Presenting Ourselves

I’m still slaving away here at work trying to make a process graph look interesting. PowerPoint is a much more effective medium with some adobe illustrator skills and some knowledge of Edward Tufte.

The graph is for a presentation I’m giving entitled “Servicing Patients Online: Educational Multimedia and Online Patient Evaluations” at the upcoming Creating Connections: NACHRI & N.A.C.H. Spring Conference. NACHRI stands for National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions, and N.A.C.H. stands for National Association of Children’s Hospitals the public policy affiliate ‚ÄîI guess all the good acronyms were already taken.

The core of my presentation is going to be about how what it takes to create a web presence as a health care provider: what one needs to know to get the ball rolling, how to avoid the stumbling blocks, and what one needs to do before even hiring a web agency. Too many people in this industry get the “need a new website!” bug, and then they run out and hire someone without any real goals or direction. I’m hoping my presentation will give them the knowledge they need to start the project right and hopefully begin to think about developing an ongoing online strategy.

Secondarily, I will be talking about what it means to treat patients online and the issues regarding treating patients online. We have just recently launched the Fetal Treatment Center ~ Inside, online patient program. The long winding path of this endeavor has taught us a lot about the legal, security, and technical hurdles of dealing directly with patients, and their data, online. Online health care is an industry still in it’s infancy, everyone wants to be doing it, and almost nobody knows what they are doing.

My co-presenter and I have already put a decent amount of work into this and it’s shaping up to be an interesting presentation. If you happen to be going to the conference we’re giving our talk on Friday March 16th from 2:45p-3:45p.