Gunther Eysenbach

….about social media in Healthcare…

I talk to him on the Medicine 2.0 event in Maastricht,The Netherlands.

Young People
JT Where are we the next five years from now with all this HealthCare by social media
GE I think technology is gone continue to evolve and systems gone be more usable. For example, I think of the latest developments Ipad and Playbook devices, which will create opportunities for new users,  for people, for very young people because they’re so easy to use. So I’m very optimistic that social media are going to be used by new user groups. And gone be penetrated even deeper into the generations. And on the other hand. I also hope that social media will become more mainstream. Applications for the normal  environment. And will be part of the communication strategies of health agencies and others.

Tracking
JT And will it solve all the problems in our Western World: ageing population, less nurses
GE Yeah, I mean social media don’t go solve the problem. But, there are application areas for example in the management of chronic diseases where I do see a roll for social media. And also for public health purposes tracking,  for example what I call information- and back tracking what the public thinks about public health issues, That’s  the other side of the equation. So social media is not a one way stream puting our information for tools. For real time measure.

YouTube

Gunther Eysenbach is a researcher on Open access publishing, health policy, eHealth, and consumer health informatics. Eysenbach was born on 22 March 1967 in Berlin, Germany. While a medical student, he served on the executive board as elected Communication Director, later as Vice-President of the European Medical Students’ Association. He received an M.D. from the University of Freiburg and a Master of Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health. From 1999 to 2002 he founded and headed a Research Unit on Cybermedicine and Ehealth at the University of Heidelberg and organized and chaired the World Congress on Internet in Medicine.

Canada
In March 2002, he emigrated to Canada and since then has been Senior Scientist at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at the University Health Network (Toronto, Canada), and Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto  (source: Wikipedia)