I work in a medical library so I live in the world of authoritative sources of health information like PubMed and MedlinePlus. But one shouldn’t dismiss the commercial realm entirely and Wellsphere is an interesting entrant on the scene of consumer health sites such as MedHelp, Organized Wisdom and Healthline.

Medical librarians and consumers should check out all of these sites. I love MedlinePlus, but it never hurts to see what else is out there at least as a gauge of what library patrons or those who never foot in libraries may be reading. And many of the commercial sites have links to mainstream press articles and useful, colorful graphics and charts that might of help to nurses, say, or diabetes educators looking for patient education materials.

And people do find comfort in patient communities and personal essays on the illness experience and these sites feature a wealth of entries in such genres. Only connect, as they say.

One useful feature of Wellsphere is “Resources Near You.” I tried “yoga” for my city in Oregon and got a few choices. (Side note to health consumers—see if your state is part of MedLinePlus’ Go Local network —good way to find nonprofit services in your area.)

I got no results on Routes & Trails for Corvallis, Oregon—and we have plenty of such things here. But Wellsphere is new and maybe such coverage will come.

One test of a health search engine is whether it provides results even if you have misspelled the disease you are researching (which is very likely for many of us). I invariably try as my search term, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—which I often mistype. But Wellsphere realized I had and I got a handsome page of useful results, including a link to a New York Times article on Patients Like Me. Pretty good.

The site as a whole is pleasing to the eye, well-organized and obviously put together by a crack team of proofreaders and editors with an admirable grasp of the English language. Nothing amateur night at the opera here. And the site design is a model for the industry—much brighter and more navigable than that of MedHelp, I’d say. And the community pages are richer in terms of features than those of Patients Like Me. The site leans towards the San Francisco/West Coast fitness-minded, personal trainer-hiring affluent me, myself and I audience rather than the more mainstream feel of MedlinePlus. OrganizedWisdom has broader coverage and a more serious tone and Healthline has better tools on its home page. But there is something for everyone in all of these sites and robust competition in this arena is (can’t resist the pun) a healthful trend.

One quibble. The blog for multiple sclerosis really seems to be to more of a message board. And when you are reading what appears to be a blog entry, one of the options is “Comment on Whiteboard.” I was confused about what was the blog and what was the whiteboard. The terminology is a bit muddled in this respect. But the question, “So, what would you classify as a blog?” is for another day.

It is interesting to see what the different approaches these sites take. MedHelp touts expert input. Wellsphere eschews the white coat approach.

It will be fascinating to see who wins out in the health consumer sphere and if any of them start to incorporate highly sophisticated personal health records or get acquired by Google, Microsoft or Revolution Health as the giants eye the consumer health market. Many of these start-up sites will die on the vine. Others will get gobbled up, making their founders very rich indeed. And some hospitals and health networks are experimenting with creating their own patient portals. And then there is the advertising-supported model versus the get the data and sell it approach of Patients Like Me. Watch this space.

By Hope Leman

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 11:55 am and is filed under Guest Authors, Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Sphere: Related Content