TIME magazine has named this year’s person of the year. Rather than picking a politician, celebrity or advocate, they’ve chosen . . . you. Yes, TIME is paying homage to all of the people who are blogging, podcasting, networking and using Websites like YouTube. According to TIME, people are watching nearly 100 million videos per day and uploading 65,000 to the service. By any measure, those are phenomenal numbers.
I read through parts of the online version of TIME’s coverage of “us” last night. I was curious to see whether there was much mention of healthcare. From what I’ve seen, there’s not much. However, as readers of this blog are aware, there’s a lot going on in the health-related social media space, specifically: 
- Thousands of people globally are writing healthcare blogs on a range of topics, including policy, business and news. In addition, respondents to a recent survey of healthcare bloggers told us that they are writing about their personal experiences and blog to educate others.
-Social networks like Organized Wisdom and Sermo are helping healthcare consumers and physicians learn more and do more . . . together.
-Dmitriy Kruglyak produced the first Healthcare Blogging Summit where people got together to discuss the scope and impact of the healthcare blogs. Three more conferences are scheduled for next year.
Personally, I’m hoping that TIME decides to focus on healthcare social media sometime soon. It would be great to see the work of all of these online pioneers acknowledged by this prestigious publication.
Fard, I thought you might want to read my take on Time's annoucment of "Person(s) of the Year" and its intersection with health care. As I look at these issues it seems like there are multiple tracks being taken in the realm of health care social networking and social media -- some parallel, some intersecting and some head on. This momentum along with critical payment issues faced by the nations health care system, aging baby boomers and the upcoming presidential political campaigning should make for an interesting couple of years. 2007 and beyond should be interesting to watch.
Posted by: bob coffield | December 18, 2006 9:21 AM | Permalink to Comment