Healthcare providers, medical device manufacturers, and data analytics firms explore innovative ways to engage patients.

Susan Nunziata, Editorial Director

October 15, 2014

2 Min Read
(Source: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/67272961@N03/6123892769/" target="_blank">jfcherry</a>)

technology and doing philanthropic works in their communities to share their stories. It is run through the Medtronic Foundation, a nonprofit formed in 1978 to expand access to healthcare for people with chronic diseases in underserved communities. The Bakken Invitation program selects 10 people annually who are awarded $20,000 each for their philanthropic organizations.

"In the first year it was a very manual application process managed by spreadsheets," said Ohno. "We got [more than] 100 applications and over 300 nominations. We had to sort through all that stuff manually. And we got a chance to tell 10 really strong stories."

For its second year, the company's leadership wanted to take the program global, according to Ohno, who knew the manual spreadsheet system wouldn't scale. The organization worked with Salesforce consultant Magnet 360 to build a system that enables people to share their stories.

"When someone shares a story we give $10 to Project Hope," said Ohno. The system tracks every story told and updates a counter on the site's homepage. "We use Salesforce forms for people to submit their story, it goes into queue where we review it, approve it, and publish it onto our site with one click."

The published stories get posted on a worldwide map. "Instead of telling 10 stories, we could tell hundreds of stories and leverage that content on our social networks. Medtronic has over 200 social media accounts. It's a great vehicle for content generation, and -- for sure, in the social media world -- content is everything."

The application itself is three pages, and each application is submitted to a review committee via Salesforce, where applicants are scored and winners are selected. The 2014 winners will be announced in November.

What's your favorite?
Each of these examples represents steps taken to improve patient experiences and, ultimately, patient outcomes. While most of these examples are provided by organizations that Accenture's Kalis would consider incumbents, they indicate that there's a growing awareness of the need to create an integrated patient-care experience that combines a plethora of disparate players. Meanwhile, new players are cropping up, such as Google Telemedicine, that aim to connect patients and physicians in entirely new ways.

So, what do you want to see from your healthcare experience? What do you think the digital disruption of healthcare will mean to you as a patient? What about in your role as an IT leader? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

The owners of electronic health records aren't necessarily the patients. How much control should they have? Get the new Who Owns Patient Data? issue of InformationWeek Healthcare today.

About the Author(s)

Susan Nunziata

Editorial Director

Susan Nunziata leads the site's content team and contributors to guide topics, direct strategies, and pursue new ideas, all in the interest of sharing practicable insights with our community.
Nunziata was most recently Director of Editorial for EnterpriseEfficiency.com, a UBM Tech community. Prior to joining UBM Tech, Nunziata was Editorial Director for the Ziff Davis Enterprise portfolio of Websites, which includes eWEEK, Baseline, and CIO Insight. From 2010-2012, she also served as Editor in Chief of CIO Insight. Prior to joining Ziff Davis Enterprise, she served as Editor in Chief of Mobile Enterprise from 2007 to 2010. A frequent public speaker, Nunziata has entertained audiences with compelling topics such as "Enterprise Mobility" and "The Multigenerational Workforce." She even managed to snag invitations to speak at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium – not once, but twice (and those folks are smart). In a past life, she worked as a lead editor for entertainment and marketing publications, including Billboard, Music Business International, and Entertainment Marketing Letter.A native New Yorker, in August 2011 Nunziata inexplicably picked up stakes and relocated to the only place in the country with a higher cost of living: The San Francisco Bay Area. A telecommuter, her office mates are two dogs and two extremely well fed cats. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from St. John's University in Jamaica, N.Y. (and she doesn't even watch basketball).

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