Peter Biddle sez,
Some friends of mine are up and running on a web startup called PokitDok. I'm on their tech board and the Facebook, blog and Twitter posts I did while I was dealing with my father's illness and death over the past year became part of their VC pitch materials.
Ted and Lisa and I have been talking for years about how we can use social media and math to link concentrations of organically acquired expertise in specific areas of health (eg cancer survivors or supporters, or people like me with ankylosing spondylitis, or who have had to get a loved one out of involuntary commitment…) with people who have suddenly found themselves immersed in similar situations.
Along the way to solving those problems (and I think they will!) they discovered that there are also some very immediate problems to solve – on Pokitdok they help people find out the actual cash cost for treatments with specific doctors, which in the US is extremely hard for normal people to discover because of regulations and insurance. They also let people look at alt medicine (like acupuncture) and modern medicine in the same place and context, which really is an "it's about time" social integration.
(Thanks, Peter!)
