If you have not yet nominated anything or anybody for the 2nd Annual Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards, now is your opportunity. We’ve already seen some fantastic nominations, but we know there’s more to come so why not nominate now? It’s very easy – simply tweet your nomination using hashtag #hesawards, DM @EngagementStrat or email [email protected]. Tell us who or what you nominate and why.
As with last year’s Awards, we have received some great questions and I’ll share some of these with you here. The Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards are intended to stimulate conversation about healthcare engagement so keep the questions coming if you have them!
Who or what can I nominate?
You may nominate anything or anybody that is making a difference, achieving health outcomes through engagement.
What exactly is healthcare engagement?
This is a great question and we’re glad you asked. There is much discussion about this topic (in fact, we have posted a number of videos on our Youtube Channel where we have asked people to define what healthcare engagement means to them, and the answers vary). I also appreciate that the word ‘engagement’ does not have a natural translation into all other languages so we should define it!
To me, ‘engagement’ means connecting together. So when we talk about healthcare engagement, we mean connecting together stakeholders in healthcare. So this might be connecting doctors with patients; patients with hospitals; pharmacists with doctors; pharma companies with prescribers; or any combination of these. It is usually about two-way communication. In the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards, we are looking for strategies for connecting these stakeholders together that ultimately achieve health outcomes.
Who has been nominated?
Nominations range from health organizations to individual people; global pharma initiatives to simple strategies that make a difference. Just a few of the nominations received so far include:
- National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition Text4baby initiative
- Janssen’s Psoriasis 360 campaign
- TuDiabetes’ engagement during 2010 including Health Seeker game
- Roche, for publishing social media guidance
- Jonathan Richman for his understanding of this space
- Pink Pad, women’s health tracking app
Can I only nominate a pharma strategy?
No! Last year’s winners included strategies from pharma companies, not-for-profits, a hospital group, and patient networks, as well as individual people in all of these groups. Some winners were global strategies; some were regional or country-specific strategies. As a result, throughout 2010 we’ve seen all these groups learning from each other too.
Is this about social media?
No, not necessarily. Social media happens to be a channel that has enabled some great advances in healthcare engagement, empowering patients to learn more about their health and their options and facilitating two-way dialogue between stakeholders, so I anticipate that we will see some great examples of social media in our nominations, as well as other digital platforms. But great healthcare engagement might also be completely offline – it could be a strategy that exists purely through face to face communication for example, as long as there are great health outcomes.
What’s the timeline?
Nominations are open until the end of December 2010. Winners will be announced in January’s edition of Healthcare Engagement Strategy and via Twitter.
How do I nominate?
Simply tweet your nomination using hashtag #hesawards, DM @EngagementStrat or email [email protected]. Remember, we’re looking for strategies and people who are achieving great health outcomes. Tell us who or what you nominate and why.
