Note: I had stopped writing posts in 2017. Started again in late-2024, mostly for AI.
SpineConnect is a knowledge networking site for spine surgeons to collaborate and support each other on difficult cases. It is the first offering from Syndicom, an online services company focused on communication and collaboration platform for the orthopedic industry. Since its launch in early 2006, SpineConnect has gathered 1174 members from 38 countries with a knowledge base of over 900 cases...
Physician Connect is a new community area on Medscape that allows physicians to securely engage online with other physicians in discussions on clinical as well as non-clinical topics that are relevant to the practice of medicine. The site was launched early this year, and is claimed to have gathered 20,000 registrants since (according to their Q1 FY08 Earnings Call Transcript). I guess that is...
Medstory is a health information search engine that went into a public beta in mid 2006. In feb 2007, it was acquired by Microsoft. Their interface is pretty minimalistic, with only a search keyword box on the homepage. The results returned with an option to refine it in various categories like conditions, procedures, trials, articles etc. The google-like interaction and navigation reduces the...
With a play on google's name, MEDgle offers symptom based health information search. The idea is to 'empower patients in their discussions with physicians', by making relevant content easy to find. The navigation is pretty simple and straightforward. MEDgle's output is a probabilistic list of disease/conditions based on the user input. The content is authored by their 3-physician team and is...
MyDailyApple is the consumer oriented website started in 2006 by Praxeon, a life sciences company focusing on semantic search for healthcare information. It brings together medical news, research, blogs, and multimedia around a disease or condition for its users. Besides searching for personalized health information in natural prose, MyDailyApple users can get relevant medical news and community...
Curbside.MD is a search engine for finding evidence based clinical information. The idea is to type in the search need as a natural language question that a clinician would normally ask his/her colleague, and get relevant answers from the literature (articles, images, guidelines, etc.) I took it for a test drive with a moderately complex question ('what is the indication for platelet transfusion...
Vimo is a consumer portal focused on comparison shopping for healthcare needs. Founded in 2005, Vimo provides a platform for users to research, review, compare and price the following: Hospital Procedures Individual & Group Health Insurance Plans Health Savings Accounts Doctors Compete.com data shows pretty good visitor count (more than 100Kvisitors/month), so they must be doing something...
PatientsLikeMe is a social networking site that enables patients to share information around disease conditions. It was started in 2004 by concerned family members of an individual with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Users can register for free and interact around eleven conditions: ALS/Motor Neuron Disease, Anxiety, Bipolar, Depression, HIV/AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, OCD, Parkinson's disease, PLS,...
Sermo is a free online community restricted to verified US physicians. It was founded in 2006 by Daniel Palestrant. Although its not the only one in this niche, Sermo has managed to get plenty of press and continuous funding ($3m in 2006, followed by $9.5m and $26.7m in 2007). So what is special about Sermo? For one, it has been forming all the right partnerships. Take its alliance with the...