I think you could add peer support to the list, which goes beyond networking.
At Breast Cancer Care, we have developed a few web based services for advice (e.g. Ask the nurse email service) and some services centered around peer support. Our discussion forum is getting over 12,000 posts per month (x3 what we had last year). We have increased our Live Chat sessions to twice weekly and are piloting a peer to peer email support with connects a newly diagnosed patient with a trained volunteer.
Considering our website core audience is women aged 40-55, I confirm technology is not a barrier for service delivery.
My main issue is that we can’t have a completely open community. I would like to move towards this model in the next three years but we have a duty of care and must ensure our website is safe and doesn’t promote unproven therapies. So having a community is fantastic but to deliver our services we have to institutionalise this community.
Bertie
I think you could add peer support to the list, which goes beyond networking.
At Breast Cancer Care, we have developed a few web based services for advice (e.g. Ask the nurse email service) and some services centered around peer support. Our discussion forum is getting over 12,000 posts per month (x3 what we had last year). We have increased our Live Chat sessions to twice weekly and are piloting a peer to peer email support with connects a newly diagnosed patient with a trained volunteer.
Considering our website core audience is women aged 40-55, I confirm technology is not a barrier for service delivery.
My main issue is that we can’t have a completely open community. I would like to move towards this model in the next three years but we have a duty of care and must ensure our website is safe and doesn’t promote unproven therapies. So having a community is fantastic but to deliver our services we have to institutionalise this community.