Social Network to Aid Patients with Chronic Medical Conditions.
Posted Dec 23 2008 9:14pm
P atients hungry for clinical information about chronic medical conditions are coming together in hopes of finding out about new treatment programs and therapies that will help with their symptoms. It would seem that several patients with chronic medical issues are becoming frustrated with “inadequate” research about certain conditions and they are doing the homework on their own now.
At a health 2.0 conference in San Francisco a new group called Cure Together will be demonstrating how patients can come together in what seems to be a social network setting and discuss, compare, and discover treatment options for various chronic medical problems. Cure Together launched in July of this year with only three chronic conditions in its data base but now has 87 conditions covered.
The site www.curetogether.com is free and all you have to do is register with e-mail, user name, and password. The site is user friendly and serves as a social forum for patients to discuss medical treatments, symptoms, and ask questions. You can invite other patient friends and see their own “healthstreams” which seem to be a daily account of how they are feeling. The site is very much reminiscent of Facebook or similar type social network set up. Patients can also recommend physicians and write evaluative comments about them; support group contact information is also available for many conditions.
While this site seems to be more of a social support network than a WebMD type of site it clearly has an audience that is paying attention. With healthcare experiencing access problems and provider shortages it is not surprising to see this type of venue develop. The real question is will this actually prove to be beneficial to its users.
P atients hungry for clinical information about chronic medical conditions are coming together in hopes of finding out about new treatment programs and therapies that will help with their symptoms. It would seem that several patients with chronic medical issues are becoming frustrated with “inadequate” research about certain conditions and they are doing the homework on their own now.
At a health 2.0 conference in San Francisco a new group called Cure Together will be demonstrating how patients can come together in what seems to be a social network setting and discuss, compare, and discover treatment options for various chronic medical problems. Cure Together launched in July of this year with only three chronic conditions in its data base but now has 87 conditions covered.
The site www.curetogether.com is free and all you have to do is register with e-mail, user name, and password. The site is user friendly and serves as a social forum for patients to discuss medical treatments, symptoms, and ask questions.
You can invite other patient friends and see their own “healthstreams” which seem to be a daily account of how they are feeling. The site is very much reminiscent of Facebook or similar type social network set up. Patients can also recommend physicians and write evaluative comments about them; support group contact information is also available for many conditions.
While this site seems to be more of a social support network than a WebMD type of site it clearly has an audience that is paying attention. With healthcare experiencing access problems and provider shortages it is not surprising to see this type of venue develop. The real question is will this actually prove to be beneficial to its users.
Source: PR.com