Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Friday, September 23, 2011
Medical websites Help Clinics Compete Against Large Hospitals
Traditional Healthcare Communication Meant Word-Of-Mouth Publicity
Traditionally, physicians and medical practices have relied on word-of-mouth publicity to establish themselves. A patient who has undergone an event-free angiography at the local cardiac care center would then tell five others about his/her wonderful experience. So now five more people know about the latest angiography services at that cardiac center. Hopefully, this positive review continues in a geometric progression as more and more people visit the medical center. But is that enough? What about the high tech cardiac catheterization and latest stenting services also available at that center? There would be hundreds of bits of positive details about your hospital most patients don’t even get to know of. Hoping that all visitors to a medical center realize all its plus points and then remember to pass these plus points to others is so optimistic, it’s foolish. Thus word-of-mouth publicity serves a very limited role in evangelizing any healthcare services.
Challenges In Healthcare Communication
Medical practices can no longer rely only on word-of-mouth to inform the world about their existence. But they also face a big handicap. They need to make themselves and their quality services known without resorting to overt advertising. Clinics and smaller hospitals face a specially forbidding challenge in breaking through this glass ceiling of ‘perceived quality’. Sheer size has allowed larger hospitals to carry an aura of quality, irrespective of the services they provide. In contrast, many clinics which provide top-of-the-line services are just not accorded due respect or simply remain unknown.
Medical Websites In healthcare Communication
Despite providing the best services, many small practices are labeled ‘poor quality’ simply because of low visibility. Technology has broken down this artificial divide between small and larger medical practices. A high quality website has become the single most important way to establish your credibility, authority and niche online. Websites and social media channels provide an easy to access free platform for showcasing your expertise to any targeted/ segmented population.
A website becomes the way people remember and recall your clinic. A website creates a visual brand for your medical practice, allowing strong recall value even among people who may never have visited your clinic. With the help of a high quality medical website, a niche specialty clinic can achieve the same recognition as many large super-specialty hospitals.
Beyond branding, the practical utilities medical practices can provide the patients via their websites are plenty. Appointment scheduling and lab reports can easily be accessed via medical websites. Interactive patient communication widgets and electronic health records can add an entirely new dimension to the concept of medical websites. To know how a website can transform your medical practice, kindly write to a.patkar@plus91.in
You can also visit www.websitesfordoctors.in
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Medical Practices Planning Websites Need 8 Answers Ready
1) What are the Three Top adjectives that describe your practice and Three Top services you provide:
All medical practices have some USP that distinguishes them. You should have yours defined before you create an online presence.
2) Who is your competition:
You are the best judge of your own competition. That’s where your patients go to when they don’t come to you. The same goes for the patients looking for Doctors online.
3) Which medical websites do you appreciate:
Your affiliations online decide your digital brand. Choose some idols of online medical presence and follow their best practices. Always link to and comment on good quality content.
4) Is there anything you don't want on your web site:
Your aversions decide you as much as your affiliations. Have a clear brand strategy for your professional appearance online.
5) What do you want visitors to do when they get to your site:
Have a clear navigation plan for your visitors and decide where you want them to finally land up on your website.
6) How do you want the web site to help your practice:
Know what you want to do and why you are doing it.
7) Do you have a collection of all digital media you might have created over the past 5 years:
PowerPoint slides, videos, text articles or posts online are good resources for high quality medical websites. A regularly updated website will always do better for your brand than an outdated one.
8) Do you plan to delegate people for managing your complete online presence via social media and PR:
Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and community platforms are the crux of an online presence. You need skilled people managing these channels for you 24/7/365. That’s a long term question ideally decided when you start a website.
Websites For Doctors allows you to create high quality websites by a simple template based process. You can check some examples here.
• Ankur Fertility Center
• Om Pathology Lab
• Dr Manoj Pradhan's Athena Heart Care Clinic
You can contact us here.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Five Free Simple Google Tools For Doctors
Digital technology has done a lot to change healthcare over the past 20 years. And Google is the biggest influence on the web over the past 14 years of the internet. Their “Do No Evil” ‘philosophy’ has given us a whole stable of free and easy to use tools which can make all work easier and better.
Google's premier patient offering, Google Health was quietly buried. There have been no comparable Google tools for doctors. Their Raison d'être, the Google search has long been a much maligned tool for medical professionals. But there is lots more a doctor can do with free Google tools. Let’s take a look at *Five Free Simple Google Tools For Doctors.*
1) Gmail
This is the most useful service ever by Google, barring Google Search. And you can have more of it! You can use Gmail to create 2 (or more) free accounts. So you can create one personal and another public email address for your medical practice. Eg: one can be *dr.nirmal@gmail.com* and another
*neuromumbai911@gmail.com*. By going to settings, you can then set to import your other email account into any one primary gmail account.
You can also enable ‘*multiple inboxes*’ via Labs subtab in mail settings, allowing you to receive neatly segmented mails. Check this video
You can reply by your choice of account, enabling you to keep your personal and professional emails separated by different accounts, yet accessible and answerable from one single account. Here’s a detailed screenshot enhanced post about this feature on MakeTech easier. Read this Gmail tutorial for lots more info on these features.
Websites for Doctors by Plus91 lets you leverage on Google’s email offering creating social media profiles for you and letting you use your own personalized email ids.
Eg. drrajan@ivfinindia.in (www.ivfinindia.in)
2) Google Alerts
If there are certain terms you want to follow on Google and receive any new mentions directly to your email inbox, create a Google Alert. Fill in the term you need to follow, like ‘*neurology India news’* or ‘*dr. nirmal surya’* and set the frequency/type of alerts required. *Stay updated via email.*
You can also directly add such feeds to your website thus making it an information resource for others to see for a particular topic. E.g. PIPCDocs Website at the bottom left corner
3) Google Maps
Maps and *Places* allow you to mark your professional locations and timings on a map. Link this marked map within all your emails. Henceforth *all patients you email will see how to reach you easily via a map*, with additional info about consultation hours that you might want to share.
Every Website made by Plus91 comes with its own embedded Google maps to allow patients to easily track your location. E.g. Dr Karnik’s Clinics under the Location Tab
You don’t need to always go to Pubmed for all your medical searches. Head to Google Scholar and do any *advanced search* (author, type, publication year and lots more filters). You will get More Results. You will search more medical databases. Try it
.
Plus91 has numerous initiatives to help promote your website using information tools like slideshare and Collaborative Online Journals like Indian Health Journal which will get you listed sooner than later.
Online videos are the most important medical info resource. But you don’t need to create videos to run a medical educational channel for your patients. Just create a channel by free login and start marking as *favourite the best medical education videos* you think might help your patients. Set channel settings to demonstrate your video favourites. You can also create multiple playlists on multiple topics and share them separately. Thus, you have a full blown video channel. Zero cost!
Now create your own You Tube channel with us at Websites for Doctors and upload videos of surgeries, patient testimonials and also a tour of your clinic.
We are planning another post on 5 Advanced and Free Google tools For Medical Practitioners. If you want to read that soon, *Share this*. If you need help with any of the above tools, comment below.
Article by: Dr Neelesh Bhandari and Co-edited by Aditya Patkar
Friday, February 19, 2010
Website For Doctors - Alive and Kicking
Why does Website for Doctors appeal to the doctors who are signing up? Because we are a specialized service, like a highly specialized clinic, serving only doctors. Since we focus on dealing only with doctors, we understand their needs and wants , so we can deliver what is best for them.
Every website we have done has gone live online within 48 hours of the doctor providing us with the required information. What’s more important is that after the doctor takes the first step of choosing a template and sending us his basic data, we can send him his personalized dummy site by the next day. Seeing it live and understanding that his clinic is now live on the web enthuses doctors to ask for more ! Seeing is believing !
What allows us to bond with doctors and give them the solutions which they need ?
Our specialization based galleries; our dedicated team ; and our medical domain expertise, because of the knowledge we have acquired as a result of developing our EMR products . A website can be tweaked and the content modified to give the doctor’s patients what they need from the website. A superspecialist consultant can get exposure to international patients; while a small city specialist can get publicity and provide directions to his clinic.
There is still long way to go in actually making Websites for Doctors from a doctor’s “want” to a “need”, but the process has begun ! Apart from the basic features of a website, there are some simple tools which can go a long way to improve your website experience for your patients. Our aim at Website For Doctors is to recommend these tools , such as health calculators, video galleries, online patient history forms ; customized ask the doctor queries; and google maps which provide directions to the clinic.
You can check out some of our work at www.websitefordoctors.in
Some of our client sites include: www.ashutoshchaudhari.com, www.swatiallahbadia.com, www.charakchildcare.com
All these websites were ready in double quick time and to the satisfaction of these doctors. Even today we provide suggestions and accept them to tweak them to make them better. As Mercedes says “the road to perfection has no finish line” but it definitely gives us , and the doctors who have decided to take this journey along with us , a goal for the future!