Just last week I had lunch with a patient, his wife, their adult daughter, and a co-worker. It was a wonderful experience. We laughed, and talked about all of the things we had in common. We talked a bit about treatment, but not much.
That was the first time I had ever met them in person, but I felt like I have known them forever...thanks Twitter.
I ran into their daughter on Twitter a few months ago, when she stumbled onto our Twitter pages. I tweeted back and a relationship was formed. I mentioned our meeting to the editor of our online publication and she wrote a story about the connection and how patients can connect to each other and the world through tools like Twitter.
Yes there is lots of noise on Twitter, and plurk, and pownce and sites like these. I hear complaints about not wanting to know what some guy in North Carolina had for breakfast. But with some simple searching you can connect to the people and conversations that matter in your world. (try searching with http://summize.com/) Those conversations are happening whether you are in on them or not.
The other question I hear is about monetization of the use of these sites. For me our lunch that day was enough to make it worth it. But if we must, after lunch we headed over to a services clinic that the family knew nothing about and made the patient an appointment for a self pay service. During lunch we also had a conversation with the wife, also a survivor about treatment options that might be available here that were not currently offered to her at her treating facility. If she finds something, she is potentially a new patient. I speculate, but assume that she made the decision to ask based on the conversation and relationship we all began to build that day. She was not asking a hospital, she was asking a person that she knew.
This for me is what my job is all about. Being a resource for the people out there on the internet looking for help, answers and a human connection to a brand.
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