case mangagement/technology/Tools for Practice Tuesday

Tools For Practice Tuesday: Unite US

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I have been paying attention to all this talk about “social determinants of health”. The idea that when determining healthcare outcomes “zip code matters more than genetic code”, is making waves. From the social work perspective, this may seem rather intuitive but it is a challenge for healthcare to measure these factors. Not only measure the outcomes but assess the effectiveness of trying to address them. Connecting healthcare providers with the tools they need to address things like mental health, housing, food, and financial assistance can be a challenge. Once you give them the resource it’s often hard to know what happens next. It’s easy to hand someone a phone number and say good luck. It’s another to follow that referral, ensure that it happened, and measure it’s effectiveness.

This week I spoke with the folks at Unite Us and demo’ed their electronic platform to help systems of care measure and take action on social determinants of health. They set out to take on this challenge…

The goal is to create a single patient record of referral to organizations like mental health, other specialties, and social services (like childcare, employment, shelter, food, etc..) Not only create a record but a means to follow through with both the patient and organization. Unite Us achieves this by striving for the right mix of human touch and technology.

The goal is to create “Community Networks” to increase partnerships within the shared record. To quote Director of Development Steve Strauss, “it goes beyond a simple memorandum of understanding” between organizations but a commitment to quality and accountability. From the care management perspective it is excellent to go beyond just handing out information but also following up.

This is the key feature that separates it from other care management technology I have seen. Yes the dashboard is intuitive, yes you can gleam insights on population health (cool reports like the one below can be generated), and also they have an API to plug into EHRs. However, a unified electronic record can’t be achieved without community partnerships and proper on-boarding of the technology.


Unite Us is committed to not only providing the technology but teams that can support the technology. As we begin to think about the notion of whole person care and addressing social determinants of health, I found Unite Us to be a useful solution. Using the right amount of technology and human touch can make a difference.

To learn more about Unite Us you can follow them on social media below and I would also encourage you to test drive it has well…

Peer Supports/technology/Tools for Practice Tuesday

Tools For Practice Tuesday: Supportiv

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Peer to peer support is becoming an important component of mental health treatment. The power of simply going through a similar experience as you can be powerful; at times more than I can offer as a licensed clinician. This blog often talks about how tech is making the world smaller. That connectivity doesn’t need to be face to face to make change either. Supportiv is a great example of combining the need for peer support with technology.

Supportiv is a platform that offers moderated peer support through an application on your phone (it can be used on Iphone and Android devices)…

What makes them unique is the use of artificial intelligence and natural language processing to match users with the appropriate chat room and additional resources deployed user including articles and safety resources. Once signing up, you anonymously enter your concerns and it will find the appropriate group to match your concern. For those not familiar with natural language processing, it takes the language used examines word frequency and themes. The more you type the more supportive … supportiv.. becomes. With over 48,000 unique users they are learning a lot.

There is a small user fee ($00.15 per minute) to assist with infrastructure. They are also transparent in their terms of use that they don’t sell this data to any third parties.

I found this to be an interesting platform. The use of of artificial intelligence to reduce he friction of matching and information provided certainly stands out. They have also thought out the need for crisis services if necessary. If needed, they have the means to move people to a one to one conversation. In the future they are building the platform to refer people to more on going counseling and other social services. So if you are looking for to increase the compacity for peer supports, check out Supportiv. I look forward to following their progress and you can too on…