Two evenings ago I had the pleasure of presenting for a meeting of about 40-50 members of the Washington State Healthcare Executives Forum (WSHEF) in Bellevue, WA. The subject of the presentation was "Discover the Power of Online Communities in Healthcare".
In organizing the presentation, I spent a lot of time thinking about the major points I wanted to get across. I figured they'd leave the meeting with only a couple of major themes- so I set out to define those themes. Further, I knew it had to be non-technical and easy to understand.
My first point was that everyone in the room is a member of a community of healthcare professionals and the "place" that allows that community to come together is that conference room. The room provides the place.
Then I had them think about how all real-world communities need a place- like a church, park, coffee shop- the places are where the community takes shape. A major point: Communities need a place.
My goal was to make the point that the "online" in "online community" is just a place, like a conference room or church. Once this point was clear, I wanted to help them visualize how this idea could be applied to a healthcare system. Department managers, project teams, administrators are all examples of potential communities that could use an online place attached to an Intranet.
I asked myself what I wanted the people in the room to do after the meeting. I came up with three basic points:
- Look at their organization in terms of communities of people that need depend on one another.
- Consider how they currently interact and what needs and goals they have
- Consider how an online "place" could help them accomplish those goals more effectively
I really wanted to drive home the idea that online community "places" can help hospitals improve knowledge sharing, manage internal communication channels, increase access to information and promote culture.
I think the message got through- both in terms of their organizations and the WSHEF organization itself. I'm providing an experimental online community space for the group and had about 30 people sign-up to check it out.
I would have loved to talk about all the cool tools and resources that make it all happen- but I knew I had to keep it geek-speak free.
I'm glad to have the chance to do this presentation and hopefully there are more on the way.