Sparrow Health System wanted to offer patients in long-term, inpatient, home health, rehabilitation and senior care a way to keep family and friends updated on their conditions.

Sparrow looked into a commercially available online product and liked what they saw, except for the costly annual membership fee.

“We thought it was great, but it was cost-prohibitive for us,” said Sparrow Web Administrator Annette Burge.

Sparrow contacted i2Integration, a Lansing-based web development company with whom it has a long-standing relationship, to see if they could create a web portal that would offer patients access to a free, easy-to-use virtual meeting place.

i2Integration started building its MyHealingPage.com  (www.myhealingpage.com) portal in May of 2007, and Sparrow took it live, branding it as Sparrow’s HealingPages, in November. The first registration came in within three hours.

“The feedback we have gotten has been overwhelmingly positive, and the staff thinks it’s a great idea,” Burge said.

With MyHealingPage, enhancements and other ideas are just a phone call away, Burge said. Sparrow also has created its own page backgrounds and themes, and provides links related to those themes.

Medical links also can be added to patient pages to provide family and friends with accurate information about their condition.

System administrators are paged whenever there is a request from a patient to create a page, and can grant an access code almost immediately.

And with wireless access available throughout the health system, anyone with a laptop can create and maintain their pages from anywhere.

“The real power of MyHealingPage is that our clients own the application and thus can make it their own, from the look-and-feel to custom themes, links and more,” explained i2Integration CEO John Forsberg. “Plus, they can modify the overall application to meet their individual needs. As no two healthcare providers operate the same, I think this is a real advantage.”