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What would a “good” WebMD look like?

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Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#171

Post by lupire »

mclouts91 wrote: post #83
switch007 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue with the NHS is that I get the impression the information they publish that strongly respects their goals and desires perhaps to the detriment of patients sometimes. I’ve certainly noticed in the past big differences in advice. The NHS will downplay and not suggest investigations whereas another (non UK) site does the opposite. The NHS advice surely is carefully crafted not to cause unnecessary (from their…

NHS is focused on the appropriate allocation of resources to the problem. It strikes an excellent balance of doing the right work when necessary and based on probabilities. If you have evidence that the process recommended by the nhs is failing patients in statistically significant numbers I would agree with you on them not doing enough tests but frankly, I think NHS would perform very well if it was adequately resou…

That's nice, but when I'm sick, I want to get well, and I might be willing to pay for it with my money, time, or labor.

I don't want to die just because it's more cost efficient for the government to save two others.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#172

Post by lupire »

briandear wrote: post #118
jjar wrote: post #15

A better question might be: Why is the private sector responsible for providing accurate health information? As this article shows, the incentives for people running medical websites and the people reading them are not aligned. I'd say the UK NHS website and symptoms/medications pages hit the nail on the head - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ . It has no advertising and provides short, easily readable and actionable i…

If the “government” becomes the only source of truth, that source of truth is necessarily political. The oft-mentioned NHS — do they not have an incentive to lower health care expenditures? Would providing medical information to the public that prescribes a suggested course of action incentivize the course of action that is least expensive to the government but not necessarily the best treatment? Is there any potenti…

> If WebMD is bad, the solution isn’t government, it’s a competitor.

And how to decide who to trust? Still unsolved. The general public loves being lied to, as long as they like who is lying to them (same political party, religion, or just making impossible promises).

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#173

Post by tern »

The author alludes to subscription services, and I think this is bearing out to some extent. Twitter accounts like https://twitter.com/grimhood are passionate generalist SMEs who take money from Patreon and deliver deep dives into various health topics. We're in the early days, but this guy is basically a subscription preventive health doctor knocking out topics one by one.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#174

Post by lupire »

stevage wrote: post #17

The phenomenon they describe for health information is, IMHO, absolutely rife across many different domains. Try looking up information about gardening, plant management, home improvement, etc - you'll find the same thing. Search results dominated by sites that have mastered the art of producing SEO-optimised "content" that is not authoritative, full of waffle, and not especially helpful. For whatever reason, the bus…

I think it's because professionals and expert users know what good content looks like, which feeds back into the algorithm. The average gardener using the web (not books or other local knowledge) for advice doesn't.

Google says "democracy on the web works" which means that what wins is what looks good to the average person among the population who uses that search term.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#175

Post by davidrupp »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #32
FounderBurr wrote: post #22

A much better WebMD would like like Wikipedia. Hint: it’s Wikipedia.

It's annoying that google has been forcefully pushing down wikipedia at least for medically related things. I don't want to have to go to the second page to get an article that isn't scared to use a word longer than 6 letters.

If I want information on medically related things, Wikipedia is my go-to. I skip Google (actually, DuckDuckGo) altogether and just start my search on the Wikipedia home page.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#176

Post by lupire »

duxup wrote: post #38
stevage wrote: post #17

The phenomenon they describe for health information is, IMHO, absolutely rife across many different domains. Try looking up information about gardening, plant management, home improvement, etc - you'll find the same thing. Search results dominated by sites that have mastered the art of producing SEO-optimised "content" that is not authoritative, full of waffle, and not especially helpful. For whatever reason, the bus…

Another somewhat successful area: Very specific task based home maintenance instructional videos on youtube. I'm not sure why but if I look up specific tasks I do find what seem like capable handy man / plumbers or similar folks with good quality advice. Medical stuff.... oh gawd almost no chance of good advice there. But maybe that's because the range of "hey we don't know" or "it's complicated" that you're going to…

Yeah handymen want to impress you so locals hire them. Mail order shops want to scam you into making one bad purchase.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#177

Post by tern »

stevage wrote: post #17

The phenomenon they describe for health information is, IMHO, absolutely rife across many different domains. Try looking up information about gardening, plant management, home improvement, etc - you'll find the same thing. Search results dominated by sites that have mastered the art of producing SEO-optimised "content" that is not authoritative, full of waffle, and not especially helpful. For whatever reason, the bus…

A partial salve would be a search engine that only returns results from websites where the people writing cannot make money from their content.

It's quite interesting to ponder the implications of this.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#178

Post by KerrAvon »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #45
coldcode wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also prefer information from the NHS even though I live in the US. Here medical information online is all about making money from ads and who knows what else they sell. There is actually little money to make from providing relevant information, unlike a national heath care system (which despite its terrible current state politically in the UK, where it seems they want to move to the US model) has an incentive to pr…

The US government also provides healthcare info at cdc.gov, nih.gov, health.gov, or USA.gov/health.

I don't know about the NHS, but we can't trust the information vended by the CDC -- they have proven willfully incompetent over the past two years. I will give just one example: they initially told us masks were ineffective against COVID, which they knew at the time was inaccurate. They said it because they didn't want a run on PPE required by medical workers. Result: there was a shortage anyway and they damaged their reputation irreparably. Great job everyone.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#179

Post by smoe »

jjar wrote: post #15

A better question might be: Why is the private sector responsible for providing accurate health information? As this article shows, the incentives for people running medical websites and the people reading them are not aligned. I'd say the UK NHS website and symptoms/medications pages hit the nail on the head - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ . It has no advertising and provides short, easily readable and actionable i…

I also highly recommend the NHS website.

The information there a couple of years ago helped me losing a lot of weight and adapt a healthier overall lifestyle.

The information is dry, concise and easy to understand for a layperson. I cannot judge how well it is aligned with recent science, but I trust the site much more than most others, because their incentives after all is public health (I'm sure some politics play a role as well), not selling you books and courses with unrealistic expectations.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#180

Post by lotsofpulp »

KerrAvon wrote: post #178
lotsofpulp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government also provides healthcare info at cdc.gov, nih.gov, health.gov, or USA.gov/health.

I don't know about the NHS, but we can't trust the information vended by the CDC -- they have proven willfully incompetent over the past two years. I will give just one example: they initially told us masks were ineffective against COVID, which they knew at the time was inaccurate. They said it because they didn't want a run on PPE required by medical workers. Result: there was a shortage anyway and they damaged thei…

If one negative example decreases an entity’s credit, would positive examples increase an entity’s credit?

What about the proportion of positive to negative examples? How does that impact an entity’s credit?

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