Physician-patient social networking

October 17, 2008

Newsweek talks about the potential of Web 2.0 applications in patient-physician communication. As it stands, current electronic records are archaic and lack transparency – I read somewhere it’s analogous to Windows 95 technology.

Patient-to-patient social networks are more advanced, and readily embraced by those with chronic disease. Can the transparency spread to physicians? Sure, but not until patient privacy regulations adapt to the rapidly evolving technology. If HIPAA casts a pall on simple tasks like e-mail and blogs, how can you expect doctors to readily adopt physician-patient social networks?

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{ 2 comments }

1 Jane Chin October 17, 2008 at 10:22 am

I think as long as physicians are forced to operate clinics like an assembly line to break even, social networking remains an ideal, not something that only has regulations / liability as implementation road blocks.

2 Marston A, SugarStats October 18, 2008 at 11:54 pm

“I read somewhere it’s analogous to Windows 95 technology”

A pretty fair analogy indeed!

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