One expects digital marketers to understand social media, but it’s nice to see health entities understanding the medium and creating programs that help us tackle health issues together, socially.  And who better to make a big announcement than the Mayo Clinic, with the most popular medical provider channel on YouTube and more than 60,000 “followers” on Twitter, as well as an active Facebook page with well over 20,000 connections.

The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media announced the formation of the Social Media Health Network, (SMHN) a group dedicated to using social media to promote health, improve health care and fight disease.   According to the press release, through educational conferences, webinars and development of social platforms for sharing training materials and resources, this network will help members learn from each other and implement social media programs.

Chad Capellman said it correctly, in his Mediapost coverage of the announcement:  it feels like something is missing.  He equates the missing “something” to terms like “mobile”, “API”, and “open source”. Although the concept of SMNH sounds good, it’s not clear to me  exactly what it will actually do.  Maybe it will all become clear on October 25th, when the website for the network, socialmediahealthnetwork.org, launches.

-Frani