Hi guys. Have you seen a sudden surge in the number of healthcare portals and websites worldwide ? Wanted to share a lot about the latest trends in the online health portals and the online resources.

A new thing that I have been seeing is that all the health portals are providing yellow pages directory as well. Everyone lists down thousands of doctors and hospitals and most of the data records are either incomplete or wrong. What’s the use for such data when anyone can get it from online yellow pages within seconds. The idea is to make use of the data and then provide services to the patients like fixing appointments or getting discounts. The pull of a portal is not because the portal has a few hundred thousand doctors listed. The strength is in providing me only 10 doctors in my city but they should be good and recommendable doctors.

Another aspect which is commonly seen is the Symptom tracker. The health websites are linked to sites like Harvard medical school or Mayo Clinic. Again, I feel it is useless after trying atleast 5 such sites. The point is that I get even more confused when these symptom trackers throw up 5-10 possible causes of my problem. I tried sore throat and fever. The result generated included all diseases that can cause sore throat including Throat Cancer. Can you imagine !! I come for a simple thing like sore throat and I get Throat Cancer as the cause. Never to visit such sites again. Best is to either call or have live chat with a doctor. If not, atleast send an email and get a response from a real doctor and not through an automated tool.

Third item which is slightly troublesome is the static content. I see sites with content from all over the world on it. Why so much of effort when I can google out the best content from parent sites or I can go to sites like wikipedia for authentic content.

The trend that is missing is the concept of Wellness and Health, Personalization and Real time Medical Advice. Community Feeling. I have listed down a few good sources and you may want to enjoy it

1. www.patientslikeme.com --- Community of Healthcare seekers, who have similar health problems.

2. www.healthcaremagic.com --- Real time Live Chat and Phone Call with a Doctor 24 x 7. Fully personalized Health advice / suggestions

3. www.revolutionhealth.com --- Good Information up here and loads of content. Recently got acquired by another large healthcare entity in the US.

If anyone shares the same idea, please connect with me by posting a comment on this post. You can also recommend some other good ones to me.

Bert Procee

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