Why do we trade up to better, faster, slicker products if existing products do the job?
If you have Facebook – why would you want a private, social network?

As customers of products, why do we trade up from existing products to newer products?

Is it just techno-lust (in the case of an iPad2 versus an iPad3) or is it capacity requirements (in the case of replacing a family sedan with a mini-van when child number 4 arrives)?

In healthcare, there is a noisy and complex landscape of information technology products for healthcare providers, personal healthcare record management apps (just look on Google Play), patient communities (PatientsLikeMe) and doctor communities (Sermo in the US and Konsilium24 in Poland) not to mention over 700 vendors of Electronic health record systems.

Despite the breadth and complexity of software for healthcare, one area stands out as an under-served market – the axis of patient-doctor communications. Most patient-doctor communications still take place in the office with the occasional phone call or email that is devoid of clinical issue context and  lacking consistent overview over time. Currently,  some American doctors may use email under duress (since the time they waste on email is not billable) and a few are making forays into social media like Facebook for image and marketing.

So why would a doctor choose to trade up email to sleeker, faster, modern technology of private social networking for healthcare?

When it comes to private social networking for healthcare, there are 2 angles to this question; the healthcare CIO perspective and the private doctor perspective.

THE HEALTHCARE CIO PERSPECTIVE

From a healthcare CIO perspective, we are at that ahah moment 10 years ago when CIOs realized that email is a very bad tool for collaboration.

This was why Ray Ozzie invented Lotus Notes and then Groove Networks which is now Microsoft Sharepoint Workspace. As a corporate product, Sharepoint is disrupting IT quite a bit and causing it’s share of security headache, but it’s still an enterprise software model.

But – the model of enterprise software like Notes and Sharepoint that takes years to develop and implement has been replaced with mobile, social, games and small apps.

Here we are in 2012 and the only tool that doctors have for collaboration with their patients is email – non-billable, insecure and a terrible way of collaborating. It’s true that some American doctors are playing with FB and Twitter to create a community of patients, but a community of people is totally different from a meaningful 1:1 conversation – as anyone who has ever been to a convention can testify.

The value proposition of private social networking for a healthcare CIO is giving their doctors a gift: a small, private social app that is 10x more effective than email, has clinical context, is private and a wonderful way of collaborating in a 1:1 thread with easy-to-use social software.

This is a good reason for healthcare organizations to trade-up from clunky email and office visits to private social networking for healthcare.

THE PRIVATE DOCTOR PERSPECTIVE.

A private doctor looks at it the doctor-patient collaboration question from the bottom up and asks himself: “Why should I trade up to social networking, when I have a phone, a secretary and email ?”.

Why do doctors continue to use conventional techniques such as phone and email instead of converting all their practices to Microsoft Sharepoint?

Doctors choose to stay with conventional methods for only one reason: costs.

Staying with old-style email and phone avoids an expensive, risky and complex investment in software, hardware, IT integration, security and maintaining collaborative applications like Sharepoint and mitigating the privacy risk of social media.

Now let’s consider the flip side: Why do doctors choose innovative means of patient communications like Facebook and Twitter?

Certainly it is not in order to play with the fire of potential privacy disclosure nor pay for social media marketing for the fun of it.

Doctors try out social media in order to differentiate themselves and test what is successful in the field while supporting interactive contact with their patient community.

Social media has an emotional appeal and it is a trend that is only getting stronger over time.

So what will it be – the emotional appeal or the productivity and quality improvement?

You can have the best of all worlds with Pathcare - the secure private social network for a doctor and her patients that helps physicians be more effective, more social and gain their patients’ trust.  With  Pathcare, a doctor gets the highly improved productivity of a Sharepoint Workspace, the emotional appeal of Facebook, the low price of using a modern online app and 2-way private data communications with the patient,

Better data improves patient education.

Knowing that their doctor is listening increases patient trust.

Having better understanding of the plan helps their doctor improve patient outcomes.

This is Pathcare - the next step in doctor-patient collaboration.