Colleen Young*, Canadian Virtual Hospice, Toronto, Canada Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Building virtual communities and social networking applications for patients and consumers Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School Room: A-Pechet Room Date: 2012-09-15 09:45 AM – 10:30 AM Last modified: 2012-09-12 Free Full Paper

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Patients, caregivers, family, friends, and other supporters are increasingly joining online health communities to share information and find support [Fox, Medicine 2.0: Peer-to-peer healthcare. 2011]. But web 2.0 technology alone does not create a sense of community. To build and sustain a successful online health community, you need a connector and evidence-informed, strategic community management.

This presentation will focus on insights, stories, and lessons learned from my experience managing and studying a variety of online health communities – SharingStrength.ca | FortesEnsemble.ca, VirtualHospice.ca | Portailpalliatif.ca, CancerConnection.ca | ParlonsCancer.ca, and Health Care Social Media Canada. I will outline a 5-stage lifecycle of community development – inception, establishment, maturity, mitosis, and death – as developed by researchers Iriberri and Leroy [A Life Cycle Perspective on Online Community Success. 2008] and adapted and refined by practitioners like Richard Millington [The Pillar Summit]. Each stage of an evolving online community presents distinct characteristics and needs. I will discuss effective community building practices relevant to each stage, such as outreach and relationship building, data collection, content creation, collaboration, and other proven techniques that ensure the survival and steady growth of an online health community. Understanding the resources and expertise required to build and maintain a thriving online health community can help organizations decide whether hosting an online community is the right strategy for them.