Psych Central
In their own words ‘Psych Central is the Internet’s largest and oldest independent mental health social network’. From what I can find, it seems to be true. They have been online since 1995, and last year got close to half a million unique visitors. So consider it as the social network that started before the age of social networking. It now offers blogs, forums, reviews, news,...
Read MoreCareFlash
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...
Read MoreCure Together
CureTogether was started in July 2008 as a way for patients to aggregate their anonymous medical data into an open-source database that can be used by any researcher in the world. They started with three conditions – migraine, endometriosis, and vulvodynia but now count more than 400 on their radar. There are plenty of precedents to social networking websites for patients, so nothing new...
Read MoreOzmosis
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....
Read MoreOncocentric
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...
Read Moreicyou
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...
Read MoreMedpedia
Medpedia is an attempt to apply crowdsourcing concept to medical knowledge, just like Wikipedia. It launched in beta mid-February this year, with some big names backing it (Harvard, Stanford, NHS, AHA, ACP to name a few). The idea is to create a collaborative body of knowledge using physicians and Ph.Ds as gatekeepers. Anyone can contribute- physicians/Ph.Ds become directors editors (after...
Read MoreMedHelp
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...
Read MoreDailyStrength
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...
Read MoreAskDrWiki
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...
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