Dive Brief:
- Dr. Kim Norman, professor of adolescent and young adult health at the University of California San Francisco, uses private personal health social networks to create scalable clinical interventions that overcome barriers of distance, stigma and expense that often prohibit access to healthcare for remote patients.
- Clinical programs use cloud-based medical-grade records and match up patients with families and other non-medical caretakers to provide them with access to relevant data.
- Norman said healing is social and technology can create collaborative care "and secure social media can serve as a virtual psychotherapy office." She is applying this concept to integrate mental health services into chronic disease care using personal social networks.
Dive Insight:
Caregivers at the Young Adult and Family Center use the social networks to reach veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, help high school and college students with resiliency skills and to help underserved youth and their families overcome trauma.
Dr. Norman, who is also the founder and director of the center, said the private social networks "build longitudinal relationships with our patients and their families to extend care beyond the traditional points of service into the home, school, and community, and for the first time, to integrate behavioral health and the social context of patient care within chronic disease care programs."
"We believe this is the future of chronic disease care," she concluded.