Historically, the health care industry has been slow to embrace social technology.
However, it seems that Twitter, the fast-growing microblogging platform, is an exception to this rule. Over the past few months, hospitals, consultants, managed care companies and even (gasp) pharmaceutical companies have been jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.
I’ve been on Twitter for a number of months now (I’m at @fardj) and it’s been amazing to watch companies that were leery of blogs, social networks and online forums embrace the platform. Jim Edwards who now writes at BNET, wrote an interesting post yesterday highlighting how a number of pharma companies have joined the Twittersphere. He writes: “AstraZeneca, Novartis, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Boehringer Ingelheim have started experimenting with Twitter with varying degrees of enthusiasm.”
Looking at their feeds, it seems that some drug companies are using Twitter to broadcast company news while others are engaging in more personal dialogue.
This is an interesting development that I’ll be closely watching.
Children's National Medical Center -- @childrenshealth -- has found Twitter a valuable extension of our communications. I see more hospitals coming on board every day. It will be interesting to see where this trend goes.
Posted by: Mark Miller | February 19, 2009 1:57 PM | Permalink to Comment