CareFlash has an interesting take on social networking for patients. It lets you create a private, secure website to inform and update your family/friends about your medical condition- an online 'community' of sorts. Good concept. Having an invite-only, private community helps everyone to stay current with latest developments about the health of someone they love, without everyone calling and...
Nothing new here. Ozmosis is based on the now-old concept of physician networking website, with features like knowledge exchange, journal club, cases, alerts, news etc. Looking at dataopedia, they don't have much traction either (roughly 1K visitors per month). Although I'd always like to write about novel ideas, exceptions like these are purely from a record-keeping perspective. I'm trying to...
Online communities are nothing new to healthcare. What seems to be the trend is increasing vertical focus. Oncocentric (also called MedTrust Online) was launched in January 2009 as an online community for oncologists. Their aim is to help find, manage and share information by connecting oncologists with each other. They have other features like twitter updates, 'OncoAssist' panel of experts,...
Simply put, icyou is the Youtube of health-related videos. It launched around September 2007 by BenefitFocus, a Charleston (SC) based healthcare benefits software provider. The name icyou stands for 'Intensive Content for Your Health'...a twist on the actual ICUs (Intensive Care Units). Basic idea is for icyou to be the exchange hub for patients, providers and caregivers to share their stories...
Good ideas are always simple. I'm really optimistic about the emerging simple tools that let consumers manage, monitor or understand their health issues better. ZeaLOG is a simple tracker that lets you measure anything, and report off it. The service seems pretty new and driven by a team of one, so there are some rough edges here and there. Most of the ZeaLOGs started are around profound topics...
Healthcare applications of Twitter keep surfacing everyday. Qwitter (not to be confused with another application by the same name that tracks people who stop following you on twitter) is a smoking-cessation tool built by the Florida Department of Health under a 2008 campaign called 'Tobacco Free Florida'. It works like this- you tweet the number of cigarettes you smoked to @iquit <number>...
Not much can be said about the whole healthcare social networking phenomenon now. There are plenty of sites out there, enough to make me almost give up trying to review all of them. But pioneers like MedHelp are worthwhile to talk about. MedHelp gives the (now) standard online community features to users looking for better information and support around thier medical problems. It was started...
Online communities are perhaps the cornerstone of web these days, and I'm begining to find so many of them related to health that I'm slowly running out of things to say around the topic. DailyStrength.org is a place for patients/family members to find others like them and anonymously connect, share and discuss all aspects of a particular disease or condition. From discussing the latest...
AskDrWiki is an online repository for medial information modeled after Wikipedia. The project was started in early 2007 by four physicians looking for a quick way to share review articles, notes and images in cardiology. The site is a grassroots effort, and geared towards clinical audience- residents, interns etc. Wiki's are a good way to organize collective wisdom in any field, so the concept...
Since my last rant was around twitter, I thought I'll follow up with another one around same topic. First notable thing about FoodFeed is that its not really useful (their own words, not mine). Its a service that lets you share your eating habits on twitter. They are still in beta so maybe other features are in pipeline, but honestly, FoodFeed seems to be a solution looking for a problem. So...