Mayo Clinic Launches Social Media Health Network

Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media which has been one of the most " progressive healthcare chain to use and harness the power of social media to reach patients and caregivers has announced the formation of the Social Media Health Network, a group dedicated to using social media to promote health, improve health care and fight disease. Through educational conferences, webinars and development of social platforms for sharing training materials and resources, this international network will help members learn from each other and effectively implement social media programs.

The announcement came at the Second Annual Social Media Summit produced in conjunction with Ragan Communications and hosted on Mayo Clinic's campus in Jacksonville, Fla.

In addition to Mayo Clinic, charter members of the network include:

• Bon Secours Health System, Marriottsville, Md.
• Inova Health System, Falls Church, Va.
• Mission Health System, Asheville, N.C.
• Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre (UMCN), Nijmegen, Netherlands
• Swedish Health Services, Seattle, Wash.

The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, a first-of-its-kind social media center focused on health care, builds on Mayo Clinic’s leadership among health care providers in adopting social media tools, which began with podcasting in 2005.

Mayo Clinic has the most popular medical provider channel on YouTube and more than 100,000 “followers” on Twitter, as well as an active Facebook page with over 30,000 connections. With its News Blog, Podcast Blog and Sharing Mayo Clinic, a blog that enables patients and employees to tell their Mayo Clinic stories, Mayo has been a pioneer in hospital blogging. MayoClinic.com, Mayo’s consumer health information site, also hosts a dozen blogs on topics ranging from Alzheimer’s to The Mayo Clinic Diet.

Mayo has also used social media tools for internal communications, beginning in 2008 with a blog to promote employee conversations relating to the organization’s strategic plan, and including innovative use of video and a hybrid “insider” newsletter/blog. This employee engagement contributes to Mayo Clinic being recognized among Fortune magazine’s “Best Places to Work.”

The website for the network, socialmediahealthnetwork.org

The Social Media Health Network, will provide access to tools, resources and guidance for organizations and individuals that want to apply social media in health and health care. The Network will offer different membership options, including free and paid memberships. We're building the online Network using open source content management tools and hosting infrastructure to facilitate future contributions and knowledge crowdsourcing from the Network member community

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