1. Local Start-up Firm Harnesses the Power of Social Media
for Healthcare
Hospitals 03/5/2013| by Steve Jacob|
A Dallas-based company is striving to bring the communication power of social media to
healthcare—without conflicting with patient privacy concerns.
Private Social Networks®
(PSN) provides a private, cloud-based platform that allows hospitals
and other healthcare providers to communicate directly and securely with patients and their
caregivers. Its main product, Connect2Health, is compliant with the Health Insurance and
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Its co-founders include veteran healthcare entrepreneurs Len Chermack, Mike Short and Roy
Gum. A fourth founder, Bob Kramer, MD, is a former department chairman of pediatrics at
Baylor University Medical Center and clinical professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern. That
team began to coalesce between 2008 and 2010, and all four began working full-time on the
product in late 2010. The project largely has been self-funded, although the group has been
seeking venture-capital funding.
Company officials see the network as an ideal vehicle to communicate with patients after they
are discharged to minimize 30-day hospital readmissions. They also point out that the
meaningful use stages that begin in October 2014 require that patient engagement include family
and caregivers.
Accountable care organizations also have to communicate and collaborate on a per-patient basis.
PSN’s products also create what the founders call “subcommunities” of providers. One out of 4
physicians use private social networks to communicate with colleagues and 1 out of 7 create
content daily on those websites.
They say patients who use social media for other purposes find the system has a familiar feel and
navigation. According to the Pew Research Center, 2 out of 3 U.S. adults use social networking
websites. The system has the ability to communicate in 57 languages.
They are targeting large hospital systems and hospital chains. The company is focusing its sales
efforts on Illinois, Texas, the New York metropolitan area and California. Four of the company’s
five hottest prospects are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

2. Unlike electronic health records, the system can be in place in 30-90 days because it is software-
as-a-service subscription. The setup fee is $25,000-$50,000 and the average annual subscription
is $180,000. The founders project the company will be profitable by the end of 2013.
Kramer said accountable care requires that providers reduce illness and hospital length-of-stay,
increase patient satisfaction and decrease the cost of care exponentially. He said post-discharge
communication is vital to achieve those goals.
“We used to put a dictated letter into the mail with lab results. If they were abnormal, the patient
wanted to ask, ‘What do I do?’ We need to tell them what to do,” he said.
Kramer said social media is “vitally important to bring healthcare back to what it should be: an
encounter between two people. That’s not possible with today’s system. This is the right product
at the right time.”
Steve Jacob is editor of D Healthcare Daily and author of the new book Health Care in 2020:
Where Uncertain Reform, Bad Habits, Too Few Doctors and Skyrocketing Costs Are Taking Us.
He can be reached at steve.jacob@dmagazine.com.
http://healthcare.dmagazine.com/2013/03/05/local-start-up-firm-harnesses-the-power-of-social-
media-for-healthcare/