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April 3, 2009

Med Students to Provide Answers on Health Search Engine

Health search engine Healia will be getting some assistance from medical students to help answer questions in the community section of their site. The feature is a results of a partnership with the American Medical Student Association.

Between 75% and 80% of U.S. internet users have searched online for health information, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

If you've ever been in a health forum, you know that finding answers can get a little crazy. Oftentimes, it turns into a Worst Case Scenario portfolio.

Sites such as WebMD or MayoClinic.com provide good information, but if you have a nuanced question, they may not have what you're looking for.

It will be interesting to see if having med students on Healia can fill this gap in online health information. At the very least, it's great that tomorrow's doctors will experience how their patients approach health care online. Hopefully it can help them incorporate technology, internet, and even search into their practices.

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Thanks for the mention Nathania. Yes, we believe that medical students can serve as an important trusted resource for health information in addition to static content on the web. They are also very up to date with regards to the latest medical research and practices. We look forward to reader feedback about this new health Q&A service.

Even though I live in the UK something like this will still be good as I would be able to get helpful answers for medical questions instead of searching for hours and not being able to find anything that's related to what I'm searching for.