discussion about how these new technologies are really going to improve the lives of the people using the technologies, doctors, nurses, hospital staff and the most important group in the equation - the patient!

This is not an easy discussion as we don't have much if any data yet to prove that these new technologies are going to improve outcomes.  Additionally, in order to get the data we have to create the technologies and get people using them.

Healthcare providers, especially physicians, live in a world where very few decisions are made without at least some data.

We in the Health 2.0 advocates need to start moving towards conducting research to validate the effectiveness of the health IT tools that are being created.  This is going to take time.

In the short term, we can use literature and outcomes data that is available to us about enhanced communication, increased access, regular follow-up, enhanced education, for improving outcomes to bridge the communication gap between HealthIT professionals and the healthcare professionals that are on the front lines of patient care.

Finally, let's not forget that we can ask healthcare professionals to help us learn how to better communicate with them. Most of them love to teach.  I am sure they would welcome a collaborative conversation in which Health IT providers are experts about their technologies and we allow healthcare providers to be the experts about caring for their patients.

New Logo and Website

New Logo:

New website is:  www.ViablesSynergy.com


Can you guess the connection between the icon and the tagline?


Sunnie