At the very start of the Health 2.0 conference, just before the key-note speaker, Nancy Turett from Edelman was introduced on stage to speak about the “Health Engagement Barometer Study” made available for free on their blog ‘Engage in Health‘. It is a major piece of research into global eHealth trends. One of its major findings struck me immediately : that health blogs had shown one of the highest growth rates for importance as a source of online health information, second only to ‘consumer health websites’. Can you believe that ? More important than forums, social networks or health video sites. Well I could have jumped up and down right there and then because what better validator for our HealthBlogs strategy than this.
But as I started my own presentation the next day, I couldn’t help but reflect a little more deeply on this finding. Because while I personally agree that health blogs are amongst the most important communication tools a physician can have, I did find it strange that such a strong conclusion could be reached considering the current state of health blogging today, which I would describe as embryonic at best. The average physician will never even have heard of blogging and the many physicians the Alensa teams have spoken to have almost unanimously stated that “it’s interesting but i don’t really have the time and don’t see the benefit”. In fact when conducting research for our HealthBlog network we quickly realized the following conclusions :
1. There are only a few hundred health blogs worldwide including the USA
2. The editors of most of these blogs are anonymous meaning no way to verify their qualifications and therefore the information they provide
3. Most of these blogs are located on non-professional platforms such as Blogger
4. Apart from advertising, no other monetization options are being widely employed and therefore no medical professionals are currently gaining any significant compensation for their work (the exclusion being bloggers who are working on government grants for health blogging such as Keith Carlson from Digital Doorway).
So here is the paradox; on the one hand health blogs are becoming the most important sources of health information and on the other there are actually very few health blogs and adoption remains low because physicians and health professionals can’t gain any benefit from it.
Luckily for Alensa, this plays into our strengths of helping health bloggers to :
1. Quickly get set up on a professional blogging platform
2. Make their blog more visible through the HealthBlogs search & network
3. Monetize their premium content through a mobile phone based micropayment solution
Alensa HealthBlogs is a simple way for medical professionals to enter the space of health blogging and a real way for them to be compensated for the time and effort they put into communicating with patients through their blogs.
For questions or to open your own health blog on Alensa HealthBlogs please contact me at dev [at] alensa.com
