When I was trying to convince doctors at my last place of employment that allowing secure messaging from existing patients was a good idea, I heard more than once that it would be the “end of modern medicine as we know it.” One of our physician champions found a reference that I’ve never been able to relocate that quoted doctors saying the same thi

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With 185 hospitals using one form of social media or another, I’d say healthcare has clearly gotten the message. But I worry a bit about some of what I’m seeing out there. Let’s just say there’s evidence aplenty that while many have dipped their toes in the waters of social media, few have a real plan in place. So here are five signs that being

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You’ve probably heard the old adage that as soon as you make your Web site “idiot proof” they’ll go and make a better idiot. No offense intended to any user of any Web site, but people do the most amazing things. I’m in the midst of user testing for a client, and again I’m seeing people do things that I never would have expected. Here are some o

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I was part of a presentation recently where one of the speakers made this statement: “When you go to a Web site, what do you do? You search, right?  That’s how everybody finds what they are looking for.” As I was driving to Atlanta, I was thinking about that a lot (two digressions: first, the fact that I spend my time on a long drive thinking ab

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Those of us who hold dear the notion that the user of our Web sites is king are perplexed when that user does something that doesn’t make sense. Here’s a great example: We just completed some user testing in preparation for a site redesign, and there were a number of content sections that relate directly to the patient experience. Things like “w

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