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TECH/CONSUMERS: Mental Health–Bloggers Prefer Web Over Therapist by James Harris

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James Harris a marketing consultant for WebTribesInc.com, an operator of MySpace-style websites for individuals with mental health concerns. wrote to me about the results of a new survey the company made of its members. Now it’s a small survey of current users, so strictly speaking it may not be too generalizable, but it confirms a lot of other research saying that patients prefer talking to computers rather than humans about sensitive health topics. The survey was made available to 1,600 members of the company’s websites in April 2007. Seventy-eight members, or 5%, responded to the questionnaire. Founded in 2006, WebTribesInc.com now has 8,100 registered members on its four sites. WebTribesInc.com operates four MySpace-type sites: DepressionTribe.com, OCDTribe.com, AnxietyTribe.com and Addiction.Tribe.com. You can see more at the WebTribesInc.com home page. Here’s James’ take:

Can the Internet play a positive role in addressing an individual’s mental health needs? A new survey of members of three popular social networking websites suggests that many bloggers prefer these online communities to seeking professional therapy. WebTribesInc.com recently surveyed members of its sites about their preferences when sharing thoughts and feelings. The survey found that members feel more comfortable discussing their conditions with their online community rather than with a private therapist. In the survey, members were asked "Where do you feel most comfortable expressing your issues?"

The survey found:

–68% said "an online community;"–23% said "my therapist;"–9% said "family and friends;"

According to Ryan Fitzgerald, president of WebTribesInc.com, "Although a number of celebrities including Brooke Shields and Tipper Gore have shared their stories of coping with depression, there is still a very large stigma attached to seeking formal treatment for mental health conditions." Fitzgerald said many of the site members have reported avoiding seeking professional help because they are afraid of being diagnosed as depressed or anxious and are worried the information will be shared with their employer or health insurer. "A safe online mental health community site offers anonymity and sharing in a nonjudgmental atmosphere. Journaling about troubling thoughts and feelings has been shown to be therapeutic. Online communities are also a welcome option for individuals who can’t afford professional treatment or live in remote areas," said Fitzgerald.

TECH/HEALTH2.0: Healthcamp2

I was sick on Saturday plus had had certain domestic issues arise after telling my fiancee that I was planning on abandoning her for work on a Saturday that was, err, unpaid. So I missed HealthCamp2. But it looked pretty interesting.

TECH/PODCAST: Interview with Bob Fisher, CEO of Foresight

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Here’s the transcript of the recent podcast with Bob Fisher from Foresight. The original interview is here and a 7 minute cut down version is up on Foresight’s site too.

Matthew Holt:  This is Matthew Holt with the Health Care Blog. This morning I’m talking with Bob Fisher. Bob is the founder, president, and CEO of Foresight Corporation, which is an Ohio based technology company that works primarily with health plans. I had the great fortune of being a speaker at Foresight’s recent customer meeting down in lovely Phoenix, Arizona, where I very much enjoyed meeting with Bob and the rest of his crew.  It was really quite an interesting meeting because after I did my song and dance about the future of the health care system, the folks there really got into some of the nitty-gritty. It was almost a chance for Bob to pick his customers’ brains, I think, about what they’re seeing. He’s come back with a wide wealth of information, not only about what Foresight’s up to but also what some of America’s leading health plans are up to. So deep in the engine room, as it were. So, Bob, good morning, or I should say good afternoon to you. 

Bob Fisher:  Good afternoon, Matthew. I appreciate the opportunity. 

Matthew:  How are you doing? Have you been keeping well since the last time we were together only a few weeks back? 

Bob:  I came back with a head full of knowledge and a little bit of a tan, and today I have a head cold, but I’ll try and keep it out of the interview.

Matthew: So let’s start at the beginning. Foresight’s a pretty small company. You’ve been around since the very end of last century. 

Bob:  In 1990. 

Matthew:  Sorry. 1990? Boy, you’re a bit older than I remember. 

Bob:  Yeah, 17 years. 

Matthew:  Seventeen years. Actually you’re almost an old company in technology terms in that case. So, but for the average THCB reader, I suspect that you’re pretty much an unknown quantity. I mentioned you work with health plans. What do you guys do? What are your core missions, core business functions? 

Bob:  Matt, we work with health care organizations, providers, and especially payers as you mentioned, and we use technology to help them streamline their operations. That is in the areas of claims, payments, eligibility, that sort of thing. We call it transaction lifecycle management. Now, we have a decent chance of actually being known perhaps by some of The Health Care Blog readers because actually most large payers in the US today, including the majority of Blue Cross organizations, are using Foresight technology. They’re using it to reduce the claims rework, to assure accurate and timely payments, to provide any level of management reporting on an ad hoc basis, and to improve provider relations.

Continue reading…

TECH/CONSUMERS: Musings on IFTF, Health2.0 and social networking

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I sat in a meeting today put on by my old colleagues at IFTF. (There are some other bloggers here, so there’ll be more about the meeting elsewhere). The room is filled with an interesting mix of techies, health care people, non-health care people, foundations, drug companies et al.

IFTF is fixated on the concept of biocitizenship. They’re interested in how wider communication tools (of which the Web2.0 tools are one) are allowing social movements to spread, and how this has enabled much more activism. I’m not convinced that this combination is as true or as new as they think, but it’s an interesting lens with which to view these emerging communities. For more on the biocitizen, look here — or contact Jody Ranck. I’m not going to detail IFTF’s research here. They’ve done some cool scenarios (including one with Howard Rheingold’s daughter acting as a “not LonelyGirl” faux youtube video as a very new health care consumer) in progress plus they sell their research for money (and if you’re a corporation it’s probably worth buying).

We also heard from the CDC, Revolution Health and DailyStrength.org. They are combining new tools, new communities and new techniques at a staggering rate. They’re also seeing some real growth. Revolution has been seeing big growth and although they didn’t give the numbers, DailyStrength seems to have 4–5,000 people per discussion group. It seems that better, more personalized search, and mapping your personal situation to that of others is the future to handle all this new information. I think that Natural Language Recognition based processing and search is going to be very important (which is why I’m so high on Enhanced Medical Decisions). However, much more of this will be dependent on what IFTF calls computing “sensemaking” (Computing has gone from processing to communicating, to sensing and on to “sensemaking”). That’s going to match patterns and heuristics to match your data. So that you get exactly what you need from all the stuff out there about you—and then that will get combined with the sensor information from medical devices et al.  And then put that all in context-which may be done by computers or humans with computers.

All interesting stuff, but there’ll need to be much more unpacking of these tools and the business models for them in the next little while….

TECH/HEALTH2.0: The trademark for Health2.0

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I’m at IFTF’s meeting today with a group discussion health new media. The Health2.0 term has been used alot and at Dmitriy’s urging I thought I’d clarify something.

Yes I’ve trademarked Health2.0. No, I will not stop anyone using it. I’ll be giving control over the trademark to the collective advisory board for the Health2.0 Conference. All I want to make sure is that no one uses the trademark offensively (pun intended) as for instance has happened with the term eRx.

More from IFTF later…

TECH/PODCAST: Interview with Bob Fisher, CEO of Foresight

Foresight is a highly focused tech company working (mostly) deep in the transactional guts of payers and plans providing claims editing tools, business intelligence and a variety of other services. Recently they had a very convivial user conference in Carefree, AZ and were nice enough to invite me to give a keynote. I also got into a little contention (but not too much!) with Foresight’s CEO Bob Fisher about what’s wrong with health care in the US. So I thought I’d return the favor and have Bob on the blog to explain what Foresight does, and we got to talk a little about the wider issues in health care too. Anyone who has any interest in how health insurers actually work (which should be all of you!) should listen to this.