Alliance Health offers services to create health-related social networks. So it’s like Ning (Marc Andreessen‘s online platform for custom social networks) for healthcare, except that users can’t self-service and start a health-related network on Alliance Health.

They currently operate separate networks on over 40 physical and mental health issues (see screenshot below). Each community offers the standard fare expected in a online social networking site- discussion forums, videos, posts, reviews, etc. The star performer in their portfolio is DiabeticConnect, which is reportedly the largest diabetic community online with around a million unique visitors monthly.

If you look at the top most active social networking websites today, there are hardly any entries related to health (DXY.cn, DailyStrength, CaringBridge are the only ones). Yet health information is one of the most commonly sought-after content online. So there is definitely scope and need for leveraging social features of internet for health. Doing so on a combined platform increases viability, since the mainstay of revenue for social networking is still advertising. Cumulative audience across all networks is a better sell to potential advertisers.

I have high hopes for Alliance Health. Once the user base is there (like in DiabeticConnect), there are significant revenue opportunities in data analytics and mining. Beyond niche topic-based networks, I think they can extend services to private organizations like large care delivery organizations, insurers to create white-label social networks.

So consider it as the social network that started before the age of social networking. It now offers blogs, forums, reviews, news, feeds, tweets and other community features to people interested in mental health. Seems like they are making a decent revenue with it too.

Always good to see focused, pragmatic and simple solutions being successful. Proves the point that social networking has more potential when done in a niche way.

MedHelp gives the (now) standard online community features to users looking for better information and support around thier medical problems. It was started around 1994 and now draws more than 2 million unique visitors a month.  Perhaps that is why they have long-standing partnerships with the top medical institutions like Cleveland Clinic and Partners Health. Not sure if advertising is the only source of revenue for them- plenty of companies willing to pay for access to this kind of rich data for patient insights.

Jan 2011 Update: Just read that MedHelp has partnered with GE to create a new mobile mood diary app that helps users keep tabs on their mood to better understand their mental well-being. The app, called MoodyMe, is available as a free download on iTunes for the iPhone and iPod touch.

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 right. Their services are free which makes the surgical procedure pricing tool even more impressive. I tried their doctor search tool too, and it worked pretty well for my location (returned more info than usual). Neat interface, fast results.