Personal Clouds come in many shapes and sizes. Drimpy (what’s in a name?) is a social platform for patients and healthcare workers to facilitate better and more efficient communication and can act as your Personal Health Cloud. In contrast to the EPD (Elektronisch patiëntendossier) initiative, emerging health platforms like Drimpy are – like all social media – voluntary. Could this be an EPD alternative?
Privacy and security concerns were major reasons to stall the EPD initiative. Unfortunately the Drimpy site looks flimsy, amateurish and lacks basic security (we were able to register as patient and as health care worker using fake names, addresses and credentials). But above all we miss a transparent business model behind Drimpy’s platform to understand their motives. We do welcome these social health initiatives but fear a serious Personal Health Cloud is still far away.
Dear Marcel,
I am always happy to see a post about Drimpy, we are a young and upcoming initiative and look at things differently. We are all about making healthcare more understandable for patients, like we as hcp know, most of the patients do not have the same knowledge of the healthcare system. Drimpy likes to make things not just more simple and understandable for the patient, but with a bit more research or asking more info from us you could have found out that the current online version is just that what you see. It is the free version, a start version to empower patients and healthcare professionals.
To be verry honest, if you see basic security as the ability to register as a patient or healthcare professional using fake names, you regretably do not understand basic security but mostly do not understand social media. It’s all about voluntary! Furthermore, if you would have looked further after registrering, you should have noticed that all features (patient of caregiver, etc.) are exactly the same at first …. And here comes something important … ONLY checked and certified caregivers can have features for caregivers etc. We call them Drimpyfied caregivers and healthcare profesionals!
Our businessmodel is also transparant … If you want specific and more features, or for hcp features to really help your patient we will check you out if you are who you say you are. Before that you will not be able to see or do more than the free and basic version of Drimpy.
As said, we just started and we are doing several different pilots at several different locations (not open for all hcp’s yet). If you would have been a phycisian, or hospital we work with at this time we would have given you more insight for sure, software developers on the other hand would love to know what is coming 😉 …. Not just a personal health cloud, but the proof that eHealth is more than just that!
Best regards,
Arnold Breukhoven.
Dear Arnold,
Thanks for your reaction. It is even two times longer than my short reflection on Drimpy (seriously…) As mentioned in my METISbit, we do wellcome these initiatives but seriously doubt current status and execution. B.t.w. since social media is all about sharing you might want to share your businessmodel on your website; just for transparency sake. That is what social media is all about afterall. Keep up the good work Arnold!
Marcel