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What would a “good” WebMD look like?

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

#241

Post by AhmedF »

mikenew wrote: post #158

Examine.com is the closest analogue to what this site is trying to do, and as far as I know, it works. It takes a while, but if people develop trust in a product or website they value that deeply, and are even willing to throw money at it. I don't even consider trying to google a supplement; I'll just go to examine and look at the body of evidence, recommended dosages, etc. I've paid for Examine and I would pay for t…

> Here's my point of feedback / wishlist item / thing I think is missing from the world. Examine is focused on supplement

That's exactly what we're doing!

We released version 2 of Examine less than two weeks ago. Here's a page on how to use: https://examine.com/how-to-use/

It's still early, but the entire goal is to break down research on conditions and goals, and where they connect, relate them to interventions.

Any questions, happy to answer them.

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

#242

Post by AhmedF »

To summarize: a good version of WebMD would have: * structured, quantitative information * real-time updates * summaries of supporting evidence

I'm obviously very biased, but that is exactly what we're building with www.Examine.com

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

#243

Post by nickff »

googlryas wrote: post #238
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…

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…

The terse version of this is to say that the government would prefer you die cheaply rather than live at great expense.

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

#244

Post by jeromegv »

googlryas wrote: post #238
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…

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…

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.

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

#245

Post by beambot »

fredophile wrote: post #229
zeruch wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"that heavily punishes presence of advertisements in a result." while that is pleasing to read at face value, it has two fundamental problems: 1. it's orthogonal to relevance of content (semi-solvable algorithmically I suspect) 2. it's antithetical to Google's core business model (a lot tougher nut to crack)

> it's orthogonal to relevance of content I disagree. The way content is presented matters. Splitting an article into 4-6 pages and filling those pages with ads makes me not want to read that content. I'd much rather go somewhere that has the same text in a single page and only a few ads.

What about playing 2-3 unskippable video ads before watching the actual content? Thus, Google should degrade YouTube search results as well!

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

#246

Post by foolinaround »

maybe a new wikipedia, where not any tom, dick or harry gets to write/edit articles, but one who is acknowledged as a subject matter expert?

To start with, in each topic, there is a broad expert, and then he creates additional topics, and names experts in this, and so on....

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

#247

Post by googlryas »

jeromegv wrote: post #244
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…

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.

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

#248

Post by decebalus1 »

googlryas wrote: post #238
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…

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…

> the government's goals are not necessarily aligned with your own.

as opposed to the private sector?

> But if the government is also providing the healthcare services "for free" to individuals, then there is an incentive to downplay testing for rare or expensive to treat diseases due to the cost/benefit ratio.

Which is what current private insurers often do. The government's incentives aren't just to cut costs and run more efficiently. It mostly cares about staying 'the government' and having people live long enough to pay taxes. I want to hear the same argument when you're talking about the government's incentives to be more cost effective when it comes to funding the armed forces.

I think the gist of it is that as an individual, in theory, you have leverage over the government via your votes or representatives. You have none of that when dealing with the private sector. So in this case, if I'm bothered by what the government publicizes about diseases and such, I have several tools at my disposal to deal with it (FOIA requests to track down who's responsible, town halls, writing to the representatives, lobby, voting etc..). If a private company does it, what am I going to do? Write a bad review?

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

#249

Post by googlryas »

decebalus1 wrote: post #248
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…

> the government's goals are not necessarily aligned with your own. as opposed to the private sector? > But if the government is also providing the healthcare services "for free" to individuals, then there is an incentive to downplay testing for rare or expensive to treat diseases due to the cost/benefit ratio. Which is what current private insurers often do. The government's incentives aren't just to cut costs and r…

The private sector will generally be happy to give you a service if you come with cash in hand. Which is why in the UK I can go get a brain MRI at a private clinic if I had a dream that I was developing MS, whereas I can't do that with the NHS.

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

#250

Post by nickff »

jeromegv wrote: post #244
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…

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.

It's best to know and understand each party's interests. Insurance companies want to keep you alive and paying premiums. Hospitals (government, for-profit, and non-profit) want you to receive a lot of treatment. The government treasury wants to keep you alive as long as your future tax payments exceed their healthcare and other expenditures. Government health departments have an extremely complicated set of incentives, dependent on exactly how they're organized.
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