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**
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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.