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Officials at Facebook are exploring how to help patients in need of organ transplants use the social networking service to ask for help.
The functionality, which could go live by the end of 2013, would involve a default format intended to make it easier for patients to raise awareness of their plight while avoiding any hint of coercion or financial exchange.
“I’m very excited about this next step in using social media to help with the organ donation crisis, in collaboration with Facebook, to help people on the waiting list,” said Andrew M. Cameron, MD, PhD, surgical director of liver transplantation at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He worked with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, a Harvard University classmate, last year to enable an option on Facebook’s site in which users could tout their organ donor registration or easily register if they had not yet done so.
“We have this cohort of more than 100,000 people waiting for an organ, 18 of whom die each day,” Dr. Cameron said, noting that 80% of wait-list patients need kidneys. “If...
The functionality, which could go live by the end of 2013, would involve a default format intended to make it easier for patients to raise awareness of their plight while avoiding any hint of coercion or financial exchange.
“I’m very excited about this next step in using social media to help with the organ donation crisis, in collaboration with Facebook, to help people on the waiting list,” said Andrew M. Cameron, MD, PhD, surgical director of liver transplantation at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He worked with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, a Harvard University classmate, last year to enable an option on Facebook’s site in which users could tout their organ donor registration or easily register if they had not yet done so.
“We have this cohort of more than 100,000 people waiting for an organ, 18 of whom die each day,” Dr. Cameron said, noting that 80% of wait-list patients need kidneys. “If...