The Mayo Clinic announced it's launching a global social media health network using tools such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to improve health care around the world.
"It will be a vehicle for us to share what we've learned about social media, including our training resources, and for others to join us in learning together and developing best practices," the medical director for the Mayo Clinic's Center for Social Media, Dr. Victor Montori, said in a statement on the center's website.
"Ultimately, we want to help health-related organizations of all sizes and types to harness these powerful communication tools to help patients and improve human health globally," Montori said.
Mayo, a non-profit research and hospital group, based in Rochester, Minnesota, created a social media center in July to train other hospitals to use social media tools. The new center will provide training, workshops, consulting services and hold conferences on how hospitals can better employ social media to achieve business goals, connect with patients and spread their message.
Mayo hopes to launch the website, www.socialmediahealthnetwork.org, by the end of October.
Mayo started its social media presence in 2005 with its first podcast. It later joined Facebook, then YouTube. In 2008 it launched a Twitter feed. Since then, it has attracted more than 20,000 followers on its Facebook page and more than 60,000 followers on its Twitter feed, according to the Mayo website.
