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Friday, February 11, 2011

Maximal Invasive Reach; Web strategy for doctors

With the advent of new-era communicative tools, findings things of relevance has not remained a tough nut to crack. People all over search the internet for things that interests them and make their opinions about. I think it’s important in today’s fast-paced and interconnected world for a doctor to make some use of various collaborative tools in the web world. It won’t just leverage the quantum and authenticity of their practice but in turn would be helpful for the patients as well. Suppose, someone is desperately searching for competent oncologists in his / her area and he googles it, there are high chances that he will be connected to the profiles of some of the specialists in the region, who may or may not be super experts. Now the choice is limited as the person in need is unlikely to personally visit every specialist and form an opinion to select the best. Here role of web presence matters a lot.

By understanding the need of projecting your special interests and capabilities as a clinician, you can help patients in dire need of your services and believe me its not a web developer’s job to highlight your profile or to enhance your web reach. By virtue of simple tools (your personal website, basic social networking tools i.e. facebook, linkedin etc, bookmarking tools i.e. stumbleupon, delicious etc), the profile’s visibility can be increased multifold. If you can write a blog, make it a point to do it regularly and keep on updating about your professional inclinations and techniques. If the target audience is a patient, the goal should be to equip him / her with the knowledge and options of various treatment modes.

The top trends in web and social media usage of internet tools are increase in the number of websites that target to social networking of health care professionals only & a high rise in web version availability of all medical and scientific journals. Its high time that we start contributing actively our scientific papers to online journals that would add up the credibility and serve as a cornerstone for our patient in his / her selection of care provider. Patients are looking for authoritative but personal information to help them navigate all of the health information they find in today’s media, and I find that using social media helps me to reach more than just the patient in my exam room, hopefully saving patients and parents unnecessary anxiety and saving physicians and other health care providers unnecessary visits.

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