Social Cascade’s AI-Driven Platform Gives Healthcare Providers a Smarter Way to Engage Patients Online

A typical annual checkup lasts around 30 minutes. That is barely enough time to address everything about a patient’s health records, let alone discuss preventative care measures or anything else in their lives that could be impacting their health.

With limited face-to-face interactions with healthcare professionals, it is tempting for patients to turn to social or digital media for medical information.

But that requires navigate an ever-growing pool of unreliable sources and misinformation.

Raleigh, North Carolina-based startup Social Cascade wants to change that dynamic by making it easier for healthcare providers to deliver vetted medical content to patients through their existing social media channels.

The company uses artificial intelligence and a bank of curated, professionally-created content to help medical practices maintain a consistent digital presence without requiring dedicated marketing or social media staff.

Social Cascade allows healthcare providers to “[show] up where patients are already looking for information and where parents are already going for information,” Lucy Shores Kosturko, PhD, Social Cascade’s co-founder, told Hypepotamus. “This, of course, has a business objective around patient education, patient acquisition, and patient retention. But more importantly, we're looking to push the needle on community health outcomes.”

Inside The Social Cascade Platform

A content advisor board, comprised of medical doctors, child development specialists, and social workers, determine the bank of content available on Social Cascade. There are currently 175 content partners on the platform. Users then select content from the organizations they know and trust. Leveraging AI, Social Cascade then selects, schedules, and pushes out relevant health-related content onto their Facebook and Instagram channels.

It is all about meeting patients where they are at: Online and inside their social media feeds.

“All patients have to do is follow their provider and social media and they get their daily touch point of information,” Kosturko told Hypepotamus.

Now, social media can be a breeding ground for health misinformation, particularly with the potential of AI-generated content. But Kosturko argues that social platforms can be effective when properly managed by healthcare professionals. The company distinguishes its approach by using AI for content curation rather than generation.

“We're not using AI to generate [health] content….we're using AI to build up community level context, what is going on and what's going around in any given community at any given time. Then we use that to output a set of topics that make sense for that specific practice to talk about on any given day,” she added.

Targeting Health Inequities In The Southeast

To scale to new communities and address healthcare disparities, Social Cascade recently announced a partnership with Wellstar’s Community Health Center for Health Equity (WCHE).

The collaboration allows more organizations to leverage social media as a tool to reach low-income, rural, and minority communities who have traditionally lacked access to vital online health information. Wellstar identified five Georgia-based clinics and advocacy organizations focused on reducing health inequities. These organizations were given full access to Social Cascade’s innovative AI-powered solutions.

One such Georgia-based organization that has benefited from the partnership was non-profit Giving Health, which provides free telemedicine services to low income and uninsured people.

The nonprofit, launched just before COVID lockdowns were enacted in 2020, is now operating across 88 counties in the state. With the partnership, Giving Health has been able to expand beyond its original partnership model.

Working with Wellstar and Social Cascade has allowed Giving Health to “start thinking about what the next step looks like for us in terms of direct community engagement and outreach,” said executive director Michael Giglio.

The partnership work with WCHE helps vital community-based healthcare organizations disseminate “trusted, timely health education into the community that they serve,” Rae-Anne Pinckney, Wellstar’s Director of Community Health Programs and Partnerships, added.

The partnership has reinforced Social Cascade's focus on community-specific content, added Kosturko.

“The key learning continues to be local matters, and locals most important,” she told Hypepotamus. “So we have lots of national content partners, and they have great messaging. But the stuff that performs the best, and that I think truly is having an impact, are those local organizations.”

Social Cascade is backed by San Francisco-based Right Side Capital Management, Fox Ventures, DC-based Springboard Enterprises, as well as North Carolina's GRO Incubator, Hyperspace Ventures, and Primordial VC, according to Crunchbase.

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Featured photo from Unsplash