By now you know that the Health2.0–User Generated Healthcare
Conference organized by Matthew Holt (THCB) and Indu Subaiya (Etude
Scientific) is all set to take place on September 20th in San
Francisco. Among other things, there are four fabulous demo panels on Search, Tools for Consumer health, Providers and Social networks, and Social Media for Patients.
You would not believe how many people want to show their cool tools on these panels. Well it just so happens that we ended up with one spot left on the Social Media for Patients Panel. We already have the wonderful Amy Tenderich (DiabetesMine) to moderate. On the panel are OrganizedWisdom, DailyStrength, MedHelp, PatientslikeMe & SophiasGarden.
So how to choose the remaining panelist from so many great possibilities? Too tough for us to decide, so we’re throwing it over to you. The contenders, listed in no particular order with a line or two of description are below. Please go take a look—don’t worry if these don’t exactly fit your definition of “social media”—we have ways of shoehorning the most interesting sites into our program.
We’re going to keep this post
close to the top of THCB everyday for a while so you don’t have to look
at all of them all at once. Please got to this survey to give us your
impression of what you see. The one that gets the best ratings will be
chosen to be on the panel and get to demo to the crowd from the stage
The contenders
Xoova.com —
a physician directory with a twist allowing you to search by all types
of specialties and conditions (that’s the media part); new company with
big ambitions to connect patients with doctors, run by an AOL veteran.
Lifespring Health —
Social networking meets healthcare’s consumer age. Participants earn
points when they shop online to help cover their healthcare costs and
other expenses – friends and family who participate can contribute
points as well. LifeSpring has brought Health savings accounts (HSAs)
into the mix and forged partnerships with online retailers including
drugstore.com, barnes and noble and GNC.com. A clever model. Expect to
hear more from these guys in the future …
Solos Health
– active in healthcare as an information provider since 2000, Solos provides
nutrition counseling and maintenance for 180,000 diabetics as well as disease management services for other areas. The company
also recently launched the ambitious Breastcancerawareness.org, a site driven by online PSAs.
ClinicaHealth —creates
disease-specific social networks for patients, family members and
caregivers, usually through other organizations such as the Lung Cancer Alliance and the WomenHeart Community.
Dlife – Is a combined community rich media site for diabetics. It also has a cable TV program on CNBC called dLifeTV
The American Cancer Society has some of the most vibrant online message boards anywhere. It may look a little Web1.0 but it’s a powerful community
healthcentral.com is a veteran health site, focusing on providing expert information and with a great number of vibrant communities.
HealthWorldWeb — a new very ambitious site integrating provider search, patient blogs, content, video information and much more.
Wellness-layers.com is another “inside” engine that powers other community and content sites. One example is DietWatch.
The company recently built a specialized community for weight-loss giant NutriSystem.
SocialText – this
groundbreaking enterprise Wiki provider sees itself as a natural for
healthcare industry and wants to do business with both providers and
payers. Humana is one early customer.
Starlight Starbright – this established children’s foundation has been running online support programs for chronically ill children and those facing life threatening illnesses for more than a decade. Starbright World allows kids and their siblings to connect through a social network using blogs, online chat and other interactive features.
icyou — Just launched (by BenefitFocus)
combines user-generated video with professionally produced web only
segment. Apparently certain other non-health care focused video sites
have done rather well, I hear.
Perhaps they can replicate that success in healthcare. It’s in early
beta, but certainly one of the most interesting Health2.0 video sites.
So please take a look and come over to this survey to let us know what you think, and which one you’d like to see on the panel
Categories: Uncategorized
I’d like to vote for healthcare.com. It’s a up and coming site filled with terrific tools.
http://www.healthinsuranceshopper.com
This post is full of excellent sites and their links. Thank you. One site’s link is missing a letter and takes to a 404 error page. The site is Wellness-layers.com.
The w is missing in the hyperlink.
Thanks for the post!
Xoova is a natural fit for this, and CEO Tommy McGloin is an enthralling and charismatic panelist. Give the man a mic and it’ll be the panel people are talking about after the conference. 😉
Although the name throws me off a little, the idea of having a broad database of patients to search for the right physicians is definitely something to watch, and something I would use. Now, if they can build in price comparison and user-generated content where people can rate the physicians like how they do it on yelp.com, then it would be more interesting!
LifeSpring: a rewards program for health sounds wonderful!
I use clinica Health’s Paralysis Community. It is safe secure and a great way to keep a blog while meeting others with like disability. They offer many patient “safety features” which separate them from the rest”
Thanks,
Bernadette
I’d like to vote for Clinica Health. They created an online community page for our organization, which serves an international audience, and it provides a wonderful service for people with rare diseases who have few opportunities to network with others who have the same diseases.
I would also check out the RIA Health Applications as well as the cancer survivors network http://www.acscsn.org it is a social network since 2001.
RIA’s can be found at http://www.labs.cancer.org
I am VP of Marketing for Wellness Layers, which specializes in creating “high-touch” consumer web portals for companies who want to integrate into their brand interactive nutrition, fitness and wellness tools and community. Our CEO, Dr. Amir Kishon, is one of the contenders for the last slot on the roster of Health 2.0 speakers and a pioneer in the online wellness arena. I’d like to share a couple of observationsabout what we have observed in the marketplace lately.
As a result of our conversations with many of the major pharmaceutical, insurance, diet, nutrition, fitness and wellness companies, we have found a tremendous interest in developing social networking and other interactive tools. The major questions usually are not “Whether” but rather “How” and “When.”
In our opinion, time is of the essence because the leaders in the marketplace will establish themselves as destination sites early on. Those who wait too long may lose a competitive advantage which will be difficult to regain. Consumers are getting used increasingly engaging online experiences and will be expecting similar online excellence from the companies they deal with. The coming months will be an exciting time in this arena, and we are excited to be helping companies develop these high quality web portals quickly and creatively.