#hcsmca National Symposium in Vancouver: The Last Waltz

By Pat Rich (@pat_health)

This post was originally published on Pat’s blog on December 18, 2015.

An opportunity to hear insights from two of the leading global experts on social media in health care  together on the same panel makes the upcoming National #hcsmca Symposium a ‘can’t miss’ event.

The National #hcsmca Symposium for health care and digital communication will be held in Vancouver, Feb. 24. Leaving aside for a moment the significance of the hashtag community itself and the important work to be done during the one-day meeting, both of which I will discuss in future postings, let’s talk about the glam factor.

The health care social media (hcsm) world is too young to have icons and the community itself has long shunned people who dare describe themselves as experts in the field. But arguably there are some outstanding institutions and individuals in the hcsm world. Putting two of them on the same panel at the #hcsmca symposium is, I feel, a truly significant event. I am referring to Lee Aase and Dr. Larry Chu who have both agreed to speak at the conference.

The Mayo Clinic was the first major academic institution anywhere to create a specific centre for social media in health care and expand its influence globally. Lee Aase is the articulate and influential Director of the Mayo Clinic Social Media Network. For his part, Dr. Larry Chu has made Stanford University an internationally recognized leader in patient empowerment in health care with the annual Stanford Medicine X conference of which he is Executive Director.

Having both Lee and Larry on the same panel must be viewed as a coup for the #hcsmca founder and conference organizer Colleen Young as I am not aware of any other meeting that has had Lee and Larry share the podium to talk about the communities they have built.

And let’s not downplay the other members of the #hcsmca symposium panel. The peripatetic Colin Hung is a leading light in hcsm in Canada not just for his expertise in taking selfies but for his role in co-hosting the #hcldr chat and for his insights into the use of social media in health care. Isabel Jordan is a leading patient advocate in Canada for her work with the Rare Disease Foundation and will bring a critically important dimension to the panel discussion.

Read more about the #hcsmca plenary panelists.

For those of us of a certain age and rock and roll disposition, the Feb. 24 meeting can be viewed as the equivalent of The Last Waltz, the seminal film of the last concert held by The Band. It certainly has the same level of guest stars. And like The Last Waltz was certainly not the last time we have heard The Band, I do not imply this conference is the end for #hcsmca.

In two subsequent posts I will deal with other reasons I believe this symposium to be so important.

Learn more about the Symposium.