Games to Make Exercising More Fun We all know how important it is to spend time at the gym staying fit, but would we call this time fun? Some smartphone apps can turn exercising into a game and make the experience more enjoyable. With Fitocracy, users get points based on specific exercises and their intensity Read More
by Diane Atwood Imagine for a moment that just the thought of going to an event and meeting new people causes such intense anxiety you feel as if you might be having a heart attack. Such a reaction is usually caused by a form of social anxiety – a fairly common phenomenon. Xenodu, a company Read More
Virtual Tours Checking out healthcare facilities in person is difficult and at best limited. Virtual tours fill this important role and have the advantage of providing details that a tour guide might not give. The three reviewed organizations all offer virtual tours that provide full-screen viewing, 360-degree rotation with click and drag, a zoom function, Read More
Ask The Expert with Mark S. Gothberg Winners of the 2013 eHealthcare Leadership Awards, the competition’s 14th year, were recognized in November in New Orleans during a presentation at a healthcare Internet conference sponsored by Atlanta-based Greystone.Net. The November issue of eHealthcare Strategy & Trends listed the winners. Last month’s “Ask the Expert” column discussed Read More
by Cheryl Haas Nationwide Children’s Hospital, located in Columbus, OH, is one of America’s leading providers of pediatric care and serves a 32-county area in south central Ohio. Much of that area encompasses rural communities where the barriers to accessing public health are significant. Issues such as reliable transportation, babysitting services, and time to travel Read More
by Julie Pelaez and Dagmara Scalise As a hospital marketer, you might have had this scenario play out in your head: Droves of new patients show up at your hospital simply because they know it offers them exactly what they need. And you didn’t even have to tell them about it! Instead, someone they trust, Read More
Help Finding Things If you lose or misplace your belongings, apps can help you find them. Place an electronic tag on your wallet, car keys, or anything else that tends to disappear regularly and you can locate it with a smartphone app. The tag sends a signal up to 150 feet. If you believe a Read More
Gundersen Health System Provider websites have come a long way since I started reviewing them 14 years ago. But with some exceptions, interactive functions remain underutilized. This site for a Wisconsin system is one of those exceptions. A click on the Health & Wellness link brings visitors to a page where they can access numerous Read More
WEBSITES/MOBILE APPLICATIONS Free Messaging Platform Introduced to Improve Medication Adherence. Care4Today Mobile Health Manager 2.0, which also works on a website, sends out reminders on scheduled medications to be taken and prompts a response from users that is recorded in an adherence report. Caregivers can link family members to their account. Go to www.care4today.com. Hospital Read More
Ask The Expert with Mark S. Gothberg Key provisions of the Affordable Care Act will be in full force on January 1 – less than two months away. Millions of newly insured consumers will be seeking health services, with many of them having limited knowledge of how the healthcare system works or the providers serving Read More
by Lannie Byrd Throughout the past decade, hospitals have put a lot of effort into improving the overall patient experience. Private rooms. Flat-screen TVs. Wireless Internet. Chef-prepared meals. High thread-count sheets. An overall emphasis on customer service. However, a healthcare institution’s digital platform touches patients throughout their healthcare experience, from searching for a physician to Read More
by Theresa Jacobellis As the American healthcare system is reformed, greater emphasis is being placed on wellness and prevention. Savvy providers are harnessing mobile technology to empower patients to be more engaged in their own healthcare, with the potential to improve treatment compliance, enhance outcomes, and even maximize reimbursements by reducing readmissions. Earlier this year, Read More
by Mark S. Gothberg Conventional Thinking Often Wrong With its total national awareness far below that of Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine, Cleveland Clinic decided to take a novel approach to building the brand. In March 2012, Cleveland Clinic launched Health Hub, a site very different from the organization’s primary website at www.clevelandclinic.org, and Read More
Facebook introduced hashtags on its news feed in June with the expectation that they would increase reach. But a study by EdgeRank Checker finds that hashtags didn’t increase exposure at all. Posts with hashtags actually had less viral reach. Also, posts with hashtags had a lower level of engagement, and organic reach exhibited a slight Read More
WEBSITES/MOBILE APPLICATIONS Concussion Recognition App Now Available for Free. The popular Concussion Recognition & Response app from PAR is available at the Apple App Store and at Google Play for Android devices. New Symptom Checker Identifies Conditions Caused by Drugs. The free personalized symptom checker from eHealthMe compares symptoms with more than 40 million drug Read More
Reference Source with a Click How often do you use Google to learn more about something in an online article, such as the location of a town, a person’s background, or the definition of a word? Rather than leave the Web page, get the browser add-on from Curiyo. Once installed on your computer, Curiyo identifies Read More
by Mark S. Gothberg “I began actively helping my elderly parents a number of years ago. Every time I took them to a doctor’s appointment, we would be asked for the same information over and over again, especially about what medications were being taken,” says Jim Rattray, until recently vice president of marketing and public Read More
In this issue we review three hospital sites: DMC Surgery Hospital Coping Club at Kosair Children’s Hospital Onlife Health DMC Surgery Hospital It’s been two years since I visited this site for a suburban Detroit facility. Some changes have been made – some good and some not so good, depending on your perspective. Nevertheless, the Read More
Ask The Expert with Susan Solomon Eleven years ago, Kay Franks, marketing manager for St. Louis Children’s Hospital, got wind that budget reductions were on the horizon and it looked like her website budget was on the chopping block. That was all she needed to get cracking on building a comprehensive dashboard to demonstrate the Read More
by Mark S. Gothberg Going Beyond Website Visits and Page Views “We used to focus all our attention on how many people were visiting our website, what content they were interested in, what was the level of engagement,” says Joe Ebeling, e-business and marketing supervisor at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. “Now, we look at Read More
WEBSITES/MOBILE APPLICATIONS Information on New State Health Insurance Exchanges for consumers is the subject of a new site at www.HealthCare.gov. The site has a Spanish language version. New Healthcare Blog presented by Forbes.com and written by the chair of the Council of Accountable Physician Practices and CEO of the Permanente Medical Group, Robert Pearl, MD. Read More
Eyeglasses Online Afraid to buy glasses online even though you could save a ton of money? Now Glasses.com has come out with an app that uses 3Dfit technology to allow consumers to accurately see how frames look and fit without stepping into a store. Available currently only at the iTunes app store.
Ask The Expert with Rachelle Montano While eight in 10 consumers say they go online in search of health information, a hospital website is usually not their first destination. That’s why you need to do everything you can to get them to come to you with their health questions. Having a robust health content library Read More
Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC www.chp.edu This site reflects a growing trend in hospital websites – simplicity. The home page features a strong visual image in the banner area, a half-dozen global links that can be expanded to give access to virtually anything a site visitor might want to find, and a highly visible Read More
by Mark S. Gothberg Here’s a dilemma that faces many organizations. The hospital is sizable, but network television originates in a city located about an hour’s drive away and outside the organization’s primary and secondary service areas. Television stations have long-standing relationships with major healthcare organizations in their city and do not view the hospital Read More