Greystone Blog

There’s something that happens anytime a group of hospital and healthcare webmasters get together.  You can almost see it in everybody’s eyes:  “I’m not the only one going through this. I’m not alone!”

One of the participants in this week’s Webmaster’s Workshop, who has been to several of them, referred to the gathering as a “Webmaster’s Therapy Group.” It was an apt description that generated a lot of nodding heads.

It isn’t that the folks who handle Web sites for hospitals or healthcare systems are any more emotionally needy than the rest of the world. But there’s so much to do, so much to stay current on, so many opportunities, that they often feel like General Custer who proclaimed:  “Gentleman, we enjoy a target-rich environment.”

That was one of the biggest reasons I started going to the Healthcare Internet Conference in the fall, and circled the dates on my calendar every year. Yes, I always loved learning new things and seeing what everybody else was doing, but some of the most valuable sessions were at the bar.

It’s our honor to see and host so many at our annual Workshops, and even more at the fall conference. We may be adding therapy couches to the exhibit area this fall.  Don’t thank us; we’re happy to help!  :’)

I’m always intrigued by questions from clients regarding the value of licensed healthcare content. Nobody really argues that if you want complete and current healthcare information, you need to license it. Doing that yourself would be a logistical nightmare.

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I’ve heard it at just about every stop in my career since focusing on the Internet:  “We can’t do that because….” All too often the conversation stops there. And when it comes to some interactive or operational element on the Web, it often becomes the answer for a long time, even if the “because” is not longer valid.

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With the dominance of Google, and the availability of MSN, Yahoo and others, online search may be one of those services that you don’t know you want better until you get it.

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You know what they say about laws and sausages (you don’t want to watch either being made)? The same is kind of true of watching the educational program for the Healthcare Internet Conference being put together. Dozens of proposals, all on seemingly different levels, and the program committee tries to pick the plums to create a coherent and strong program. It’s not easy.
But it’s most definitely enlightening. We see real trends in the submittals each year. This year, for example, it’s become clear that social media is no longer such a great mystery for our industry. In fact, we probably have more proposals to talk about something related to social media than all of the past years combined.
As another testament to the progress our industry has made, the number of proposals on the basics of site redesign, usability, mobile (smartphone) strategies, SEO, SEM, etc., seem to be lighter this year. A few have been bold enough to offer a case study on showing ROI or actual results, and we’d love more of those. More proposals on intranets would be great to see, too.
Actually, if you have not submitted a speaker proposal, we’d love to get one that shares what you have accomplished (if you have a great social media story, don’t let me scare you off). That’s why we’ve extended the deadline for proposals to Wednesday, June 3, 2009.
Share your expertise and get a free conference registration to boot!  Click here to download the speaker proposal form

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You’ve certainly heard the old adage about the cobbler’s children and the state of their shoes. Well, I’m afraid those of us at Greystone.Net have been so caught up in helping clients and trying to stay current in this fast moving Internet world, that we neglected our own site for too long.

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College basketball fans are sure to have heard Dick Vitale exclaim during a particularly terrific basketball game that he can’t believe he gets paid to do what he does.  I had that feeling as I participated in pre-design user testing with a group of Chinese nationals.

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If it’s votes for a politician, 55 percent is almost a landslide. But when a recent study by Deloitte suggested that many Americans would like to be able to email their doctors, a reporter asked me if I was surprised that it wasn’t more.

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In case you missed the big news last week, Facebook announced that it has added its 200 millionth member. That’s right - Facebook Nation is now the fifth largest country in the world. If your temptation is to discredit the impact of this amazing growth on healthcare by assuming that these new members come from the ranks of teenagers and college students, you would be making a big mistake. A majority of Facebook users are now over 35, and the fastest growing segment of Facebook users is actually women over 55. According to CNN, “There are now about 1.5 million female users older than 55 on the site — roughly a 550 percent increase over six months ago.” As a 33-yr old who has recently received friend requests from my mother and several of her friends, I can personally attest that the AARP-ization of Facebook is for real.

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We certainly struck a chord with our post on the concept of notices of employee deaths on the intranet. We heard from nearly a dozen readers.

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