As you would have seen from my recent blog post, I am ecstatic about the fact that the 2011 South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive festival will have a “Health Track” as part of it’s mainstream sessions and, what’s even more exciting, is that a big part of this was due to the success of the Social Health 2010 unconference (read: “New for SXSW 2011: One-Day Health Track“). And to top that off, I have also been invited to be a member of the 2011 SXSW Advisory Board for “Health” — you can see how sessions are scored on the Panel Picker here.

While I am extremely honored to be on the “Health Track” ad board, one disappointing “side effect” is that I am not able to submit a proposal for a session within the “Health Track” (it would be silly to judge your own submission )

While many businesses and corporations have started to adopt social media as part of their marketing, communications, and other business practices, regulated industries – such as pharmaceuticals, financial services, and the automotive industry – often face challenges and restrictions that other industries do not need to consider, such as federal regulations and industry guidelines.

This panel brings together an esteemed group of social media pioneers within regulated industries, who have not only transformed their organization’s approach to social media, but also successfully planned and executed numerous social media programs, while adhering to their respective industry regulations and limitations. The session will cover:

• A general overview of some regulated industry regulations/ limitations
• Championing organizational change, with respect to digital communication
  
• Developing internal policies/guidelines for social media
  
• Working with internal legal/regulatory departments for reviews and/or approvals
• Developing social media strategies within highly conservative corporate culture

Questions Answered:

1. What are some of the federal/industry limitations that challenge regulated industries?
2. How do you get around existing internal policies and guidelines that prohibit social media activities?
3. What needs to be established before implementing social media within conservative corporate cultures?
4. How do you develop an ongoing process that meets the expectations of the social media culture, yet adheres to the limitations of being regulated?
5. How do you develop and implement strategies that will work within the conservative limitations of a regulated industry?

This Thursday, August 26th from 1-3pm ET, Phil Baumann (Founder of Health is Social), will be hosting an interesting webinar called “Healthcare Social Media: Perspectives in Practice“. This is the first Health Is Social event, since it’s inception and the cost is $39.

The presenters that Phil has recruited for this webinar are a nice mix of well respected, prominent #HCSM (Healthcare and Social Media) thought leaders, including:

• ePatient Dave - Patient engagement advocate, speaker, author of Laugh Sing & Eat Like a Pig, blogger
• Dr. Bryan Vartabedian (aka Doctor_V) – Kids tummy doctor, father, writer and overall good guy (blog: 33charts.com)
• Erin Macartney (Palo Alto Medical) - Public Affairs, Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Ragan HealthCare MarCom News team
• Angela Dunn – Director of Social Media & Recruiting for Odom Lewis

Here’s a brief description about the webinar…

If you’ve decided that Social Media is here to stay and you’re either planning or implementing your social media strategies and presence, but are still figuring out what to do or what more you can do, then you’ll want to attend this Webinar.

The purpose of the Webinar is to expand on the theoretical bases of healthcare social media with specific examples and views. Health Is Social believes that social media offers a robust array of possibilities within healthcare, requiring different perspectives on what can be done.

In this Webinar, we cover four of these perspectives: the patient’s, the provider’s, the healthcare organization’s and the professional’s (internal staff):

Hospitals, healthcare associations and practitioners interested in developing their online presence are encouraged to attend this Webinar. We believe Social Media goes deeper than just public relations – these new media offer opportunities to improve collaboration, help redesign internal processes and provide novel ways of adding value to all of an organization’s information customers.

If you’re interested in signing up for this, register for the event at Eventbrite.

In case you haven’t already heard the extremely good news, the South by Southwest (SXSW) organization has now included a “Health Track” as part of it’s mainstream events. I’ve copied and pasted the “full story” of how this came about below (originally posted on the SXSH blog).

While it may appear to be a little too late to have a blog post about submitting your “Health Track” proposals in time for the original deadline of July 9th, the good news is that the SXSW organizing committee has extended the deadline over the weekend, so you have at least 1 more full day (till July 11th) to submit your proposals, so if you haven’t already done so, you still have a day’s reprieve — GOOD LUCK!

DISCLOSURE: I have been invited to sit on the advisory board of the SXSWi “Health Track”.

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Here’s the original post from the SXSH blog:

SXSW Health Track – Now a Mainstream Event!

In case you haven’t heard the great news, the SXSW organizing committee will be including a “Health Track” as part of the mainstream events of the wider South by Southwest festivities conference ! If you haven’t already done so, please submit your proposals for a health-related session by JULY 9th — below is a picture of the “Health” category which you can select as an option:

Thank you to everyone who supported Social Health 2010, whether as a participant, speaker, sponsor, or even just via “social conversation” — you were a big part of the success and this wonderful outcome!

Hello World — I’ve re-surfaced !

<crickets>Chirp, chirp…</crickets!> Know what that sound is? The sound of my blog lately!

If you’re wondering what brought about this unintentional hiatus from blogging, well… I have no really good excuses, but it’s definitely been a combination of a few things, including:

• My new role at work — leading digital strategy and social media as my company prepares to commercialize and launch (hopefully) in the upcoming year.
• Planning and running the wildly successful Social Health 2010 unconference and attending SXSW.
  
• Oh yeah… and did I mention my new baby boy ? #LittleG was the nickname/hashtag I used as I live tweeted his birth in early June.

Anyway, I know these are merely excuses for not just having enough discipline to carve out some time,  sit down, and start blogging again, so I’m now making a mid-year resolution to do just that and start getting jiggy with my blog once again. Keep watching this space… I’m gonna start clearing out the cobwebs…

Wow, it’s been a loooong time since I last published a blog post! So, what have I been up to that’s kept me so busy? Well, let’s just say I’ve been working on a few new things that have kept me pretty occupied…

Firstly, I recently moved into a new role at work at the start of the year, I’m now officially part of the Marketing (brand) team leading digital strategy and social media. That responsibility came with a bunch of new deadlines and travel, that have made Q1 2010 the busiest quarter I’ve had since I joined the company… but definitely in a good, good way (like a caffeine high )!

On top of all that, I have also been working with a few key folks (Dana Lewis, Reed Smith, and Tom Stitt) to bring together a special Health Care and Social Media (HCSM) event just prior to the largest international Social Media gathering at South by South West (SXSW)… The event is called: Social Health 2010 (SXSH) and it will be held on March 11th, 2010 at the Texas Hospital Association in Austin, TX.

SXSH is a day-long international social health un-conference encompassing all aspects of healthcare. The event will have structured, previously announced presentations in the style of a TED conference, as well as an “un-conference” portion — similar to PodCamp or HealthCamp — where topics are decided by the participants. The un-conference tracks will be divided into three main themes: (1) ePatient and Participatory Medicine, (2) Provideer/Payor/Legal, and (3) Social Pharma.

The idea behind SXSH is to break down the silo’s between various HCSM groups and bring together — IN REAL LIFE — the folks that have been involved in various TweetChats and other online communities, surrounding healthcare (e.g. #HCSM, #HCSMEU, #HCMktg, #FDAsm, #RNchat, #SocPharm, as well as Healthcamp, BILPIL, etc.).

Here’s a list of the diverse group of cross-healthcare speakers that we have lined up for the “TED-like” presentations:

• Doug Ulman — CEO, LIVESTRONG (Opening Keynote)
• Fabio Gratton — #FDAsm, Cheif Innovation Officer and Co-Founder of Ignite Health
• David Hale — Project Manager of Pillbox and NLM Social Strategist
• Greg Matthews — @Chimoose, Director of Consumer Innovation at Humana
• Marc Monseau — Director of Media Relations at J&J
• Jenn Texadda — Communications Program Manager at MD Anderson

And for an idea of the program topics, check out the (near final) agenda as well.

Hopefully, some of you will be able to make it to the event itself, but if you aren’t able to, do follow along on Twitter (@SXSH) and with the hashtag (#SXSH), which will be “moderated/facilitated” by @TStitt.

Finally, a big THANK YOU to all the sponsors for supporting SXSH: St. David’s Healthcare, MD2P.net, WEGO Health, IMC2 health & wellness, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and our media partner, DigiRedo.

As read on Macdailynews:

“As Michael Oh watched his daughter easily navigate her iPod touch, he had an epiphany,” Stacey Burling reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer. “‘I figured if she can learn it so intuitively that neurosurgeons would be able to figure it out,’ said Oh, who is a neurosurgeon.”

“He’ll find out whether he was right when 3,500 neurosurgeons meet in Philadelphia in May for what he believes is the nation’s first paperless scientific or medical convention,” Burling reports.

“When they register at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons meeting, the doctors will be given iPod touches already loaded with everything they’ll need, including the program (165 pages last year), summaries of research presented at the meeting, advertising and information from exhibitors,” Burling reports. “Doctors will be able to use the iPods for messaging and for interacting with presenters during meetings. The convention also attracts 3,500 exhibitors and guests who will not be given the devices.”

“Not only will the iPods encourage community building, but they will save a lot of paper, said Oh, who heads a convention committee on the machines,” Burling reports. “The programs alone would have used more than half a million pages, he said, and most of those would have been left behind in hotel rooms.”

Burling reports, “AANS bought the iPod touches and added $100 to the registration fee. Apple will have people from its local stores on hand to answer questions, and members of the young neurosurgeons committee will help, too.”

Check out the original article here.