Social media is about sharing ever more information about ourselves with an ever larger crowd. But some of the most valuable information, about things like health and children, needs to be kept close. Now there is a social too for that, too, and it comes from a well-known name in technology.
Jonathan Schwartz, the former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, is cofounder of CareZone, a service that enables families to organize care of their loved ones. CareZone provides secure storage of patient information like medical records and prescriptions, plus critical phone numbers and digitized documents associated with care, like insurance information. There is also a journal feature, for keeping notes on things patent conditions and future appointments.
“It's a biological reality that we are all going to take care of somebody,†says Mr. Schwartz, who oversaw the sale of Sun to Oracle in 2009. “You need a safe place to keep information about things like doctors , care and medicines. You need to be able to share that with your spouse, your immediate family and trusted neighbors.â€
The service debuted last February with little notice, and while Mr. Schwartz would not say how many subscribers he has attracted, he says it is growing. On Tuesday, Mr. Schwartz added voice broadcast and calendar features designed to make it both more functional and more accessible to larger groups of people.
The calendar enables subscribers to assign tasks, like picking up medication or taking someone for an examination. The broadcast service enables messages of up to 10 minutes to be sent to the phones of up to 100 people at a time. Formerly a Web-based service, the company is adding a mobile application.
CareZone is not taking the usual social media route of targeted advertising, since the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, closely guards how closely medical information must be shared. “Advertisin g and HIPAA are oil and water,†Mr. Schwartz says, adding that CareZone will have an overt policy of “no ads, no data mining.â€
It is an interesting reflection of changing times. During the early days of the Internet, Scott McNealy, Sun's cofounder and Mr. Schwartz's onetime mentor, was known for saying that “privacy is dead, get over it.†Now that we are under even more corporate surveillance, Mr. Schwartz calls privacy “something people will pay for. There is a lot of value in the data that only you have.â€
The trick is to keep things private, but widen the circle of trust to include larger organizations that participate in care, and also pay. The new features are intended to make CareZone an attractive tool for home care workers, outpatient hospitals, and church groups trying to establish food and care services for a parishioner.
While the main application is free for up to five individuals under care, from January 1 it will cost $5 a month or $49 a year to use CareZone for five to 10 people. From 10 to 100 individuals, CareZone charges $25 a month. There may be additional charges for above 100 people. CareZone will also add other paid features, like charging for lots of data storage.He figures that professional caregivers will pay for the service because it will help them manage patients.
“My bet is that a year from now hospitals will be a revenue stream,†says Mr. Schwartz. “Pharmacies and hospitals are looking to communicate with you in a secure way.â€
