Category Archives for Conferences

e-Health 2012: Social media guideline development

July 29, 2012

Slides for a presentation I gave to the e-Health 2012: Innovations in Health e-Care conference in Vancouver, BC.

This presentation uses the social media guideline document that the eHealth Strategy Office has been developing over the early part of this year as a case example for talking about uptake of social media in health care organizations. I also framed some general strategies of social media adoption using two different change management frameworks.

The work is ongoing, and we’re currently exploring ways to build our guidelines into the governance of UBC and its Faculty of Medicine.

Is web literacy practical or technical? Or both? #nv12

July 05, 2012

Haven’t blogged in a long while, but after attending Northern Voice, I got the expected kick in the pants from many of the attendees there. The enthusiasm is infectious, but more than that, it’s just a great reminder that blogging demonstrates first-hand the power of the web. So, no excuses for my lapse, but this is just what adults who care about the web do: we blog.

So I had the pleasure of sitting in on a discussion on web literacy that took place during the unconferenc-y first afternoon of #nv12. (Here’s a good breakdown from Boris who had the idea for the conversation.) It’s interesting for me to come to a discussion like this one with my background in libraries and in health, because I think though my personal level of “literacy” on the web as we talked about it is high, my perception of an average web users’ skill set is different. Maybe it’s pessimistic, maybe not. But, my sense is this:

To me, web literacy should be about establishing an understanding of how the web works practically. I’m not saying we shouldn’t value understanding how the web works technically, but I am saying most people aren’t interested in that right away when they sign up. What they’re interested in is getting some pictures on Facebook and Instagram. They want to reblog someone’s Tumblr post, they want to grab that infographic and Pin it. Before we can talk about HTML, before we can talk about DNS and hosting, we need to acknowledge that, like it or not, much of the creation and consumption happening on the web right now is mediated by large platforms like these.

So I don’t entirely agree with Boris when he says “I don’t think posting photos to Facebook or using an app to post to Twitter qualifies as putting your own content online.” To me there is nothing fundamentally different between a Facebook status and a blog post. Value judegments aside, at the core, those acts are all the creation of a cultural artifact on a web platform.

My perspective in health comes in here, because there’s a correlary between my perspective on web literacy I’ve just outlined, and how I think about health care on the web now, too. People are looking for information and to connect with others by any means necessary — if they do it on Facebook, or Patients Like Me, or on another health-oriented web community doesn’t really matter (to them). What matters is the connections they can make and their newfound ability to share.

So I believe it’s important that we start helping people to understand what it means to share their information on platforms where they don’t own the content, so that they can make informed decisions about what they choose to share there. I don’t believe people will stop using Facebook or things like it. I do, however, want people to feel empowered to participate on those platforms with an understanding of how much control over their contributions they can reasonably expect; to continue sharing with an explicit acknowledgement that they are freely giving up some ownership of their content in order to gain access to the advantages of the network.

If, after that, they end up (like we hope they do) making the decision to own their content then all the better, and let’s help with that. But in my view, we’ve got a very consumption-heavy web right now, and we have to tackle the implications of making your web content OPP first, and help transition people into owning their content second.

CHLA Conference 2011: Exploring paths to health sciences research careers

May 10, 2011

For the upcoming Canadian Health Libraries Association 2011 conference, a group of health librarians including myself are putting together a poster that traces the career paths of five qualified health librarians who all work outside of a traditional library settings. The goal of this reflection is to explore what brought us to our current positions, how the field of health librarianship is evolving, and how library and information studies Master’s programs can better prepare their students for careers that may not take place in “a library” but still call for the information professional’s skill set of searching, synthesis, instruction, and information fluency.

Because we are each tracing our own development, we wanted a theoretical frame to guide the analysis and a way to interpret one another’s responses. Additionally, we needed to account for the fact that we are all trained as librarians, but do not currently work “in libraries.” So to underpin the interview questions that we designed, we used the Chaos Theory of Career Development, which accounts for the inevitability of attractors and chance events in one’s career decision making.

The next steps include analyzing all of our responses for thematic elements, and collating those onto a poster for dicussion. The idea of a career paths got me thinking of visualizing each respondent in a color, like the subway map above. This is just one idea of how to present this visually, and I’m hoping for some more inspiration as the process goes on.

As a teaser, I’ll include one of my responses below (though you can always ask for more). I haven’t asked the others yet, but I’m hoping some of my co-presenters will agree to share some of their responses as well.

1. Describe how you came to have your current position: How did you find out about it? How and why did you obtain or create the position? How (if at all) has it evolved over the time?

I heard through a personal connection that my current position was open, and as luck would have it my immigration documents had come through after graduation and I was able to apply. I was selected for the the position through a combination of traditional librarianship skills–information retrieval, needs assessment, research synthesis, teaching–and some unique skills that I brought by either personal interest or chance–knowledge and experience with social media being foremost among them.

My position is quite flexible, and it evolves with the project load of the office as well as accommodations for personal and professional interests. Currently I work on a lot of web strategy because that is where there is a need in both practical office knowledge translation efforts as well as in research design. But I have the sense that my responsibilities will continue to shift as my skills as a librarian are taken full advantage of by my colleagues, as funding priorities ebb and flow in eHealth, and as our existing projects continue to follow their natural life cycles.

Image: designboom

Reflections: Patient Voices Network Forum Workshop, Consumer Health 2.0

April 19, 2011

This past Saturday, my health librarian colleague, Elisheba Muturi, and I delivered a workshop as part of a one-day conference for a group called Patient Voices Network.

The title of our workshop was “Consumer Health 2.0: Using social media to find and share health information.” In my mind, there are really two phases to the patient information lifecycle from the users’ perspective: 1) the challenge of finding relevant and high-quality information; and 2) sharing that information not only with those who need it most, but also with an undefined audience who may find it of use. Our contention is that the true value of social media for patients is that you can provide not only your own story (for moral support or catharsis) but also that the lessons you can share with a network, the “insider” information, may help someone who would truly be lost without it.

Overall, I think our workshop was effective, I really enjoyed hearing and learning from the audience, and I hope they learned from us as well. We created slides to guide our lecture portion of the afternoon, as well as a handout to support the reflection activities that we planned. These are embedded below in Slideshare.

Some observations:

We used a video to open the day that is a somewhat striking portrayal of two e-patient stories. How Sheba and I interpreted the video (one woman who successfully used online information to overcome her cancer, another who succumbed to misinformation) was not ultimately the way that the audience received it. Though I believe we listened and responded to the criticism appropriately, I was initially caught off guard by the unanticipated reaction.
The call for workshop proposals wanted high interactivity in their sessions and so we spent a fair amount of time planning activities for the audience to engage with the themes of health information sharing and social media. Ultimately, we went short on time and I offered the participants the choice or whether to engage in the scenario activity, or continue with a discussion of how patients and health organizations were using social media. They chose the latter, which really opened my eyes to how much talks like these are still needed at a “building awareness”-level.
I spent some time discussing statistics of ‘x amount of patients searching for health information’ that were simply less engaging than I had hoped. I will pare that down next time.
The audience guided the workshop to great effect. I was so happy to lead a group discussion on social media that was only loosely based on the outline we prepared. This is such an important topic, and the interest was obvious from the amount of both solicited and unsolicited participation we received throughout. I would much rather have half the workshop go un-presented, than get through everything having made no impact.

Lessons learned:

Plan early. Participants had to pre-register for sessions, so we were able to conduct a pre-survey that was a wonderful tool for gauging the skills and knowledge of the room. I would like to continue to tweak this tool for future use, as I am not sure we gained as much as we could have. We did use the results heavily in the planning process and it was an essential tool in crafting the final product.
Plan less. We wanted to show them everything, but in doing so, I think we may have diluted some of the messages. We were able to shift some of our content following the results of the pre-survey, but an absolutely killer focus would have been better than then comprehensive abstract and presentation we developed originally.
Plan better. Even from the very first proposal that we submitted, I think we could have done a better job of defining the scope and deliverables of the workshop. Our goals were broad. I am very glad that a session was delivered on this topic at the conference, but in biting off too much, we may have only been able to scratch the surface.

Next steps:

Do more, in smaller chunks. Based on the feedback during the workshop, I think what this group needed was an interactive session introducing them both to the concepts and issues of a single, specific social media (patient blogs, patient communities, twitter, Facebook) and some hands-on training using and exploring that one platform. This would enable the wide range of skill sets in the room to benefit from one another better, and to provide the smaller scope we needed.

Overall, crafting the workshop with Sheba and her expertise in health literacy and patient advocacy was a great working experience that I sensed would work well since we met back in 2009. Additionally, it was a distinct pleasure to meet with such an engaging (and engaged) group of patients. It was clear that they are all poised to change health care from the inside, and I truly hope we were able to show them the potential for creating networks and becoming champions not only for their own health, but for others. I hope I have the pleasure of working with these patients and others in the future.

Social media and evidence-based practice: A primer on Twitter

January 25, 2011

As I keep telling you, we’re busy developing content for a workshop on “Using social media for evidence-based practice” at the upcoming Cochrane Canada Symposium. Our three content areas of focus will be blogs, wikis and Twitter. As we develop a “manual” to hand out to participants, I put together a one- 0r two-pager on Twitter. Just the basics. Take a read, and let me know if it’s clear or if there’s anything, as a beginner, you’d wished you’d known. What do you need to know to get started on Twitter?

Twitter: a primer

Definition: Twitter is a “microblogging” (“tiny” blog) service that allows networks of users to send short updates to each other in less than 140 characters. Initially used to share personal information, Twitter is now a platform for global information dissemination, social networking and real-time communication.

Background: Twitter was launched in 2007 as a tool where personal updates were shared by cell phones but has expanded in popularity due to its simple, accessible way to connect with others. It is estimated that Twitter has 190 million users, generating 65 million tweets a day and handling over 24 billion search queries per month [2]. Today, Twitter allows for updates to be sent using SMS but has expanded to include software for the Web as well as smartphones (e.g. iPhone, Android, Blackberry).

Key characteristics of Twitter:

Platform for sharing short updates called “tweets” of less than 140 characters
Tweets often include links (URLs) or “mentions” of other Twitter users
Personalized profiles include updates from people you choose to “follow”
By including a topic keyword preceded by a ‘#’, users can find and track only those tweets related to a specific topic (e.g. #ehealth) or event (e.g. #ccsymp11)
All tweets are public by default (i.e. other users can choose to follow you) but may be made private if desired

Uses of Twitter:

Sharing links and opinions about online content (e.g. blog posts, literature) [3].
Short conversations with other users and sharing of personal/professional opinions and expertise. (“Don’t underestimate this platform” [4])
Collecting a broad view of current news and important events in real-time [5].

Challenges:

Detailed conversations/debate are difficult to carry out effectively in 140 characters [6].
Tweets are meant for consumption by the public; some may be uncomfortable with the “broadcast” nature of the tool [6].
Spam and fake accounts are common. Requires proactive maintenance of your followers

Recommended Twitter Users:

@cochranecollab: The Cochrane Collaboration: Working together to provide the best evidence for health care
@DrVes: Assistant Professor at University of Chicago, Allergist/Immunologist, Internist. Former Cleveland Clinic Assistant Professor and NEJM Advisory Panel Member.
@Berci: Medical doctor, founder of Webicina.com, health 2.0 consultant, blogger; Second Life resident, Wikipedia administrator doing PhD in genetics
@laikas: Medical Librarian, scientist, mom, wife and human

Recommended hashtags:

#ccsymp11: Cochrane Canada Symposium, 2011
#hcsm: “Health care and social media”
#hcsmca: Health care and social media in Canada
Other hashtags to explore: #ehealth, #healthlit, #pharma

References:

http://blog.twitter.com/2010/10/world-of-tweets.html
http://searchengineland.com/twitter-search-queries-up-33-24-billion-searches-per-month-45840
Mandavilli A. Peer review: Trial by Twitter. Nature. 2011 Jan 20;469(7330):286-7. doi:10.1038/469286a
http://www.slideshare.net/mavergames/web-20-and-the-cochrane-collaboration-a-case-study?type=presentation
Chew C, Eysenbach G. Pandemics in the age of Twitter: content analysis of Tweets during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. PLoS One. 2010 Nov 29;5(11):e14118. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014118
Cunningham AM. What I have learnt about Twitter [blog post]. 2011 Jan 23. Available from: http://wishfulthinkinginmedicaleducation.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-i-have-learnt-about-twitter.html
Hawn C. Take Two Aspirin And Tweet Me In The Morning: How Twitter, Facebook, And Other Social Media Are Reshaping Health Care. Health Aff. 2009 Mar;28(2):361-368. [link to abstract]

Is CES good for your health?

January 12, 2011

I was all set this week to write a post about all the cool new toys coming out to track your health at the Consumer Electronics Show. For the uninitiated, CES is a massive trade show where companies set up demos in a huge Vegas convention hall, and all you can read on the tech blogs all week is about gadgets that have just arrived, and will soon be on the market, ready to change your life. Of course, most of these new products never do see the light of day, and what you get is a lot of hype for products that, by and large, you never hear about again.

And I never thought the health market had a niche there, but they do. My hunch is that health technologies probably didn’t have much presence at CES until the iPhone came along, because CES is so heavily gadget-focused. But whatever the case is, health gadgets are all the rage there now. For instance, there’s the

iPhone ECG: “The AliveCor iPhonECG is a slim case that fits over a smart phone. Low-power electrodes on the case are pressed against the fingers or chest of a person to display electrical activity of the heart.”
iPhone Blood Pressure Cuff: Actually, there’s another one of these, and they both debuted at CES.
Then of course, there’s the CES announcement that a fingertip pulse oximeter will integrate with Microsoft Health Vault in coming months. You can pick one up for the low-low price of $265 USD.

There’s more where that came from. But back to my point: does any of this hype matter? Should we really be spending our time and energy worrying about the newest gadgets on one week of the year?

The only reason why I’m even bothering to ask (assuming the answer is usually, “Sure, why not?) is because I read a really nice column by Farhad Manjoo entitled “The most worthless week in tech.” Observe:

In private, gadget reporters will tell you that covering the show is a tremendous hassle and rarely yields any interesting news. But because CES demos make for great headlines and visuals—hey look, Steve Ballmer unveiled a tablet PC even before Apple did!—and because of the sheer volume of new stuff to post about, CES is a boon for gadget blog traffic and a honeypot for advertisers…

So, why is CES so dependably dreary? It’s the curse of that old Yogi Berra joke—nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded. If you’re a big tech company with something truly great to push, you’d be foolish to tell the world at CES.

He goes on to argue that CES is just fodder for “bogus hype” and that the things that truly matter take place at other times of the year. In fact, thanks to the web, they can take place whenever you want. If what you have is going to change tech or health care, it doesn’t matter if you announce it from a press conference in Vegas or on your blog from your basement. If it’s great, it’s great. If it’s not, well, just because you have live audience can’t change that.

Being a somewhat gadget-loving guy myself, reading that article in the middle of the week last week kinda put a damper on things for me, so I thought I’d save it just in case, to give you one last hoorah with CES and all the glitz and glam. And now that it’s over, this year, I’ll be paying attention all year long. Looking not just for the latest gadget to take my blood pressure, but something that has some potential to make my life and yours truly better.

Using social media to promote evidence-based practice at the Cochrane Canada Symposium

December 10, 2010

Good news yesterday that our workshop abstract for the Cochrane Canada Symposium was accepted! This year’s symposium theme is Early Exposure to Cochrane: Accessible, Credible, Practical. Our topic (see below) is one that will hopefully spark some interest and some great discussion and practice at the symposium. Leading up to February, we’ll obviously be interested in gathering some sources and opinions on how others use social media for evidence-based practice, so please get in touch with your thoughts if your have ideas or suggestions!

“Using Social Media to Promote Evidence-Based Practice: A Primer on Blogs, Wikis & Twitter”

Dean Giustini, Francisco Jose Grajales, Daniel Hooker

When / Where: Fairmont Pacific Rim, Vancouver, BC. February 16-17, 2011.

Background
This workshop provides an overview of three popular social media technologies, blogs, wikis and microblogging (e.g., Twitter, Yammer). The authors will show where to locate medical blogs and wikis on the social web and the type of information that can be found there to support evidence-based practice. Through a mix of didactic lecture, hands-on practice, and group discussion, this workshop provides an entry point for social media beginners.

Learning objectives
At the end of this workshop, participants will:

Understand blog, wiki and microblogging tools and how they are used in medicine
Have some basic knowledge of how to select one of the social tools examined to support evidence-based practice and medical education
Identify major blogging and wiki platforms to create accounts, new content and social networks
Be able to assess issues of privacy on various social media platforms
Contextualize workshop information for personal use in practice, research and continuing education

Presenters
Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian, Adjunct Faculty, SLAIS
Francisco Grajales, Trainee, Western Regional Training Centre for Health Services Research
Daniel Hooker, Researcher, eHealth Strategy Office, Faculty of Medicine

Format
A practical session that combines lecture, live demonstrations and practical exercises.
Equipment required
Participants can bring their laptops and mobiles. Internet access will be provided.
Level of knowledge required
Some awareness of social media and basic knowledge of the web.

Top ten Canadian consumer health websites

June 29, 2010

This year at the annual conference of the Canadian Health Libraries Association (CHLA/ABSC), a poster was presented that showcased the results of a survey given to Canadian libraries about their favorite Canadian consumer health websites. Finding specifically Canadian content in consumer health is difficult, due often to the supremacy of MedlinePlus. Without the support of a National Library of Medicine, however, Canadian librarians often have to find ways to supplement American consumer health information with the recommendations of Canadian physicians and health professionals.

From the announcement sent to the CANMEDLIB list-serv:

There was no clear favourite: the top 3 recommendations tied at 10 votes each. Submitted websites had different focuses. They tended to fall into a few categories such as women, children, disease-specific, and health promotion. We decided to compare the websites in each category and selected the ones that stood out. Because our choices were the best in different subject areas, we felt that we couldn’t rank them as 1, 2, 3. Instead we chose to list them alphabetically.

Bravo to the Consumer Health Information Providers’ Interest Group of CHLA! Thank you for delivering the results of these needed recommendations. The full poster is available on their website.

Here is the list: