Facebook poised to enter health-care sector with 'support communities'
Industry watchers say social media site is set to follow Apple and Google into lucrative market
PUBLISHED : Friday, 03 October, 2014, 9:04pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 04 October, 2014, 6:26am
Reuters in San Francisco
Facebook product teams noticed that people with chronic ailments such as diabetes would search the social networking site for advice. Photo: AFP
Facebook already knows who your friends are and the kind of things that grab your attention. Soon, it could also know the state of your health.
Following fellow US technology companies Apple and Google, Facebook is plotting its first steps into the field of health care, according to industry sources.
The company is exploring online "support communities" that would connect Facebook users suffering from various ailments. A small team is also considering "preventative care" applications that would help people improve their lifestyles.
The sources said the social networking giant has met medical experts and entrepreneurs, and was setting up a research and development unit to test health apps. It was still in the idea-gathering stage, they said.
Health care has long been an interest for Facebook, but has been pushed aside by more pressing issues.
However, recently, Facebook executives have come to realise that health care might work as a tool to increase engagement with the site.
One catalyst was the unexpected success of its "organ-donor status initiative", introduced in 2012. The day that Facebook altered profile pages to allow members to specify their organ-donor status, 13,054 people registered to be donors online in the United States, a 21-fold increase over the daily average of 616 registrations, according to study published in the American Journal of Transplantation in June last year.
Separately, Facebook product teams noticed that people with chronic ailments such as diabetes would search the social networking site for advice, one former Facebook insider said.
In addition, the proliferation of patient networks such as PatientsLikeMe demonstrated people were increasingly comfortable sharing symptoms and treatment experiences online.
Facebook allows members to specify their organ-donor status.
Privacy, an area where the company has faced considerable criticism over the years, is likely to prove a challenge.
This week, the company apologised to users for manipulating news feeds for the purposes of research. It plans a stricter review of requests to access information on its 1.3 billion active users after a psychological experiment on unwitting users in 2012 created a furore on social media.
In the study, Facebook experimented with the emotional states of users to prompt them to post either more positive or negative content on their news feeds.
Facebook's recent softening of its policy requiring users to go by their real names may bolster the company's health plans. People with chronic conditions may prefer to use an alias when sharing health experiences.
"I could see Facebook doing well with applications for lifestyle and wellness, but really sick patients with conditions like cancer aren't fooling around," said Frank Williams, chief executive of Evolent Health, a company that provides software and other technology services to doctors and health systems.
People would need anonymity and an assurance that their data and comments wouldn't be shared with their online contacts, advertisers, or pharmaceutical companies, Williams said.
