I have a friend whose hair started falling out suddenly, and her scalp started looking scaly. The doctor said it was psoriasis, and she came home with two types of shampoo, some drops and an ointment that she has to smush in her hair for a very long time.

I’ve heard of psoriasis before and I remembered it not being that serious, but I tend not to trust anything with a silent p since silent p’s scare me. That, and all that shampoo and ointment seemed excessive and very goopy. Was there anything else to do?

Today I talked with Iri Amirav, founder and CMO of iMedix, a new health alternative search engine based in Israel with a two-pronged approach to healthcare.

First, iMedix offers pre-approved articles on almost any disease in the known world, with a fix-as-you-go spellchecker in case you don’t know about the silent p in psoriasis.

Secondly, iMedix gives you a network of people who are interested in the same disease. It’s like Facebook for diseases.

And what about Google? In comparing Googlehealth with iMedix, Amirav had this to say, “Googlehealth is a walled approach, it’s private and secure. On iMedix, we’re about openness. The philosophy that my partner and I have for healthcare is to promote transparency. Complimentary to Google, this is something that’s different but can be used at the same time. Here you can search for health information that was already filtered. Google can’t do that because everything’s private.”

And the psoriasis information I found? Other than goopy ointments, I found that you can dunk your head in the dead sea, which is good, because I live right near there.

For a summary video of the site, see below.

I did the same thing with Trusera and did a psoriasis search. Trusera does not have an on-the-fly spellchecker, so if you don’t know about the silent p, you won’t find anything.

Nonetheless, Trusera is based on the concept of sharing medical stories, also with the open approach of iMedix, but without the articles. It simply links people and allows you to share your stories about various diseases, which sounds like fun.

Its staff is composed of former Amazon executives, They claim that out of the 113 million people going online to find health information, 84% turn to online social spaces to educate themselves about a disease or a condition, so the demand for a site where people can find personally relevant health information, lean on the wisdom of the crowds and leverage the power of “been there” is growing.

Essentially, iMedix is Trusera with articles, but Trusera has more personalized stories. Both will get you connected to the diseased community you seek. Or better yet, the recently healed community you seek to learn from.