Frequently Asked Questions
What is Wellocities?
Wellocities is a tool that allows people living with diabetes to self-manage the disease through the Internet.
What does the name, Wellocities, stand for?
Wellocities is the development of wellness through communities.
Why was it founded?
Many Canadians are living with diabetes, a chronic disease for which there is no cure yet. The only way in which they can lead long and healthy lives is by managing well their disease, on a day-to-day basis. Wellocities aims to bring powerful and easy-to-use tools and resources in one place so that Canadians living with diabetes are fully empowered and in control of their disease management.
Who is behind Wellocities?
Wellocities was created as a joint effort by Canadian patients and their loved ones, health professionals, scientists, software engineers and business leaders.
With whom do you compete?
Wellocities is the only resource of its kind in Canada.
How is this different from WebMD?
WebMD can be best characterized as a content publishing health site used by physicians and patients as a source of trustworthy information. Wellocities is entirely focused on the power of social networks, offering people living with diabetes the opportunity to create content, to find services in a personalized and contextualized manner, and to monitor their own conditions, rate services and share first hand accounts of their health experiences with others.
How is this different from Yellow Pages?
Like Yellow Pages, Wellocities offers access to health service provider contact information. In addition, Wellocities allows individuals living with diabetes to monitor their disease, and to share health experiences and insight about the services and providers they have used.
Why did you focus on diabetes at the outset?
Diabetes is an epidemic disease in Canada, affecting more than 2 million people in this country, with at least 20% remaining undiagnosed. The disease has no cure and requires a high level of self-management by those living with it. The health system, despite its best intentions, remains focused on the treatment of acute conditions, leaving people with chronic conditions unsupported most of the time. Wellocities is helping fill this growing gap in the community, strengthening the ability of the health system to enable people to lead independent and healthy lives, now.
What other diseases will you cover?
The site is designed to support other chronic conditions such as obesity, asthma, heart diseases or cancer. Future coverage will be entirely determined by Wellocities’s members and their interests.
Is Wellocities just for patients?
No. As a health social networking resource, Wellocities can be easily used by those who care about people living with chronic diseases, such as family members, health professionals and other caregivers.
What technology/tools were used to develop Wellocities?
The site is based on Drupal, an open-source technology.
How do you manage privacy and confidentiality of health information?
Wellocities follows an approach similar to that of other social networking sites, such as MySpace or FaceBook. Users can choose any name and password to enter the site. Details of the user such as their real name or email address are not disclosed to other members of the community unless they choose to do so.
How often is Wellocities updated?
Wellocities’s growth will be organic. It will be improved constantly based on user feedback to ensure that it meets the needs of patients and their loved ones.
How do I sign up?
Parts of the site do not require users to register. Sign up is free. Anyone can register on the site by entering an email address, choosing a display name and a password to begin posting and accessing all of the services available.
How do I provide feedback?
Users could provide feedback by clicking on the top right hand link
When will you have a multilingual version of Wellocities?
There are plans to move as quickly as possible to implement a version for the French language. At this time there is no specified date for this roll out.
How many Canadians visit the Web for health information today?
According to Comscore Media Metrics, 16 million Canadians visit the web monthly to seek health information.
How will Wellocities sustain itself?
There will be advertising on the site in time to generate immediate revenues. Eventually, there will be revenue opportunities through various programs with partners.
Are you reselling any data to advertisers and or sponsors?
No. We are keeping our members information strictly confidential.