July 2018 GreyMatters

GreyMatters 2018

New Children’s Hospital at the Forefront of Digital Technology

children-hospital The latest in digital technology is on display at the brand-new Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital-34^th Street in New York City. The new hospital is part of NYU Langone Health.

According to the organization, the innovative technologies incorporated into the new hospital were “thoughtfully architected and implemented for staff efficiency, maximal patient safety, and a more personalized experience for patients and families.” The digital experience that people have in their daily lives can now be a part of the care given at the hospital.

Digital innovations that have been implemented at Hassenfeld include:

MyWall platform on individual patient tablets enables patients and their families to learn about their care team and their care plans, order meals and control environmental settings in their room.
Housekeeping tasks such as transporting meals, linens, supplies, medications and hazardous waste are performed by a fleet of robots.
Digital Medical Drawers in patient rooms will be synced with the patient’s EHR to boost patient safety.
In the operating room, the Buzz OR/AV Management platform provides surgeons with a high-resolution display that provides real-time information and allows for interaction with pathologists.
Care teams have mobile devices to allow communication through a system called Clinical Mobile Care Companions.
A smart call system allows for communication with both patients and other care team managers.

The digital technologies implemented at Hassenfeld are all designed to integrate with patient EHRs.

How Instagram’s Algorithm Works

In a recent meeting with a group of tech journalists, Instagram went into specific detail about its algorithm—how their system works and how users benefit.

Since Instagram is now a Facebook property, it is not unexpected that the three main elements of the platform’s algorithm are similar to the main elements of Facebook’s algorithm. Those elements are:

Interest. How much a user has engaged with similar content is considered when determining how much that user will be interested in an individual post. Instagram looks at the amount of engagement with video and image posts with each individual user. The platform also considers the actual amount of visual content in posts. Instagram’s image recognition tools are continuing to evolve, so that actual visual content of posts is evaluated.
Timeliness. The date of publication is looked at. Due to complaints from Instagram users about too many older posts showing up in their feeds, Instagram recently rolled out an update to address this concern.
Relationship with post creator. The amount of engagement with the post’s creator in the past, including comments and likes on each others’ posts, direct messages and being tagged on posts, is considered.

The image recognition piece is expected to help Instagram’s Explore layout. This feature organizes content into topic channels, so images can also be organized this way. Thus, Instagram will be able to highlight visual content of interest to users.

Other points that were brought out in the meeting with tech journalists included:

Instagram’s feed will not be going back to a chronological time line any time soon, if ever.
Although it may seem contradictory, Instagram’s algorithm does not favor visual posts – the user’s behavior determines what shows up in his/her feed.
Users do not get penalized for posting too often, but the posts of an individual who posts frequently may become interspersed with other posts to prevent long streams of content from the same user.
There is no preference given to personal or business accounts - they are ranked equally.
With this algorithm, users now see 90% of posts from their friends, as opposed to only 50% of friends’ posts and 70% of posts from accounts they follow under the previous chronological post feed.

Does your organization use Instagram? Have you noticed any changes in engagement with your followers?

What Does Mary Meeker Say for 2018?

meeker-trends Mary Meeker recently released her 2018 Internet Trends report. Here are some highlights from that report.

More than half of the world’s population is now online – 3.6B. This leaves fewer unconnected people who need smartphones or internet service. As a result, there was zero growth in the number of smartphones shipped in 2017, and internet use grew only by 7%, down from 12% the previous year.
There was an increase in the amount of time spent online, with US adults at 5.9 hours per day spent on digital media (up three-tenths of an hour from 2016). Just over half of those hours spent online were spent on mobile devices, which accounts for the overall growth in consumption of digital media.
The worldwide average price of smartphones has continued to drop, even in the face of expensive popular devices such as iPhones and Samsung Galaxy Notes. Lower device cost has spurred smartphone adoption in less-developed parts of the world.
It has gotten easier to make mobile payments. In 2017 in China, there were over 500M active mobile payment users.
Voice is exploding. For example, the use of Amazon Echo devices in the US grew from 20M in Q3 2017 to >30M in Q4 2017. That’s an increase of over 10M devices in three months.
The desire to provide a better customer experience is colliding with violating consumer privacy.
Big tech is becoming more competitive. Google Ads is being joined by Google Home Ordering. Amazon is moving into advertising.
More is being spent on healthcare by individuals, which can lead to a greater focus on value by the consumer. Meeker wonders if health care prices will finally be affected by market forces to drive down costs.
Healthcare companies continue moving into the retail market, offering retail experiences such as more convenient locations, digital transactions and on-demand pharmacy services.
Technology will disrupt the job sector, with on-demand and internet-related jobs starting to predominate.

Do More with Less: 6 Ways to Repurpose Your Healthcare Content

Note: This sponsored article was provided by Coffey Communications. Coffey offers both print and digital solutions for healthcare organizations, including hospitals, health systems and health plans.

You’ve been asked to reach key consumers in your community. If you’re tempted to do that by creating more content, you’re certainly not alone.

Here’s the good news.

It’s not always necessary to write more content to reach more consumers. Instead, you can take the content you already have and spin it into several different types of content. Each piece you create can help you expand your reach.

Let’s get specific. Imagine that you interviewed a cardiologist at your facility and created a Q&A blog post about heart disease. That one piece of content can become six key marketing assets. Turn that blog post into:

A week’s worth of social posts. Transform quotes or punchy paragraphs into compelling social media posts. Superimpose them onto photos for visual appeal or leave them as simple text.
Email marketing assets. Take a snippet of your blog post and share it with your community via email. Follow up with a second email message that contains a little more data from the same post.
Printed postcards. Coming up with the right mix of content for these small but vital cards is easy when you have an effective blog post in play. Find a key quote or statistic and place it on your postcard.
A webinar. You’ve already interviewed a doctor for this piece, so you have all the information you need for a webinar. Create a slide deck with key points and provide your own voiceover. Or, ask your cardiologist to join in on the fun. Your blog post provides the structure and key messaging, so planning is a snap.
A printed article. Repurpose your entire article in your community newsletter or magazine. You may reach entirely different readers with these two marketing methods, or you might reinforce the messaging if a reader sees it twice.
An e-book. If you’ve created several blog posts on cardiology, gather them together and republish them as a comprehensive e-book, available to download on your website. You’ll give the scholars in your audience a lot of data to digest, and each download is an interested contact you can connect with later.

By repurposing the content you have, you can reach the consumers you need. And you can use the time you save for some of your other essential marketing tasks. It’s a win-win!

Coffey_logo_cmyk

Content Production Problems? Here Are 3 Tips to Help

content-problems You want more content. You need more content. You want more blogs, more video, more product/service related information. But where the heck is it?

Many companies struggle with content production. This struggle often results from a few common issues:

Lack of ownership for the content type. If no one person is assigned responsibility for a blog or other type of content, it’s easy for the task to get “punted” from one person to another.
Production bottlenecks. Maybe it takes time to come up with ideas for content. Maybe there are ideas and topics ready but writing the content takes longer than expected. Maybe content is written but it takes a while for the approvals to happen.

To get around these issues and others with developing content, consider these tips:

Have a strategy.
- Have a plan and make a schedule based on that plan. The schedule should include assignments to specific individuals and a timeline for each step in the production process.
- Make a list. What do you need to meet your production schedule? Make a list of all necessary elements. If you’re planning to repurpose your blog articles, plan for all involved channels.
- Involve everyone. Make your content plan available to everyone who will be involved ahead of time and make sure the appropriate manager(s) approves it. Everyone who is assigned to the content plan should agree to it.
Use a batch system. Consider how much content can be produced and posted in one session. Many organizations create content in monthly batches that include all content pieces to be used for that month. If you’re planning to repurpose any content, remember to include that part of the production when planning your batch. You should also consider how far ahead of time you want to complete batches to ensure your content will be ready when needed.
Use separate calendars for production and publication—and share them with the team. Once your production calendar is set, it’s easy to create the publication calendar.

How does your organization manage content development and publication?

Healthcare Internet Hall of Fame: Honoring and Preserving the Healthcare Digital Industry Visionaries

“Of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near or at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented. I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention has taken form.” – Steve Jobs

There is no doubt our generation has seen, and continues to see, remarkable creations in the digital space. The digital world has transformed--and continues to transform--the way we live our lives.

Many of us can relate to Steve Jobs’ way of thinking when considering our own organizations’ colleagues and leaders who have laid the road before us as they revolutionized the digital space within the healthcare industry.

John A. Eudes, founder of Greystone.Net and the Healthcare Internet Conference, was one of these visionaries. John influenced many within the industry to start a revolution of sorts in their own organization to help shape the vision of where the industry was going and how digital was going to play a role within the healthcare industry.

John also saw the need of recognizing and honoring those who not only began the work but also continued to carry the torch for others to ensure that we are continuously pushing the boundaries. John had a vision that one day we could recognize these revolutionaries and visionaries formally. In 2012, John’s vision came to fruition when the first ceremony was held to induct the first class of the Healthcare Internet Hall of Fame.

Today the Hall of Fame has become known as HIHOF. Each year during the Healthcare Internet Conference, providers, individuals and organizations providing services and tools to the healthcare digital industry are honored for their innovative contributions to the industry.

The HIHOF Board of Judges evaluates nominations each year, looking for inductees that meet the requirements necessary to be a member of this elite club. Those inducted into HIHOF not only are respected by colleagues throughout the industry, they also have:

Made numerous, lasting and significant contributions to the healthcare Internet field at a local, state or national level.
Assumed a leadership position in the healthcare industry beyond just the organization in which they are/were employed.
Demonstrated a willingness to share their expertise with others in the industry.
Served as a role model or mentor to others in the healthcare Internet industry.
Shown the ability or influence to effect change in the industry.
Been engaged in the field of healthcare internet for at least 5 years.

To continue honoring those in our industry for their accomplishments, nominations are required for the Healthcare Internet Hall of Fame. If you have been looking for a way to recognize an individual, provider organization and/or product or service for their outstanding work and contributions to the digital healthcare space, please visit the HIHOF website to submit your nomination.

HIHOF nominations will be accepted throughout the month of July. The Class of 2018 will be inducted during the 22^nd Annual Healthcare Internet Conference in Scottsdale, AZ on Tuesday, November 6^th.

DYK? YouTube More Popular Than Facebook for Teens

youtube According to the latest Pew Research on teens and social media, YouTube is now the most popular social media channel for teenagers.

The survey found that 84% of teens ages 13-14 use YouTube and 86% of teens ages 15-17 use the video platform. However, Snapchat was used more frequently by this group than YouTube.

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