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What would a “good” WebMD look like?

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

#311

Post by ciphol »

FounderBurr wrote: post #22

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

I would say that WebMD is better than Wikipedia. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and in practice this means content often comes from idiosyncratic people with axes to grind. Wikipedia pages vary immensely in correctness, completeness, objectivity, clarity, and usefulness. WebMD, in contrast, is pretty consistent in all those ways; its flaws (wordiness, lack of reference to detailed research, catering to the customer) are of minor consequence to the typical person searching for medical information (we at HN are not the typical person). The best Wikipedia articles are better than the best WebMD ones, but the worst Wikipedia articles are worse, and in medicine it's the floor you care more about.

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

#312

Post by lupire »

joegahona wrote: post #192
lupire wrote: post #163

I don't get the WebMD hate. It's leagues ahead of Healthline. WebMD is full of doctors. The gov and AMA should be sanctioning doctors for abuse of license if the content is bad.

The atrocious UX isn't helping. Paginated articles, popups, autoplay ads within the well of content... these tactics put you in a bad neighborhood with bot-farm-type sites, no matter how many doctors are involved in the actual content creation.

If you don't use an ad blocker it's your own fault. Paginated articles are not a hill to die on.

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

#313

Post by lupire »

nicoburns wrote: post #190
lupire wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you use SEO on your non-campaign transactional and info sites? Those are the ones that need protection from fee scammers. It seems you've got it exactly backwards.

SEO is what the scammers use. When Google prioritises an authoritative page, that’s making SEO less important.

No, that's "black hat SEO".

Google has a support article with SEO advice:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en/

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

#314

Post by mitchellst »

Article sums it up as: there hasn't been a better WebMD because the costs of making one have been too high, but new advances promise to draw those costs down, so the author is founding.

Costs might be a factor. But revenue is a bigger one. WebMD and Healthline have flourished because advertisers have an incentive to underwrite them. Symptom checkers for health professionals do well, too—hospitals and medical malpractice insurers have an incentive to pay for provider-focused tools. A comment brings up the UK NHS site—sure, it makes sense that a national health system would have a strong incentive to help people self diagnose.

Do end users have a similarly strong incentive to maintain a subscription to a service like this month after month? Selling direct-to-consumer subscriptions at scale is hard. I wish you the best, but it's tough business.

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

#315

Post by BurningFrog »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #79
BurningFrog wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my point! Regulations have been set up so you have to pay an AMA member to get any information that might be labeled "medical advice".

There is tons of medical advice. Wikipedia, cdc, health.gov, mayoclinic, webmd, Reddit forums, hacker news, etc. You can even get fake diagnosis and fake healthcare from chiropractors who are allowed to advertise themselves as doctors, and fake medicine from naturopaths or whatever who are also allowed to call themselves doctor. I am using fake to mean unsupported by evidence in the form of sufficiently blind trials…

That chiropractors have good lobbyists that managed to carve out a lucrative regulatory niche doesn't really disprove my theory.

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

#316

Post by lotsofpulp »

BurningFrog wrote: post #315
lotsofpulp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is tons of medical advice. Wikipedia, cdc, health.gov, mayoclinic, webmd, Reddit forums, hacker news, etc. You can even get fake diagnosis and fake healthcare from chiropractors who are allowed to advertise themselves as doctors, and fake medicine from naturopaths or whatever who are also allowed to call themselves doctor. I am using fake to mean unsupported by evidence in the form of sufficiently blind trials…

That chiropractors have good lobbyists that managed to carve out a lucrative regulatory niche doesn't really disprove my theory.

Are chiropractors part of the AMA? Or any of the other sources of medical advice I listed?

Pretty weak “regulation” when you can get a “doctor” to prescribe you herbs and spices for your illnesses. Not to mention the tech startups that hand out amphetamine prescriptions written after an online telegealth visit by remote physician assistants and nurse practitioners (see Cerebral and Done).

There might be some regulation to get paid by Medicare and Medicaid services, and some requirements by insurance companies, but that seems entirely reasonable. There is little regulation on who is allowed to give medical advice.

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

#317

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #219
LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mistakes to correct statements, yes. Those balance out. The opposite of being right is being wrong, the proportion of these two is their score. Lies though, where we find out they knowingly said something they knew was wrong when they said it, don't balance out. The opposite of lying to someone to manipulate them is respecting them enough to let them make their own choices. They need to acknowledge that and start pur…

The intent of the lying also matters. Corruption is bad, lying with good intentions is context dependent bad, mistakes are OK. But if one is going to throw out the baby with the bath water at every instance of corruption/lying/mistake, you are not going to be left with much other than chaos. Humans are fallible creatures, we have to work and improve with what we have. The exceptionalism of the USA is the fact that mo…

Sure, the organization is mostly fine. But the people who lied are not, and are not redeemable.

Mistakes are fine, policy lies are absolutely unacceptable and should be punishable by public whippings and jail.

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

#318

Post by blandry »

strstr wrote: post #299

A better WebMD already exists, and it’s called UpToDate. It’s target audience is doctors, but you can pay ~$20 for a week as a consumer (you can pay less per week for longer also). It’s a great resource, and has a summary of the most recent consensus view on common medical topics. It doesn’t expand pages out with fluff or talk down to you, though it won’t have too much info about assumed medical fundamentals. You can…

I can give a nice example of how some of UpToDate’s information is compiled, and why its so high quality.

I built a new diagnostic test that replaced and upgraded upon one that had previously been discontinued. After building it a clinician who is a top expert on that specific diagnostic reached out since he was responsible for the relevant up to date page. We had a knowledgeable discussion and they gained a full understanding of the diagnostic I had built. After that they wrote up a new and high quality UpToDate piece describing the new diagnostic and its clinical usefulness. Overall it felt like a very effective process, and one that happened pretty early on in the life cycle of the new product.

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

#319

Post by Cd00d »

snickerbockers wrote: post #305
Cd00d wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a standup bit, I don't remember who the comic is, where he says, "my elbow was kinda sore after I was playing a bunch of tennis. I looked it up on the internet and oh no! It turns out I have elbow cancer!"

im not sure i see the punchline? theres a group of connective tissue cancers called sarcomas that are often found near knees and elbows.

The joke is that anything medical you search for online you'll end up having your greatest fears validated, rather than get helpful and balanced insight.

Or rather, all online diagnoses are cancer.

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

#320

Post by 6t6t6t6 »

googlryas wrote: post #247
jeromegv wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that supposed to be an advertisement for private healthcare? With insurances companies deciding based on profit margins? I'd say the government incentives are a lot more aligned to have their population healthy and productive, than the insurance company looking at how much you paid for your premium and how much the treatment is.

Pointing out a conflict of interest is not an advertisement for anything. It is what it is. You could also have publicly funded, 100% government provided healthcare which provided some base level of care but allowed individuals to pay for specific treatments if they wanted them and they weren't a part of the base level of care.

Most public healthcare systems provide excellent treatments for the majority of the population. And, if you have some rare condition that can only be treated with some state-of-the-art cure that is only provided by some hospital out of the country, and you have several hundred thousand $$$ in your bank account, nobody will stop you from paying the treatment from your pocket.
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