The Surprising Life Saving Advantage Of Facebook
“Health is social,” says SPM member Phil Baumann, RN (@PhilBaumann) at HealthIsSocial.com.
Slate has a dramatic story of how a mother’s Facebook network helped spot – rapidly – Kawasaki Disease, a rare auto-immune disease that the family’s doctors had initially missed.
Her social network contains some medically knowledgeable people. (Do you have any docs, nurses, etc in your Facebook circle?) Note that friends’ availability is sometimes far greater than a doctor’s office.
Read how the diagnosis unfolded. And read what her family physician said, when she called from the E.R.:
“You know what?” he said, “I was actually just thinking it could be Kawasaki disease. Makes total sense. Bravo, Facebook.”
Then this, as the crisis wound down: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*