I was thinking it might provide some means of hands free navigation, but I think the focus has been on keyboard navigation for users using screen readers. That said, a modified keyboard that allowed you to click your keyboard’s modifier keys with a foot switch, combined with Discourse’s keyboard navigation might it easier to use the application with one hand.
Yeah, there are potentially a couple of levels to this. For example, if a hosting provider is used to serve your forum, they will also need to be HIPAA compliant. I’m not sure if that’s even possible. Maybe encrypting all medical data on the forum would be a potential way to comply. There’s a potential Discourse solution for that here: Discourse Encrypt (for Private Messages).
Regulations that end up promoting the opposite of their stated purpose is a bit of a personal pet peeve. That’s getting off topic though. In some cases accepting the risk of ignoring the regulation is a reasonable approach. Otherwise you’ve got to find a way to work with it.
Yes, I believe they are. That sounds like a good approach.
Yes, I read it closely enough to determine that you’ve identified a real problem that Discourse could potentially help to solve. In some ways I think you’d get better traction on this topic if you edited the link to your article into the topic’s first post. You might even want to start another topic specific to the article, asking for suggestions about how Discourse could be used to create chronic care networks.
Only related to the final section of your post, I’m still not sure I’m quite following it. Sticking with Discourse (because that’s what I know), it would definitely be possible to display statistics for a network of sites that demonstrate whether or not people are getting value from the sites. It would be up to you to determine what metrics should be used to demonstrate value.
The tools that are available for this are the Discourse API, the Data Explorer plugin, and potentially Discourse AI.