2012 Exl Digital Pharma West

Welcome to those of you who are checking my website out from the 2012 Exl Digital Pharma West meeting in San Francisco. The meeting organizers were gracious enough to extend another invitation to speak this year. I was also part of a panel discussion in 2010.

The title of my talk is "Physicians, Social Media, and Pharma: Challenges and Opportunities." The final copy of the slides are below. You can also download the presentation here from my slideshare account. A lot of what I have to say has already been stated in the great twitter stream for the conference this year.

I'm also going to be part of a panel called "Epatients & EDocs" along with Kelly Young, also known as @RAWarrior on twitter, and also Sean Aherns, founder of Crohnology which is a patient-to-patient forum about the GI diagnoses of Crohn's Disease and Colitis.

To track the conference, I encourage you to follow the #digpharm twitter stream which has a great group of people tweeting out the conference. For those new to my website, I encourage you to check out my podcast, follow me on twitter, "Like" my facebook page, check out my TV interviews from local TV news, and my Linked-In page. Thanks for checking out my site!

Physicians, Social Media, and Pharma

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FamMedRocks Ep263 Preview

I'm happy to welcome Dr. Laura Knobel to be a guest on Family Medicine Rocks Episode 263 which will take place on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 6pm Eastern Time on the BlogTalkRadio network. Dr. Knobel is a Family Physician and member of the AAFP Board of Directors from Walpole, Mass.

Dr, Knobel and I will be discussing her recent essay on the AAFP Leader Voices blog: "The Joys - And Advantages Of Solo Practice" here's an excerpt from her essay:

One weekday afternoon when I was sitting on a bleacher watching my daughter play softball, another parent asked me why I wasn't at my office seeing patients. My answer? She's only going to grow up once. I attended every one of my daughter's high school softball games, but I also made plenty of time for my patients.

Many physicians struggle with work/life balance, so being your own boss has distinct advantages. I own my own small practice in suburban Boston, and love being a solo doc - again.

If you haven't already, invite you to check out previous interviews with Dr. Conrad Flick and Dr. Reid Blackwelder about their recent essays in the AAFP Leader Voices blog. I hope you can join us Live on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 6pm Eastern Time for Family Medicine Rocks Episode 263 with Dr. Laura Knobel.

AAFP Summer Cmte Mtgs

Last weekend in Kansas City, the American Academy of Family Physicians held their Summer Committee Cluster meetings. I'm not currently on an AAFP Committee right now, but I have some great memories of those meetings while talking with other Family Physicians about important issues for our patients. What follows below is a summary of the tweets from this past weekend using the #aafpsc hashtag. Enjoy!

Dr. Conrad Flick Interview

Thanks again to Conrad Flick, MD for being my guest on Family Medicine Rocks Episode 262 last week. Our main topic of conversation was his essay, "Working With Others Key To Successfully Transforming Our Practices." Everyone knows that we have a broken health care system. However, physicians are sometimes uneasy about change. We had a great conversation about what he and his practice went through to change their practice.

We also talked about his Family Medicine story and his views on social media. I apologize for not having a video portion of the show available yet. I'll add that to this post when I'm able to edit it. Meanwhile, you can listen to the audio podcast below, or you can download here. We're also available on iTunes. I encourage you to "Like" the Facebook page, follow me on twitter, and check out my YouTube page. Enjoy!

Listen to internet radio with DrMikeSevilla on Blog Talk Radio

Download Episode 262 Here

FamMedRocks Ep262 Preview

I'm happy to welcome Dr. Conrad Flick to Family Medicine Rocks Episode 262 which will take place Tonight LIVE at 7pm Eastern Time on the BlogTalkRadio network. Dr. Flick is a Family Physician and a member of the AAFP Board of Directors from Cary, North Carolina. 

Dr. Flick and I will be discussing his recent essay in the AAFP Leader Voices Blog: "Working With Others Key to Successfully Transforming Our Practices" which has to do with the transformation of the current model of medical practices to the Patient Centered Medical Home. Here is an excerpt from his essay...

Good partners can make all the difference when transforming a practice. For example, one of the family physicians in my practice, Andrew Drabick, MD was so concerned about the obesity problem in our community the he led our efforts to open a weight loss clinic. Many of our patients found the extra help they needed, and we added an important revenue stream.

One of my other partners, Stephen Moore, MD, is passionate about practicing family medicine, but he has little desire to be involved in the business of medicine. Stephen puts his trust in others to make sure we are running a sound business. I also love being a family physician, but I have the interest in business that my partner lacks. Together, we provide balance to a practice that has expanded three times in a little more than five years.

If you haven't already checked it out, I also invite you to check out last week's show with Dr. Reid Blackwelder talking about Advocacy, Family Medicine Residents, and medical students. I hope you can join us at 7pm Eastern Time Tonight for Family Medicine Rocks Episode 262 with Dr. Conrad Flick.

Behind The Scenes

People know that I enjoy having fun at meetings in addition to covering the topics through twitter, blog posts, and other social media platforms. Below are two videos from recent meetings, where these guys were great sports when I get the video camera out. Enjoy!

10 Physicians To Follow On Twitter

Thanks so much to Michelle McNickle who included me in her article today entitled, "10 Physician To Follow On Twitter" on HealthCareIT News. She is a web content producer for the site. I was very pleasantly surprised to be Number Two on the list...

Toward the end of last month, Mike Sevilla, MD, spoke to a crowd of 100 at the Connecting Healthcare + Social Media Conference on why physicians ought to be on social media. Although multiple such outlets exist - Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn - none have appealed quite so strongly to physicians as twitter. Here are 10 physicans, in no particular order, who have mastered the art of twitter.

2. Mike Sevilla, MD - @drmikesevilla Formerly known as Dr. Anonymous, Sevilla tweets regularly and is the blogger behind FamilyMedicineRocks.com. He is known for being an advocate for physicians on social media, all while giving his followers and blog readers a behind-the-scenes look at life as a family physician. He hosts Family Medicine Rocks on Blog Talk Radio, where he reviews current industry events, news, and all things social media.

I'm honored to be part of a great group of physicians on twitter. If you're not already, follow all the physicians on this list. I'm always curious about following more great physicians on twitter. Who else should be on this list and why? Gimme some suggestions!

Best & Worst Of Female Ohio

Case One: Meghan Vogel, from West Liberty-Salem High School (not the Salem where I'm at), shows a huge amount of sportsmanship (or sports-womans-man ship) by helping her competitor across the finish line at last weekend's state championship meet (also check out the video above)

Case Two: Audrey Bolte, Miss Ohio, says that the movie "Pretty Woman" is an example of positive portrayal of women in film. (also check out the video above). You be the judge here folks....

The Hashtag Lifecycle

You know, Charlie Brown can still teach us lessons, you know. In the video above, you'll see him talk about the commercialization of the Christmas holiday. I know, what you're asking, how does this relate to twitter hashtags?

Tonight, Ryan Madanick, MD introduced the new twitter hashtag #medsm with his blog post entitled, "Introducing #medsm, a new unifying hashtag for the intersection of medicine and social media." He writes:

Therefore, #medsm is being introduced as a new umbrella hashtag for posts related specifically to healthcare and medicine topics.  The #medsm hashtag could be include content with links to studies, stories about patient care, etc.  The more broadly it becomes used, the more likely Twitter users will be able to identify your healthcare-specific content.

Everyone's familiar with the #hcsm hashtag which was originally defined as "healthcare communication and social media." It's true that this hashtag gets a little clogged up, and with its continued popularlity, it's getting difficult to filter through the useful information for me. And, don't get me wrong, the rest of this post is not for or against #medsm or #hcsm. Read on...

This really got me thinking of this question: Do twitter hashtags have a social media life cycle? The example that I'll use is our own #FMRevolution hashtag. Almost a year and a half ago, Dr. Jay Lee wrote this essay entitled, "#FMRevolution = Family Medicine Revolution" which clearly defined the lofty goals of the hashtag.

What has happened since then? What once started as a unique hashtag, now has moved to more of a "commericalization" of the hashtag where anyone talking about anything vaguely medical has been posting tweets marketed toward Family Docs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining. I will still continue to use the #FMRevolution hashtag. I think that this is part of the hashtag lifecycle, or anything that starts small. The question always becomes: What happens when this idea (meaning hashtag) scales up and becomes more visible?

Be careful what you wish for, because as the hashtag gets more popular, and as more people take notice, certain individuals will see this as a marketing opportunity, with less valuable tweets in the stream, and people trying to think up new hashtags to start the hashtag life cycle all over again.

Dr Reid Blackwelder Interview

Thanks to Reid Blackwelder, MD for being my guest on Family Medicine Rocks Episode 261. We started out by chatting about how be came to find Family Medicine as his calling. I invite you to listen to his story in his own words in the video above.

We had a great discussion about mentors and Family Medicine Mentors. We then talked about his essay from the AAFP Leaders Voices Blog called, "Students, Residents: Stand Up And Make A Difference For Family Medicine." This essay also gives a shout out to the AAFP Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students meeting which will take place this year on July 26-28, 2012 in Kansas City.

At around 45 minutes into the show, there was a technical problem where, for some reason, the connection cut out, and I had to stall while Dr. Blackwelder tried to call back into the show. It's been a while since I had a technical problem like that. This is why I love live internet radio. You know if a host is good when something random like this happens. I'll let you be the judge to see how I did.

We closed our chat with talking about Social Media and Family Medicine. Dr. Blackwelder has done a great job, just in the past year, about becoming engaged in social media and encouraging other Family Docs to become familiar with social media.

As always, you can listen to the entire audio podcast in the player below. You can also download the show on the link below or here. I also encourage you to follow me on twitter, "like" the facebook page for this site, check out my youtube page, and click on over to my linked in account. Thanks so much for your support of the show!

Listen to internet radio with DrMikeSevilla on Blog Talk Radio

Download Ep261 Here