Healthcare Social Media: Post 1

Over the last couple months the online health sector has gotten even more press than usual. And for good reason. If you consider how the social nature of Web 2.0 is changing many aspects of society, it's only natural that health care would be changed in the same manner.

Doctors, drug companies, and other professional information sources have been online for years, so I won't focus on those. Instead, I want to focus on people to people communication.

I want to talk about two communities and approaches today: WebMD and Healia. WebMD makes my very short list because they are absolutely the big daddy of the online health sector, and touch more people with health info than anybody else. Healia intrigues me because they are slowly but surely building a legit online health social network, and because they are part of Meredith, the media giant.

If you're healthy, you may not know about the literally millions of people sharing advice and ideas on their own current and past health conditions online. Cancer patients, heart patients, stroke survivors, all of it. Naturally, many people with health issues, concerns, and fears want to know the best way to get and stay healthy.



The dispersion of health care information through doctors relied on an imperfect system in the past, by which I mean that some doctors paid greater attention and became aware of new ideas and treatments more quickly.

The old system also depended upon drug companies to do a lot of the information distribution, through their reps.



Add to that a health insurance industry Hellbent on lowering costs while simultaneously cranking out greater profits and it is easy to see how personal health optimization -- if I can get all jargony for a minute -- requires greater personal participation in one's conditions, preventions, and treatments.

Also, if you have an interest in alternative medicine or nutrition, you may find your healthcare professional not all that well-informed on the topic.

The web provides a wonderful way for people to play a greater role in their own health because it can give people access to much more information, though there is always the problem of misinformation online. But anything that makes people take a more active role in their health is a good thing, I think, because often our natural inclination is to ignore problems until it is too late. I know because I have two relatives who ignored breast lumps -- relatives that died because when the problem became too large to ignore, the condition was too severe to treat.

So there you go. In my next two posts I will be doing little profiles of WebMD and Healia, and their different approaches to helping people connect with one another and share health care info.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.