Flipping #hccmty – Meet the Panelists

By now, I hope you’ve heard that #hcsmca, #hcldr and Evening Rounds are hosting a blockbuster #hccmty Meetup in Toronto on February 25 at 6pm at the Hard Rock Café. It’s going to be an evening of super-charged networking and meeting people that you may only know from Twitter.

We’re also going to dive deep into what is an online community, what does it takes to build one and why you should or shouldn’t. #hcsmca events often turn things on their head, and this time will be no different. In fact, I’ve invited my fellow panelists to “flip the panel” like Susannah Fox, Pam Ressler, Meredith Gould and I did at Stanford Medicine X.

Flipping the panel means we’ll be posting ideas and sparking conversations in advance so that the on-stage event at the #hccmty meetup will be but one more link in the chain, not the start or end point. Read more about the panel topic.

Over the next 2 weeks, each of the panelists (Colin Hung, Robyn Sussel, Blair Ryan and myself) will post a blog here, presenting each of our perspectives on Building Online Community in Health and gathering your reactions and wisdom in the blog comments and the #hccmty hashtag on Twitter.

Let’s start by meeting the panelists

Colleen Young (@colleen_young) is internationally recognized for her expertise in building online health communities that thrive. She’s the Founder of Health Care Social Media Canada (#hcsmca). She’s also the Community Strategist for Canadian Virtual Hospice, a virtual community for people living with or caring for someone with a life-limiting illness.

In 2012, Colleen was awarded the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) Award at the Medicine 2.0 Congress at Harvard University for her leadership in developing best practices for building online communities. She frequently speaks and writes about chronic illness in the digital age and the impact of social web in health and health care, including presenting at Stanford Medicine X 2014, contributing to the Mayo Clinic’s book Bringing the Social Media Revolution to Health Care and publishing the JMIR article Community Management That Works.

Colin Hung (@Colin_Hung) has helped various healthcare and IT companies launch new products, enter new markets and achieve breakthrough revenue growth for the past 20 years. He is currently the Senior Vice President of Marketing for PatientPrompt – a cloud-based patient communications platform headquartered in Toronto. Colin is extremely passionate about improving healthcare. He co-founded and manages the popular healthcare leadership Twitter community (#hcldr).  He is also actively involved with HackingHealth – a volunteer organization that is dedicated to driving innovation in healthcare.

Colin received an honours BA in Applied Science from the University of Waterloo and is a registered Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario. He speaks regularly about marketing, healthcareIT and leadership.

Robyn Sussel  (@robynsussel): Through her branding and communications practice, Robyn has helped many health, science and human rights organizations clarify their messages and connect with their audiences. Her clients include UNAIDS (Geneva), The Open Society Foundations (New York), Providence Health Care, Genome BC, and the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association. Before becoming a consultant in 2001, Robyn worked for 10 years as an in-house communicator for a national HIV clinical trials network where she helped connect activists and advocates with the HIV research community.

Robyn received an honours BA in communications from Simon Fraser University and a Masters degree in communications from Concordia University in Montreal. Robyn works at Signals.ca and speaks regularly on the subjects of communications in health and science, knowledge translation, and digital strategies in health care.

Blair Ryan  (@TheRounds), CEO and Co-founder of The Rounds , doesn’t play by the rules. He has committed his professional life to creating change. This has certainly not been the path of least resistance, but through his work he has raised millions of dollars for charities and for-profit endeavors alike. His one proviso is that an organization must do something that really matters.

Recently, Blair launched an eHealth startup, The Rounds. The Rounds is a professional network exclusively for physicians, which allows them to crowdsource solutions to difficult medical problems, and in-turn deliver better care. Serving as the company’s chief executive, Blair has plans to use the knowledge exchanged and collected in The Rounds to dramatically and forever change the way healthcare is delivered worldwide. Blair is in relentless pursuit of meaningful ideas and is always interested in meeting the people with the resolve and passion to bring those ideas to life.

Moderator: Kathy Kastner (@kathykastner) is a successful serial entrepreneur in the health space, always taking the patients’ point of view. She pioneered two North American-wide hospital-based patient education television networks, with content often used in impact studies and health communication courses.

BestEndings.com is Kathy’s current endeavor: a website born of being embraced, as a layperson, in the end of life Twitter community. She creates and curates on the topics of dying and death. Lest you think it all doom and gloom, the title of her TEDtalk: Exit Laughing. Kathy is invited as patient contributor to conferences, workshops and round-tables and when she gives keynotes virtual communities are always emphasized. She is a 2013 Stanford MedicineX ePatient Scholar, presenter at Patients2.0 and Health2.0. A former TV journalist, she is frequently called upon for interviewing, facilitating and moderating.

Join us February 25 at 6pm at the Hard Rock Café in Toronto. See details and register today:

[Note: The event will also be livestreamed. Let me know if you are planning to meetup with fellow #hcsmca-ers to watch the livestream in your town.]

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