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What would a “good” WebMD look like?

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

#271

Post by quickthrower2 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #29
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…

Tragedy of the Commons. We all could use easily accessible, accurate and unbiased medical information, but most people can't or won't pay a website to procure and publish such content, especially when they don't really know if they can trust the site! It's rather circular. If only there were some association of all people, some kind of organization that included all members of the public, which could collect a nomina…

Governments would need to run big very expensive ad campaigns to change peoples behaviour from “googling” to entering a government website url. The browsers now make searching so much easier than typing an URL.

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

#272

Post by adolph »

shuntress wrote: post #266
googlryas wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fairly straightforward answer is that the government's goals are not necessarily aligned with your own. You, presumably, care very much about your own personal health. You also care about other people's health, but you really, really care about your own health, and probably don't want to die earlier than you need to. The government, on the other hand, doesn't generally care about individuals, and is working on a st…

You are talking about "The Government" as if it is some uncontrollable force of nature. Here in reality, we are actually self-governing. Obviously it's messy, complicated, and not as simple as just "deciding what to do and doing it". But it is fair to say that pretty much every rational person agrees that we should take care of each other including anyone with a rare condition.

> Here in reality, we are actually self-governing.

Given there is more to we than just me, "The Government" would refer to mostly other people and specifically other people with a particular proclivity toward involving themselves in the lives of others, to what effect is in the eye of the beholder.

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

#274

Post by quickthrower2 »

pfisherman wrote: post #201

There is an excellent version of WebMD called UpToDate. The primary audience is physicians / clinicians, and they make money by selling subscriptions. So not a consumer health product, but an example of what the gold standard in this space looks like.

Example link: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/approach-to-chronic-cough-...

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

#275

Post by InCityDreams »

aantix wrote: post #148

Five year survival rates listed for local surgeons across the procedures they perform. Sortable by number of procedures performed, death rates on the table, survival rates. I don't care how "kind" the physician is, if they listened to my concerns. I want to know their effectiveness.

Maybe the patients were crap.

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

#276

Post by bogota »

ravenstine wrote: post #31
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…

That's a nice page, and I'll definitely bookmark that one. But I don't see most of the public using something like that over WebMD. WebMD is complete trash (I even block it in my Kagi search preferences), but it succeeds over sites like the NHS one because of blog SEO. WebMD is really a glorified blog with posts about every condition you might get paranoid over. I don't know how precisely they achieve this, but they'…

Not to mention pretty much every health condition you look up will list that you have cancer or some mental illness.

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

#277

Post by brokenodo »

ravenstine wrote: post #31
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…

That's a nice page, and I'll definitely bookmark that one. But I don't see most of the public using something like that over WebMD. WebMD is complete trash (I even block it in my Kagi search preferences), but it succeeds over sites like the NHS one because of blog SEO. WebMD is really a glorified blog with posts about every condition you might get paranoid over. I don't know how precisely they achieve this, but they'…

I’m honestly blown away by the Merck Manuals! How can this resource be so comprehensive and clear yet seemingly never come up in topical searches?

It seems like the most comparable medical version to Cornell’s Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/

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

#279

Post by gregmac »

nvrspyx wrote: post #125
hombre_fatal wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Punishment/vengeance is a popular idea around here, but you have to also remember that a search engine is supposed to bring you the most relevant results. Filtering out, say, Stack Overflow or Reddit because it has ads doesn't help you when it answers your question and is perhaps the only thing on the internet that truly does. People seem to think there's this ad-less replica of the internet, sitting right behind our…

Maybe instead of heavily punishing websites with ads, a search engine could instead punish heavily ad-driven websites. A lot of the SEO-exploiting blog mills are filled to the brim with ads where the goal is to get you to visit to view as many ads as possible, not provide good content that's funded by ads.

Do you mean the advertising company that runs a search engine should punish pages in the results that... show their ads? Or just when it's a "lot" of their ads? Or should they only do that if the pages are showing ads from their competitors?

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

#280

Post by davidgerard »

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…

NHS Conditions was what I came here to post. You'll notice your GP glances at precisely those pages when they're talking to you too.
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