Ed Bennett, manages Web services at the University of Maryland Medical System, and maintains a Hospital Social Network List. I found his list to be quite impressive, outlining hospitals that tweet, blog, facebook, and Youtube!  Alas, I was rather disappointed that the list did not include hospitals in New Hampshire or Vermont.  Though hospitals have been conservative by nature, some are finally breaking the mold!

Ed’s list: June 15, 2009 – U.S. Hospitals that use Social Networking tools:

* 297 Hospitals total
* 142 YouTube Channels
* 109 Facebook pages
* 213 Twitter Accounts
* 26 Blogs

Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston blogs!  Two Stories on Florida Hospital’s Interactive Care Experience are posted on Youtube, expounding patient empowerment as an industry trend in health care.  Mayo Clinic appears on Facebook as a group with 7500+ fans.  If we include Ed Bennet’s blog about The Top Ten Hospitals on Twitter, this could be indicative of possible trends that could be here to stay!

Until next time – stay safe online!

BBC news reported that a computer worm shut down three London hospitals on Monday.  According to E-Health Insider the hospitals — St. Bartholomew’s, the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and The London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green — are part of a single system, Barts and The London NHS Trust.

The culprit is believed to be that of the Mytob worm that infects via email and installs a backdoor trojan that allows hackers remote control over computers.

Guardian.co.uk -  A spokesman said the engineers believed they had contained the virus on Monday night, but the system crashed when staff logged on yesterday. He said: “There is no indication that this was a malicious attack, but engineers are still investigating where the virus came from and what it is.” The bug did not infect the patient record system and there was no evidence that it spread to other trusts.”

How safe are your medical records?