There is a concern that healthcare has been slow to embrace social media and appreciate it’s potential to educate and inform. Twitter numbers about healthcare conversations tell a different story: over 610 million Tweets, over 11,00 topics, almost 5,200 hashtags and more than 2100 contributors. The reason we know the data about millions of healthcare tweets is due to the Healthcare Hashtag Project – a program of Symplur. Get Social Health had a conversation with Tom Lee, Co-Founder of Symplur about the reasons the Healthcare Hashtag Project was created. We also chatted about hashtag bombing, tracking specific healthcare conversations and the use of hashtags in conversations about Ebola.

To catch the segments of our conversation, check the time stamp content below.

00:00 Intro
00:47 Meet Tom Lee
01:19 Creation of Symplur
04:10 Healthcare Hashtag Project
04:56 How does a healthcare hashtag get created?
07:48 Hashtag bombing & hashtag trolls
11:20 Community management at Symplur
12:00 Why Tom Lee tried Twitter
12:58 New users to the Healthcare Hashtag Project
14:23 Tracking hospitals, pharma, physicians and health agencies
17:12 What’s your project goal?
18:20 Big Data and project use
20:50 Ebola and it’s Twitter path
24:00 Transitions – from fun to serious
25:30 Tracking rumors
26:40 Tracking History
29:01 Massive
29:50 Focus on Cancer hastags: Dr Matthew Katz @subatomicdoc
33:21 Bernadette Keefe @nxtstop1
35:00 Conventions and “remote tweeting”
37:15 Social Media Success Tip: Greg Chang of for[MD] “Give before you ask”

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