One’s a registered nurse. Others are a healthcare Web strategist, a hospital digital communications manager, a healthcare lawyer, an interactive marketing specialist, a sociologist-activist, even an e-patient.
But there’s not a single doctor on the emerging external advisory board for Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media. And blogger KevinMD — “social media’s leading physician voice” — is none too happy about what he calls the exclusion of doctors. “What a slap in the face,” writes Dr. Kevin Pho.
Not to fear. The folks at Mayo on Thursday turned to crowdsourcing to find “fellow revolutionaries” to fill the remaining 12 seats on their 25-person board.
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“We’d like to have representatives from state, local or federal government, public health, medical and scientific journals, hospital and nursing associations, disease-oriented organizations and patient foundations, medical associations and specialty societies, and of course physicians,” writes Lee Aase, a Mayo public relations manager and self-proclaimed “social media evangelist.”
Aase leads the nearly two-month-old social media center at Mayo that is supposed to train other hospitals to use social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo is billing the new venture as “a first-of-its-kind social media center focused on healthcare.”
The center was half-way through recruiting advisers when it decided to “put out the call” by using the social media tool of crowdsourcing, Aase said.
What if no doctors raise their hands? Not everyone thinks that’s necessarily a bad thing.
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“Does the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media really need physician advisors?” wrote Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Texas Children’s Hospital and the Baylor College of Medicine on his blog 33 charts (he also pointed out that Center for Social Media is under the medical direction of physician: Dr. Victor Montori).
“Look for The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media Advisory Board to expand to involve a more diverse representation of social health,” Vartabedian added. “But what an interesting statement it would make if physicians didn’t make the cut.”
Dr. Ves Dimov, a Chicago-based medblogger, tweeted that the addition of doctors to the board “depends on what the goals are.”
But Aase said: “There will be doctors who raise their hands.” Besides, the crowdsourcing effort doesn’t stop the center from recruiting more advisers.
The center will employ about eight people and have an initial annual budget of $800,000.
However, Aase doesn’t see the new social media center as a big revenue driver for Mayo. “This isn’t a real money-making strategy for Mayo,” he told MedCity News in July. “It’s more about building relationships with other providers and among medical researchers.”
How about a relationship with Kevin Pho?
He’s one of the doctors the center had hoped to recruit, Aase said.
