• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 19, 2015

At a time when it seems a new social media platform is launched almost every day, a new social media platform will be unveiled during the Lions Health Festival in Cannes, France today that is like no other. The platform, which begins with a Web site and integrations on various social media networks, is called “Caregivers Speak Up,” and it is aimed at an often overlooked, but vital segment of healthcare: the caregiver.

“Usually, it is a family member or a friend who takes on the burden of caring for a patient,” explains Elizabeth Elfenbein, partner-creative at health and wellness agency The CementBloc, who is unveiling the pro bono initiative on a Lions Health panel, “Creativity and the Caregiver” today.

Elfenbein, an OMMA All Star alum, says she was moved to conceive the platform after experiencing the unique hardship of caregiving personally, when her sister-in-law was diagnosed and eventually died of ovarian cancer. Elfenbein became a caregiver to her brother, who was giving care to his wife, and through the process she realized social media could play a role.

“It’s about caring for the caregiver,” she says.

The initial application on the platform focuses on people posting mini video documentaries of their own firsthand experiences as caregivers, and Elfenbein says the primary goal of posting and sharing those experiences is cathartic -- simply to let the world know what they’ve gone through.

While there is little initial commercial application to the platform, Elfenbein says it taps an “unmet need” in a healthcare system that typically focuses on patients and providers. While some professional healthcare providers also fall into the caregiver bucket, Elfenbein says CaregiversSpeakUp is designed for the non-professionals who step up to the job simply out of love and a genuine desire to care for someone else. They are often unsung heroes and the platform for them to have a voice.

While caregivers may also use the platform to learn from one another, Elfenbein says “education” is not a goal. It simply is an opportunity to share stories.

While focusing on a niche segment of the marketplace, the launch of CaregiversSpeakUp comes at a time when others are seeking to leverage social media for people to share empathy with each other -- as opposed to the egocentric propensity of many other social media platforms.

One notable example is Twitter Founder Biz Stone’s new platform, Super, which focuses entirely on human empathy. During his keynote conversation at SXSW Interactive this year, Stone implied there was no explicit business model for Super, and that his only goal was to generate “a hundred million happy active users.”

While happiness is a relative concept, both Stone and Elfenbein have struck on a core insight that empathy is an important part of the human psyche that can be leveraged in social media, and that it could be used for good, if only the pro bono kind.