by Tony Chen

I've previously blogged about Partners Healthcare experimenting with the Second Life Medium as a means to deliver healthcare information and educational content.

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Now, CIGNA takes that a step further by rolling out a Second Life pilot of its own. Patients can join in on seminars, participate in real-time voting, check out displays, and chat with each other. Cigna's CMO money quote:

"[The program is] not replacing anything, but that people might find it a more preferable medium to engage in conversations about healthcare."

Here's CIGNA's press release.

By evidence of this blog, I am an enthusiastic adopter of social media. I think it provides a new avenue for people to connect with each other - learning/growing and enriching our lives. We can now find people all around the world who have the same interests/passions we do, and that's terribly exciting. However, I've also been thinking about the negative aspects of social media - the increase of "noise", the regurgitation of news without much value add, the dangers of creating a new/different "self" online, the lack of accountability, and the whole "internet addiction" problem that is arising. The main thing for me is that social media should complement (not replace) my real-world relationships and communities. After all, if we spend all this time in online forums, but don't know our neighbor's name...

That's a long way of saying that I agree with CIGNA's CMO. Social media is great, but at the end of the day, people are people. There's nothing like a good ole fashioned lunch meet-up at the corner sandwich shop or a face-to-face check-up with your family physician.