[Air-L] the role of new media in reducing health care cost?

[Peter Timusk]

On 22-Feb-09, at 7:37 PM, Yifeng Hu wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am looking for articles/thoughts about whether new media can play  
> a role in reducing health care cost. Any perspectives are welcome.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Yifeng**
>
> -

Some thoughts

We have been using tools like Freenets in the middle 1990's and forum  
style web sites to now blogs by  consumer staff. When I say "we" I  
mean the mental health consumer/user community in Ottawa Canada and  
also more now joined by professional parnerships. While I can not give  
studies pointing to the use of the net in particular as effective, I  
do have studies or my staff do, that consumer peer support reduces  
hospitalization.  This has shifted our government spending on health  
from hospitals to community groups like users groups. I would also add  
that I have gone from unemployed mental health patient with some  
university, to graduate school and working full time and an active  
consumer disabilities advocate because of the net largely but also by  
participation in consumer survivor groups and the use of less  
professional health care. The main gain with the net is being a writer  
very day. There are also secondary gains of owning computers such as  
being able to run say SAS, Matlab, or Maple at home for school work.

The most effective online tool for me has been email list serves on  
mental health topics. But there are other tools like personal recovery  
blogs that have also helped me.

tools that are effective in business also reduce costs in consumer  
survivor groups.

Net users are the person of the year in Time magazine and I tend to  
think in my bubble that consumers survivors of psychiatry are also  
benefiting from this self empowerment trend.

You might visit http://www.psychiatricsurvivors.org/

all the best and please share any articles you find. Peter


Peter Timusk,
B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University
Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa.
just trying to stay linear.
Read by hundreds of lurkers every week.
Kiitos Paljon,  Merci,  and thank you.