During our mid-term presentations, we heard about how the Mayo Clinic is using social media effectively to connect with patients. Now, some new social ventures have tapped into this idea to make money by bridging the gap between social media and health care. There’s a great article about some of these new services on CNNMoney’s website.
Patient-to-Patient
PatientsLikeMe, don’t quite envision the service as a social network. However, it does allow patients to connect with others who are dealing with similar health conditions to share stories, discuss symptoms and respond to online health questionnaires.
Interestingly, despite all the privacy issues in health care, PatientsLikeMe makes its money by selling the questionnaire responses and other data to drugmakers and research institutions.
Doctor-to-Patient
Patient Fusion allows patients to post reviews of doctors and review their schedules before booking an appointment. The service is an offshoot of the company’s original offering, Practice Fusion, a service that allows doctors to share electronic medical records through the cloud. The service currently touches more than 60 million patients.
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