The Best Positioned Tech Giant in Healthcare Today? The Answer May Surprise You.

By DAVID SHAYWITZ, MD When you think about tech giants playing in healthcare, you think of Google and the work Verily is doing; you think of Apple and their HealthKit and ResearchKit applications, as well as their rumored plans to organize all your medical data on your iPhone; you may even think of Amazon and their potential entry into the pharmacy market. But the name you may hear about least–Facebook–may actually be the company influencing healthcare the most, and may also be the best positioned to support the patient-centered future that so many imagine and that Eric Topol described in The Patient Will See You Now (my Wall Street Journal review here). At first blush, Facebook seems to be doing remarkably little in health; their most notable effort has arguably been providing the opportunity to list your organ donor status, an initiative which produced an immediate lift in organ donor registrations. But while participating on a panel at a recent Festival of Genomics meeting in San Diego, I learned that apparently, Facebook is where patients with rare conditions, and their families, often go to connect with others in similar situations–typically via private groups. Apparently, these can be extremely specific–the example the panelist cited was childhood epilepsy due to one or another individual genetic mutation. Families reportedly self-organize into private groups based on the specific mutation, and share experiences and learnings. This reminded...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Tech Uncategorized Facebook Health IT Organ Donor Zuckerberg Source Type: blogs