What is the role of social media in healthcare?

Agenda: (Last updated 20th March 2013)

Talk 1: Moving from the e-patient to the i-patient - Michael Seres

Talk 2: 'Real Time Patient Feedback - Disrupting the Customer Service Norms of the NHS' by Robin Vickers

Talk 3: ‘Insights into Patient Engagement’, Lora Schellenberg

Speaker Biographies

Michael Seres (@mjseres)

Michael was diagnosed aged 12 with the incurable bowel condition Crohn's Disease. After over 25 surgeries, and intestinal failure he became the 11th person to undergo a small bowel transplant in the UK at The Churchill Hospital in Oxford.

Michael started blogging to chart his journey from Crohn’s to a Bowel Transplant. http://beingapatient.blogspot.com is syndicated in over 20 sites and has had over 55,000 views from transplant teams & medical students to patients. He has developed an understanding as to how patient to patient interaction can be a powerful tool to assist in recovery. Michael mentors many patients and their families; he is a published author & professional speaker. He uses social media to develop global on line communities and devises social media strategies around patient engagement. He is the patient lead for #NHSSM, a facilitator for Centre for Patient Leadership & digital strategy advisor to The Patients Association & Oxford Transplant Centre.

Robin Vickers, Founder and Executive Director at Digital Life Sciences (DLS) (@Robin_Vickers)

I am a Digital Health Strategist and Entrepreneur based in the West Midlands.

Having a strong background in engineering in the UK, I am motivated by a desire for restored economic growth in this country and I see embracing new technology as a way to do that. Within healthcare, where people have a very mixed experience of the service, there is a massive opportunity to disrupt the status quo using digital tools.

My role at DLS is to lead a team of great people to make sure this happens.

Before working in healthcare, I came from an engineering background to work for 11 years as a management consultant transforming businesses through the use of technology. For the past eight years, I have focused on health, delivering NHS local, national and local digital health programmes and programmes in patient and staff engagement alongside organisations such as the NHS Institute.

In an advisory capacity, I have helped with the creation of the framework for delivering telehealth at scale, Healthcare Without Walls, that was endorsed by the Government’s Health Select Committee. I have also helped formulate the response of The British Computer Society to the NHS Information Revolution consultation and advised NHS London on digital activation ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games.

In an entrepreneurial capacity I am also co-Founder of Clever Together LLP, a business that uses crowd-sourcing technologies to engage patients and staff in service improvement.

Lora Schellenberg, Community Manager at HealthUnlocked (@HealthUnlocked)

Lora has a background in Healthcare Administration and has always been passionate about technologies that allow patients to empower themselves to manage their health. She closely follows what happens in Health 2.0 and has attended number of conferences in the field. Over the last year she has been working as Community Manager at HealthUnlocked, UK's biggest social network for health, where she primarily manages its network of 80,000 patients and focuses on growth and engagement.