For my first profile, I am delighted to link up with Fard Johnmar, Founder of the Path of the Blue Eye – a relatively new global initiative, which is already establishing itself as an important networking tool and information resource for healthcare communications professionals like me. Without further ado, I will pass you over to Fard to explain what the Path of the Blue Eye Project is all about and to answer some of the questions you may have...

Two-thirds of hospital marketers say Facebook is an effective social media channel. Among large hospitals, 40% say online will be the core focus of marketing by 2013. Almost 80% of hospitals will invest in mobile health in the next 2 years.

Hospitals increasingly are mining patients' health and financial records to market specialty services such as cancer, cardiac and orthopedic care to a targeted group of individuals, Kaiser Health News/USA Today reports.

In Kurnool, a bustling urban center in southern India, more than 500 parents will receive critical vaccination alerts for their newborns via text message thanks to the tech entrepreneurs at Medic Mobile. The global nonprofit, which creates open-source tools to support health workers and the communities they serve, piloted the SMS-based system with a $5,000 grant from the Gates Foundation as part of last year's GOOD Vaccine Challenge calling for ideas to improve vaccine awareness and access.

Recently, Dr. Ming Tai-Seale and her colleagues published a study in the European Journal of Pain about pain management for older adults in primary care. With the patients’ and doctors’ consent, the authors evaluated the content and time spent on pain and other topics in 385 videotapes of routine office visits. The median length of visit was 15.7 minutes and the median number of topics per visit was 6.5. The median length of time spent discussing pain was 2.3 minutes. When pain was discussed earlier in the visit, slightly more time tended to be spent on the topic.