Mayo Clinic to Hold Social Media Conference in New York City in May

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media will hold its first conference in New York City May 17–18, 2012, at Roosevelt Hospital, 1000 Tenth Ave. (at 59th Street).

The conference, Connecting Health Care & Social Media, is organized by NYC Health Business Leaders and hosted by Continuum Health Partners. In addition to Farris Timimi, M.D., and Lee Aase, the leaders of Mayo Clinic's Center for Social Media, presenters and panelists will include:

• Ed Bennett — Manager, Web Operations, University of Maryland Medical Center
• Chris Boyer — Director, Digital Marketing and Communications, Inova Health System
• Howard Luks, M.D. — Chief, Sports Medicine and Orthopedics, University Orthopedics
• Katie Malbon, M.D. — Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center
• Mike Sevilla, M.D. — Family Medicine physician and blogger

"Our mission in the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media is to lead the social media revolution in health care, contributing to health and well-being for people everywhere," says Dr. Timimi, the center's medical director. "We see this conference as a way to help spur and inspire broader adoption of social media tools by medical professionals, for the benefit of patients."

To fulfill this mission, the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media has created the Social Media Health Network, which currently has 111 member organizations, as a means for those interested in applying social media for health-related purposes to learn from and with Mayo Clinic and each other. In addition to webinars and an online community for employees of member organizations, Mayo also sponsors in-person learning and networking events such as this New York conference. Other center programs include its Social Media Residency and the annual Social Media Summit, which drew 375 participants from 38 states and four countries to Rochester, Minn. last year. This year's summit, part of a weeklong series of social media events at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., will be held Oct. 16–18.

"Social media tools have had seismic impact on governments and throughout society," says Aase. "We believe their immense power can and must be harnessed to promote health, to improve health care and to fight disease. We see this New York conference as a way to encourage thoughtful application of social media solutions to important health and medical problems."

See the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media site for further details.

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