Healthcare Mobile Web Presence

It is pretty much a given that healthcare organizations, medical offices, and physicians maintain a web presence given how frequently consumers turn to the internet and google especially for health information.

Given that... I would like to point out that more and more of this web traffic occurs on a smartphone rather than a computer and in an effort to retain consumers who seek healthcare, it behooves that any web presence be also mobile friendly.

According to my own personal web statistics using google analytics (free), in the month of Sept 2012, more than half (59.7%) of all web visits occurred using a smartphone.

Compare this to 53% in July 2012 and 39% in January 2012.

In January 2011, it was a laughably small 12.5%.

Overall, mobile web browsing accounts for 20% of all web traffic in North America. Cisco in February 2012 predicted that:

"global mobile data traffic will increase 18x between 2011 and 2016... By the end of 2012, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth, and by 2016 there will be 1.4 mobile devices per capita. There will be over 10 billion mobile-connected devices in 2016, including machine-to-machine (M2M) modules-exceeding the world's population at that time (7.3 billion)."

Also, google's own internal research revealed that half of consumers will use a website less often if it does not work well with a smartphone even if they like a business. In essence, you WILL lose customers at the moments that matter without a website specifically made for mobile devices.

It is based on just such statistics that persuaded me to take the time and money to convert my practice website such that it is now mobile friendly earlier this month.

So what does it mean to have a mobile friendly web presence?

It means that a consumer does not have to enlarge or scroll around horizontally to view a single webpage. Information appears formatted specifically for the smaller smartphone screens automatically.

In the past, there was a call for healthcare to have a web presence. In the future, that may not be good enough... modern IT demands a web presence that is mobile-friendly. Indeed, if one made decisions purely based on statistics, the focus should be on "mobile presence" rather than "web presence".

Food for thought...

Sources:
Mobile-friendly sites turn visitors into customers. Google 9/25/12.

Google Research: No Mobile Site = Lost Customers. Forbes 9/25/12

Mobile is Not a Sideshow. Information Week 9/21/12

Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2011–2016. Cisco 2/14/12

Mobile Devices Now Make Up About 20 Percent of U.S. Web Traffic. All Things D 5/25/12.

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Fauquier ENT Reaches 5 Million Web Visits

It is with some amazement that a certain milestone was reached this past week...

Fauquier ENT's online presence received over 5,000,000 web visits since first coming into existence in 2004. This number includes practice website and blog.

There has been exponential growth year over year with daily web visits now averaging close to 8,000 hits per day with some occasional peak days exceeding 10,000 views.

Our YouTube channel has done even better on its own with over a QUARTER BILLION VIEWS since we first established it in 2007. As of today, our videos have collectively received over 228 million views, averaging 45,000 views per day.

Thanks for all the online support!

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If Computer Security Experts are Getting Hacked, Why are Hospitals/Doctors Expected to be Better?

As anyone knows from reading the newspaper recently, major computer security firms like RSA and Verisign have been hacked. Even the pentagon!

If companies that specialize in computer security get hacked, why are hospitals and doctors who do NOT specialize in computer security held to an even higher standard?

Criminal penalties against healthcare professionals and organizations are steep for computer data breaches at $100 per record with criminal penalties that can include fines of $250,000 and 10 years in prison.

Given such steep penalties, the assumption is that hospitals and physicians must be experts in computer and network security... even better than companies that specialize in this subject area... or can purchase one.

So who should healthcare organizations hire to secure their computers to avoid getting hacked as I can certainly tell you, they are most certainly not security experts?

Google? Symantec? RSA? Verisign? The pentagon?

They've all been hacked successfully... As such, how can we trust their security products?

The answer is simple... There is no company that can be contracted to provide bulletproof security.

The only way is to NOT use a computer at all!

So here's the interesting quandary...

The government is mandating hospital and physicians to transition to electronic medical records or start facing penalties for not doing so.

BUT, the electronic medical records must have bulletproof security or else criminal penalties and even jail-time can be had for any breaches.

With these mandates, the only thing doctors and hospitals can hope for is to not get noticed by hackers. Either get punished for not using a computer or get punished for not having a security system even better than the pentagon.

Source:
Why the security industry never actually makes us secure. CNET 3/3/12
HIPAA Violations and Enforcement. AMA

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