Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media named 17 members Wednesday to its advisory board, which will help draft industry guidelines and best practices for using social media to improve health care. Mayo launched the social media center last summer with the goal of helping the health care community improve care through the use of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Mayo Clinic said Tuesday that it’s taking its social media push overseas. The non-profit research and hospital group, based in Rochester, Minnesota, launched the Social Media Health Network, an international group that promotes the use of social media tools like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to promote health, fight disease and improve healthcare around the world.

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.

Mayo Clinic has created a social media center that will train other hospitals in the use of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.Mayo is billing the new venture as “a first-of-its-kind social media center focused on healthcare,” according to a statement from Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo.Mayo has [...]

Just in case anyone needed a reminder which is the world’s the most recognizable health-care system, God, The Onion — or both — sent a reminder. But are hospitals so comfortable with social media that they cheer when The Onion singles them out?