Computer-mediated communication systems can be used to bridge the gap between doctors in underserved regions with local shortages of medical expertise and medical specialists worldwide. To this end, we describe the design of a prototype remote consultation system intended to provide the social, institutional and infrastructural context for sustained, self-organizing growth of a globally-distributed Ghanaian medical community. The design is grounded in an iterative design process that included two rounds of extended design fieldwork throughout Ghana and draws on three key design principles (social networks as a framework on which to build incentives within a self-organizing network; optional and incremental integration with existing referral mechanisms; and a weakly-connected, distributed architecture that allows for a highly interactive, responsive system despite failures in connectivity). We discuss initial experiences from an ongoing trial deployment in southern Ghana. Author Keywords Telemedicine, social networking, organizational interfaces,

Low-income African American communities face a disproportionate amount of diet-related health problems in the United States. To address this issue, we developed EatWell, a system that allows people to use their cell phones to create voice memories describing how they have tried to eat healthfully in their neighborhoods (e.g., at local restaurants) and listen to the memories that others have created. In this paper, we describe the results of our field trial of EatWell, specifically characterizing how our participants were able to craft stories that were both emotive and culturally-relevant, the challenges that arose in creating these memories and finally how sharing these stories facilitated a sense of community empowerment. We conclude by presenting implications for the design of future applications that facilitate the sharing of health-related experiences. ACM Classification Keywords

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Immediately after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, the netizens reacted and participated in the disaster response in many ways. This work examined a popular Chinese discussion forum during the first week after the earthquake, adopting both quantitative and qualitative approaches. A new message classification scheme was developed to categorize 2,266 discussion threads posted to the forum. Four important roles played by the forum were identified and further examined. Design implications for disaster response systems were drawn.

Today’s mobile devices have become increasingly powerful with enhanced features such as increased CPU power and memory, internet connectivity in multiple ways (multi-homing) and interfacing with external peripheral devices (for instance GPS receiver, medical sensors). The proliferation of these mobile devices combined with an increasing willingness of users to share information available on and around mobile device (e.g. location, user activity) has given rise to Mobile Virtual Communities (MVC). This way, social interaction is now feasible anywhere and anytime. In another paradigm referred to as telemedicine, information and communication technologies are being investigated and employed in areas such as health maintenance and alleviation, cure and prevention of diseases. In general, (mobile) virtual communities have been explored in the telemedicine domain where they were found to be promising in many cases. However, evidence for their effectiveness has yet to be established. With this background and based on our expertise with MVCs and telemedicine, we address a number of aspects including: 1) basic concepts in telemedicine and MVC and analysis of effectiveness and success factors of MVCs in the telemedicine domain; 2) a prototype architecture addressing mobility issues for the MVC in the 19 20

To understand why and how people share health information online, we interviewed fourteen people with significant health concerns who participate in both online health communities and Facebook. Qualitative analysis of these interviews highlighted the ways that people think about with whom and how to share different types of information as they pursue social goals related to their personal health, including emotional support, motivation, accountability, and advice. Our study suggests that success in these goals depends on how well they develop their social networks and how effectively they communicate within those networks. Effective communication is made more challenging by the need to strike a balance between sharing information related to specific needs and the desire to manage self-presentation. Based on these observations, we outline a set of design opportunities for future systems to support health-oriented social interactions online, including tools to help users shape their social networks and communicate effectively within those.

The continuing spread of the World Wide Web and mobile communications devices is changing whole disciplines and industries. Entrepreneurs, policy makers, and researchers are recognizing that the many orders of magnitude increase in collaboration through socio-technical systems offers compelling opportunities for business, education, national security, and beyond (1). The vital importance of collaboration justifies it as the focus for the next phase of science, whose new research methods could have high intellectual and societal payoffs (2, 3, 4). Emerging successes such as scientific collaboratories among genomic researchers, engineering innovations through open source software, and community-based participation in cultural heritage projects are early indicators of the transformative nature of collaboration (5). Ebay, Amazon, and Netflix have already reshaped consumer markets, while political participation and citizen journalism are beginning to change civil society. Patient-centered medical information and secure electronic health records are improving healthcare, while creating opportunities for clinical research. MySpace and Facebook encourage casual social networks, but they may soon play more serious roles in facilitating emergency/disaster response (6). Social media platforms, such as Wikipedia, flickr, and YouTube, are also stunning success stories of web-based

Abstract. The dramatic success of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and traditional discussion groups empowers individuals to become active in local and global communities. Some enthusiasts believe that with modest redesign, these technologies can be harnessed to support national priorities such as healthcare/wellness, disaster response, community safety, energy sustainability, etc. However, accomplishing these ambitious goals will require long-term research to develop validated scientific theories and reliable, secure, and scalable technology strategies. The enduring questions of how to motivate participation, increase social trust, and promote collaboration remain grand challenges even as the technology rapidly evolves. This talk invites researchers across multiple disciplines to participate in redefining our discipline of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) along more social lines to answer vital research questions while creating inspirational prototypes, conducting innovative evaluations, and developing robust technologies. By placing greater emphasis on social media, the HCI community could constructively influence these historic changes.

Abstract—Many users join online health communities (OHC) to obtain information and seek social support. Understanding the emotional impacts of participation on patients and their informal caregivers is important for OHC managers. Ethnographical observations, interviews, and questionnaires have reported benefits from online health communities, but these approaches are too costly to adopt for large-scale analyses of emotional impacts. A computational approach using machine learning and text mining techniques is demonstrated using data from the American Cancer Society Cancer Survivors Network (CSN), an online forum of nearly a half million posts. This approach automatically estimates the sentiment of forum posts, discovers sentiment change patterns in CSN members, and allows investigation of factors that affect the sentiment change. This first study of sentiment benefits and dynamics in a large-scale health-related electronic community finds that an estimated 75%–85 % of CSN forum participants change their sentiment in a positive direction through online interactions with other community members. Two new features, Name and Slang, not previously used in sentiment analysis, facilitate identifying positive sentiment in posts. This work establishes foundational concepts for further studies of sentiment impact of OHC participation and provides insight useful for the design of new OHC’s or enhancement of existing OHCs in providing better emotional support to their members. I.

Billions of people participate in online social activities. Most users participate as readers of discussion boards, searchers of blog posts, or viewers of photos. A fraction of users become contributors of user-generated content by writing consumer product reviews, uploading travel photos, or expressing political opinions. Some users move beyond such individual efforts to become collaborators, forming tightly connected groups with lively discussions whose outcome might be a Wikipedia article or a carefully edited YouTube video. A small fraction of users becomes leaders, who participate in governance by setting and upholding policies, repairing vandalized materials, or mentoring novices. We analyze these activities and offer the Reader-to-Leader Framework with the goal of helping researchers, designers, and managers understand what motivates technology-mediated social participation. This will enable them to improve interface design and social support for their companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations. These improvements could reduce the number of failed projects, while accelerating the application of social media for national priorities such as healthcare, energy sustainability, emergency response, economic development, education, and more. Keywords: Social participation, motivation, technology mediated communication, a Reader-to-Leader framework, online community, social networks, contribution, collaboration