David Harlow Keynotes on Health Care Social Media and the Law at Annual Healthcare and the Internet Conference

I attended the 14th Annual Healthcare and the Internet Conference in Las Vegas this week, and gave a keynote presentation entitled: “Health Care Social Media – The Lawyers Don’t Always Say No” in which I discussed the reasons for health care providers to engage with their constituencies via social media — both from a business perspective and from a regulatory perspective (ACO rules and future phases of Meaningful Use rules effectively demand a response from providers involving social media), and how to do it without getting into trouble (there are a variety of HIPAA, other privacy, liability, anti-kickback and fraud and abuse issues to keep in mind when planning for patient engagement through social media). Here are the slides from my talk:

Some of the themes I touched upon ran through other sessions at the conference as well: development of patient portals, on-line services and a panoply of off-the-shelf and customized web and social media solutions. There was a great deal of sharing — formal and informal — throughout, and I enjoyed meeting many folks in person (some of whom I’ve known for a while, but only on line).   Kudos to the team at Greystone for putting on a terrific conference.

Update 11/21/2010: Check out the #hcic tweetstream.

David Harlow
The Harlow Group LLC
Health Care Law and Consulting