This document summarizes a presentation about using social media for healthcare organizations. It discusses how the Canada Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC) has grown its social media strategy over time through engagement, learning, and adapting. The key aspects of social media for CIHC are described as leadership, collaboration, and community. The presentation poses questions to help organizations assess their readiness for social media and determine how it could benefit them.

1. social media readiness
for healthcare organizations
networked communities and collaboration
presented by Sean Cranbury, CIHC.
at IPE Ontario 2011 Conference, #IPEO11.
W: www.cihc.ca/blog T: @cihc_ca E: sean@cihc.ca

2. The CIHC social media strategy has grown
immensely since we first started engaging the
social media networks.
We have learned many important lessons and
will undoubtedly learn many more.
We work hard to engage our communities in
their native spaces online and in person.
We share and we listen. We respond to input.
We measure, we adapt, we strategize again.
We want to share some of what we’ve learned.

3. Social Media is many things and can be
described many ways.
It is a highly adaptable, inexpensive, global
medium for collaboration and community
building.
For real time communication with clients,
patients, families and team members.
It provides platforms and frameworks for
publicly archiving data and communications
that is open and collaborative.

4. But if I was asked to distill the essence of
social media down to just three words
they would be:
LEADERSHIP
COLLABORATION
COMMUNITY
(and, shhhhh... listening.)

5. If you are in this room:
You are already a leader in interprofessional
education.
You are already working collaboratively in
teams.
You are already building and supporting
communities.
You possess the skills, attitude and energy to
engage the social media channels.

6. But is your organization ready for social media?
Let’s answer some questions:
1) Does your organization have a message that
it would like to get out?
2) Does your organization serve a
community that is separated by distance/time
zones?
3) Does your organization encourage
collaboration and participation from these
communities?

7. 4) Is your organization currently using social
media tools?
5) Are you aware of strategies or policies that
govern social media use within your
organization?
6) Are you aware of other organizations like
yours that are using social media tools?
7) Do you follow/collaborate/interact with these
organizations via social media?

8. 8) Would you participate in this way if your
organization developed a social media strategy
and proper training/mentoring is provided?
9) Do you participate in social media channels
in your private life but not in your professional
life or vice versa?
10) If yes, why one and not the other?

9. Two More Questions:
A) What is the biggest opportunity that social
media can offer your organization?
B) What is the biggest concern about social
media for you in this context?

14. CONNECT WITH CIHC ONLINE:
Web: www.cihc.ca
Blog: www.cihc.ca/blog
Twitter: @CIHC_ca
Wiki: www.cihc.ca/wiki
Also on Facebook, YouTube & LinkedIn.
Thanks to Beth Kanter (www.bethkanter.org)
for allowing me to use her Assessment Model in this presentation.
Her book, the Networked Non-Profit (written with Allison H Fine), is
one of the best books yet written on social media in any context.