At The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, I was Program Director of Social Media. I thought social media should be used to do all of the pieces of academic medicine and healthcare better. From patient experience, to medical education, to stories about ground-breaking research, we used social media to elevate the Medical Center’s standing. In 2011, we added a Mako-robot that performs Makoplasty surgery, a new technique offering a shorter recovery time for the patient. We decided to stream and live tweet the surgery so the family could see their loved one and so medical students were able to watch the procedure live. This was the first time in the state of Ohio that a surgery had been live tweeted and led to numerous earned media.
Dr. Beal meets with patient Tom, after his Makoplasty surgery—the first live tweeted surgery in the state of Ohio.
The video was live-streamed to Ustream (link no longer available) and we used the hashtag #OSUMCmako.
It Takes a Team
We needed three of us from marketing and communications to pull this off, plus two surgeons, Dr. Beal who performed surgery, and Dr. Glassman to narrate so we could accurately tweet what was happening. A nurse sat with the family to explain the video and procedure as they were able to watch live. Months of planning and preparation went into this, including organizational change management work to allow this to happen. Read more from MedCity News and Becker’s Hospital Review.