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ADVANCE Outlook: Lab Professionals

Tweeting Results

Published March 30, 2009 9:48 AM by Amanda Koehler
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This weekend I attended HealthCamp Philadelphia, an open forum, barcamp-style conference on healthcare and social media. This was the first type of gathering in the Philadelphia region, although there are other HealthCamps across the country.

Phil Baumann, an RN and president of CareVocate LLC, presented an interesting session on healthcare uses for Twitter. For those of you who don't know what Twitter is, it's a new Web 2.0 operation that has users, both professional and personal, answer the question, "What are you doing?" (Shameless plug time: ADVANCE is now on Twitter! Follow us @ADVANCEMedLab).

Baumann's session was based off of his thought-provoking blog entry and slide show, 140 Health Care Uses for Twitter. One of these uses Baumann discussed in the session is number 9 -- "Emitting critical laboratory values to nurses and physicians."

Essentially, a Twitter-like, closed circuit application (meaning one where the general public couldn't see what you are saying) could be used to transmit lab results from a laboratorian to a nurse or doctor, instead of phoning them in or using a paper lab report.

How do you feel about this? Could this help prevent lab reports from getting lost in the shuffle? Or do these Web 2.0 and social media strategies not belong in healthcare?

posted by Amanda Koehler
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Interesting concept. Laboratorians are frustrated when they try to call stat or critical results to a doctor who is unavailable or (worse) gets upset for being "diisturbed".

Under very select situations it would be great to be able to inform physicians or nurses of results using such electronic devices.  

I have young friends and relatives who text continuously! They can also multitask-text while watching TV and without looking at the keypad. So texting, tweeting etc are second nature to many younger individuals.

Suppose a doctor is in a meeting or roaming the halls of the hospital and requests they be informed about a result. Logistically the lab could very easily send them a quick text message.

Addresses could be set up to allow the equivalent of speed dialing and some devices send a confirmation to document the message has been successfully sent.

I just read recently that Mercy Medical Center in Oklahama City issues electronic communicators to patients in ICU so that those who cannot verbalize (or otherwise fail to get a response from their call bell) can contact their nurses through texting.

The devices have about 30 buttons with single common phrases  to make communication faster. Of course they can also use the alphabet for more traditional texting. They are color-coded and bilingual versions (English/Spanish) versions are available.

I think that's pretty cool and may well be predictive of the new types of communication devices that will be found in hospitals as healthcare catches up with social networking.
Glen McDaniel March 31, 2009 5:19 PM
Atlanta GA

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