Institute For The Future

Trusera is finally down for the count, but another health social network steps into the ring in its place

As I reported in late March, health social networking site Trusera was struggling to stay afloat financially. Recently, in preparing to give a presentation on social media and health, I decided to visit the site. I was surprised to learn that Trusera will be shutting down its community portal as of May 27th.

I was initially intrigued by Trusera because it was different from many of the other health-related social networking sites. Unlike Daily Strength, for example, it was not organized around specific diseases

or health issues, nor did it have a "support group" feeling to it. Instead, Trusera—founded by a former Amazon exec—used a matching tool to help users find each other based on a number of factors.

Interestingly, I had just come across news of a new social networking site—FacetoFaceHealth.com— that I haven't had time to blog about. The blog HealthSpacesRX has a post entitled, "Can Health Social Media Learn from Online Dating?" (a headline that definitely caught my attention). It observes,

 

One of the frustrations cropping up on health social media sites is centered around the mechanism that caused their popularity at the outset, the message board. On a typical health social media . . . much of the activity takes place on message boards which are grouped by conditions (asthma, diabetes, etc.). Depending on the site, members can then connect with each other (assuming they found their interaction satisfactory). There are two issues with this approach: one is the level of "noise" found on some of the boards -- the lack of screening in health groups on Facebook, for instance, has meant that many of the posts are irrelevant to patients. The other is the serendipitous nature of the posting process itself, notably, a specific question may not be read by the right party at the time that it is posted.

 

The CEO of FacetoFaceHealth, Nowell Outlaw, likens the message board model to "'sitting in a cafeteria full of people and writing your message on a notecard and putting it on the wall - only if someone walks by and sees your message and writes a response to you do you get an answer.'" His site's solution is to establish a directory of people in the cafeteria, so that you can see who has what condition, find the best match, and virtually walk up to them in the cafeteria and ask them a question directly.

The site uses a linking mechanism that actively matches people based on health information members provide. The site is designed to securely provide resources, contacts and information not only for patients, but also for the patients' caregivers, parents, spouse or loved ones.

Matches are pushed out to members on a weekly basis. HealthSpacesRX notes that Outlaw's wife describes the company as "Match.com for healthcare." Its approach to matching people based on the health information they provide does sound oddly like online dating services such as Match or eHarmony.

I don't know. I haven't had much success with online dating services, so I'm not sure that FacetoFaceHealth would work for me. But a new approach may be just what we need.