Presentation by Lee Aase, manager of syndication and social media at Mayo Clinic, and Chancellor of Social Media University, Global (SMUG) on social media in health care.

1. Improving Health Care
through Social Media
Lee Aase
Manager, Syndication and Social Media
Mayo Clinic
April 22, 2010

2. Dispelling Myths and Answering
Misgivings about Social Media
• Just a passing fad
• Just for kids
• Just toys with no real business use
• I don’t have time for social media; I’m
already drowning in email and can’t add
another thing
• I’m too old to “get” social media
• They’re complicated and bewildering

13. Top SMUG Textbooks
• Getting Things Done, David Allen
• The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss
• Free: The Future of a Radical Price,
Chris Anderson

15. About Lee Aase (@LeeAase)
• B.S. Political Science
• 14 years in politics and government at
local, state, national levels
• Mayo Clinic since April 2000
− Media relations consultant
− Manager since 2004
− Media Relations/Research Comm
− Syndication and Social Media

17. A Grandpa who appreciates the
power of Facebook

20. Disclaimers
• These results not typical
• Use as directed
• Read and follow label directions
• Side effects may include vertigo, watery
eyes, crackberry thumb and iPhone
application addiction
• Social media tools are an essential part of a
balanced communications diet
• If insufficient media coverage persists,
consult your communications doctor
• Batteries not included
• Some assembly required
• Your mileage may vary

21. Disclosures
• No financial interest in any product or
service mentioned in this presentation
• Full-time salaried employee of Mayo
Clinic

22. Demonstrate that social media
tools are...
• Immensely powerful
• Consistent with your organization’s
values (or should be)
• Free (or ridiculously inexpensive)
• and...

30. Thesis #1: Air was the
original social medium

35. Mayo Clinic and Word of Mouth
• 91 percent of patients surveyed say
they have said “good things” to an
average of 40 people after a Mayo visit
• 85 percent say they recommended
Mayo to a friend
− Advised an average of 16 to come
− 5 actually came

36. Sources of Information Influencing
Preference for Mayo Clinic
Word of mouth 84
Stories in the media 57
MD recommendation 44
Advertising 27
Internet/Websites 26
Personal experience 24
Mailings to home 18
0 20 40 60 80 100

37. #2: Electronic tools merely
facilitate broader, more
efficient transmission by
overcoming inertia and
friction

39. #3: The mass media era was
a temporary anomaly

40. Evolution of Community
• Local: Pre-1930
• National: 1930-2005, made possible by
mass media
• Global: Post-2005, individuals members
of multiple communities of interest
without regard to geography
• Succeeding levels build upon earlier
stages without completely supplanting

42. #4: Social media are the
third millennium’s defining
communications trend

44. The Most Important Word
in Web 2.0

45. A Partial List of FREE Tools
Blogs RSS
Podcasts Social Networks
Skype YouTube
Wikis Twitter
Slideshare uStream

46. #7: Hand-wringing about
merits and dangers of social
media is as productive as
debating gravity.

47. What else do patients
know about you?
 Copyright 2009, Health Grades, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

48. #9: Mass media will remain
powerful levers that move --
and are moved by -- social
media buzz.

53. USA Today
Nov 12, 2009
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54. #10: Social media strategies
can’t compensate for an
inferior offering or bad service

55. United Breaks Guitars Breaks United

57. #14: Strategic thinking about
social media is no substitute
for action

58. Tips on Personal Steps to Explore
• Establish a permanent personal email
• Get profiles in Facebook, LinkedIn
• Get a Twitter account
• Get a Flip camera (or iPhone 3G S?)
• Create a personal YouTube account
• Start a personal Blog

59. Starter Steps for Nonprofits
• Claim your Twitter “handle”
• Create a Facebook “fan” page
• Create a YouTube channel

60. #15: You can hear a lot just
by listening

61. A Story from Twitter

63. Ensuing Conversation

65. #17: Social media are free in
any ordinary sense of the
word (or at least ridiculously
inexpensive)

68. Total Cost for Mayo Clinic
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
$0.00

69. In England, based on current
exchange rates:
£0,00

70. In the European Union:
€0,00

71. Cost for a Standard Definition
Flip Video Camera
$149.99
HD available for an additional $50

72. What’s wrong with this video?

75. podcasts.mayoclinic.org

76. newsblog.mayoclinic.org

77. sharing.mayoclinic.org

78. Yearly Cost for a
Customized Blog
$75.00

79. Cost for Your Global TV Station
and Publishing Platform
$300.00

80. #18: As I approaches zero,
ROI approaches infinity

83. #19: MacGyver is the model
for social media success

84. The MacGyver Mindset

85. Mayo Clinic Medical Edge
News Media Syndications

86. First Foray in New Media
• Existing Medical Edge radio mp3s
• Launched Sept. ‘05; Downloads up
8,217 percent Oct. vs. Aug.

87. Step 2: More, Longer Podcasts

90. #20: Social media enable
authentic communication if
you don’t purposefully
complicate things

91. Key Tool: Flip Video Camera*
• Affordable
• Recording interviews (with tripod)
improves existing processes
• Authenticity without writer’s cramp
• Provides potential blog resources
− Audio of full interview
− Video excerpts
• Limited group of video editors to ease
adoption, ensure quality

93. Case Study: Simple Storytelling
• 8:45 a.m. Colleague mentions article
coming off embargo at 3 p.m.
• Interviewed M.D. via Flip at 10:20
• Edited video, had password-protected
post on blog by 11:55 for pitching
• Uploaded files to YouTube channel
• WSJ Health Blog used video

95. #22: Social media are an
essential part of a balanced
communications diet

96. Basic Social Media “Food Groups”

97. #24: Compelling content is
much more valuable than
advertising time or space

98. The Octogenarian Idol Story
• Alerted to interesting video of elderly
couple playing piano in Gonda atrium
• Video shot by another patient and
uploaded to YouTube by her daughter
• Video had been seen 1,005 times in six
preceding months since upload
• Embedded in Sharing Mayo Clinic,
posted to Facebook, Tweeted on 4/7/09

99. The next day...

100. Six days later...

101. April 22

102. Sunday, May 3

105. May 4

106. Cinco de Mayo

107. May 10

109. May 11

110. May 12

111. May 15

112. Early Morning May 26

113. May 26, 2009: Live in Studio
Good Morning America

116. Results to Date
• More than 7 million views on YouTube
• >1.4 million views on Sharing Mayo Clinic
• From 200 views/month to 5,000 views/hour
• Validation of Thesis #26

117. #26: Your mileage may vary,
but you’ll go a lot further if
you get a car.

118. #25: If you’re remarkable
enough, your customers will
create content for you

121. Jillayn Hey’s “Remarkable” Story
“One statement has stuck out above all
of the medical jargon written by the
surgeons and various nurses who cared
for me, and that is this: ‘patient's stay
was unremarkable.’ Well, although
things went fairly smoothly after a
difficult surgery, I would like to say that
there was nothing unremarkable about
my experience with Mayo.”

122. Therapeutic Storytelling...
“I recently read an (Utne Reader) article ... (which said) that
through telling our personal stories of illness and disease, we
assist in creating a new story of wellness that facilitates
healing and in turn directs a person towards recovery. This is
just one aspect that Sharing Mayo Clinic provides. It is not
only an opportunity for many patients and perhaps future
patients to tell their unique stories to work their way towards
health but it also provides a voice for its employees to share
parts of their daily work which I know must include joy and
sorrow as some of us become well and some of us
unfortunately do not. In my opinion, this is just another area
that Mayo is ahead of the curve in caring for its patients and
obviously their employees as well.”

125. #28: Paying for advertising
while not taking advantage
of FREE social media tools
isn’t particularly astute

126. A Story from Facebook...

130. Tamiko says...
“I’ve had lots of people ask me about the
YouTube video and I’ve told at least 30
people they should go to Mayo. ”

133. The most harmful TV show in
U.S History?
• Married with Children?
• Baywatch?
• The Survivor series?
• The A-Team?

136. “Kids will take a chance.
If they don’t know,
they’ll have a go.”
-- Sir Ken Robinson, TED 2006

137. #29: Your kids aren’t smarter
than you are. They’re just
not afraid to look dumb.

138. #33: Social media will
decrease diffusion time for
research and innovations

140. Thesis 9 and 33 Combined!

141. Last Friday
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142. Less than 24 hours after my initial appointment, I not
only had a new diagnosis - a UT split tear - but had
surgery to correct the problem. As I write this, my
right arm is in a festive green, but otherwise
annoying cast. The short-term hassle, however,
should be more than worth the long-term gain - the
potential for a future without chronic wrist pain. A
future, that without Twitter and those in the medical
community willing to experiment with new
communications tools, might not exist for me.
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144. #34: Challenges of
introducing social media in
your work are not unique

145. Businesses Already Revolutionized
• Music - iTunes vs. Tower Records
• Classified Advertising - eBay, Craigslist
• Bookstores
• Movie rentals - Local, Blockbuster, Netflix
• All mass media
• Video cameras
• See The Innovator’s Dilemma; TI Solution
and TI Prescription - Clayton Christensen

146. #35: Social technologies will
transform healthcare

147. How can we accelerate the pace?
• Free/low-cost practical experiments
− On-line chats about research findings
instead of just surgical tweets
− Journalist-level access to embargoed
research findings for bloggers
− Virtual support groups w/medical pros
− More collaboration within and among
organizations via Yammer, Twitter, etc.
− Share case studies within industry

148. The 36th Thesis
If your organization can’t find a way to
constructively use free tools that enable
deep, two-way communication with
anyone, anywhere, anytime, your real
problem is lack of imagination.

152. So, one night after 1:00 a.m., I can’t sleep,
as usual, thoughts of my daughter rolling
in my brain, I was on the internet. I was
researching symptoms – Google
searching orthostatic blood pressure,
vomiting without obvious causes,
abdominal pain, etc. Somehow, I came
across a YouTube video of a young
teenaged girl talking about having all of
the same symptoms as my daughter.

153. And I Einally saw a blog about a girl
talking about her symptoms, which led
me to the YouTube video, which I
watched, and she was a patient of Dr.
Fischer’s. Well, it was like someone had
told me I just won the lottery. Here was
a teenaged girl who sounded exactly
like my daughter getting help from this
doctor, who was researching this
syndrome, which seemed treatable with
medicine, diet, exercise, etc. – I nearly
screamed!

154. In closing, it has been 7 weeks since our
return from the Mayo Clinic. With the
regimen of medication, diet, and
exercise prescribed by Dr. Fischer (and
others), Hayley’s recovery has been
nothing short of miraculous. Her
vomiting quickly tapered down and has
Einally gone away.

155. Her abdominal pain has slowly subsided
and is now a mild inconvenience, rather
than a debilitating condition, which makes
her daily life and sleeping entirely
manageable. And, most importantly, she
has gained 9 pounds (she weighed about 74
pounds when we Eirst arrived at the Mayo
Clinic). And Einally, just last week, Hayley
has returned to high school on a part­time
basis. It’s a start, and we hope to have her
back full time within the next several weeks.

156. The 37th Thesis
Applying social media in health care isn’t
just inevitable: it’s the right thing to do in
the interest of patients.

157. If you have an iPhone, Let’s Bump!

158. If not, contact me by...
• Googling Lee Aase or SMUG U
• @LeeAase on Twitter
• aase.lee@mayo.edu