Consumer health search is hot (think Organized Wisdom). Online patient communities are sprouting everywhere (Trusera, MedHelp, Healia). A theme we heard sounded repeatedly by top execs of such firms at the Health 2.0 conference was that consumers want easy, immediate access to commentary from other consumers within the framework of reputable consumer health sites.

Here is a case study. Today we will look at the partnership between Omgili and iMedix.

Now, you are going to have to be patient with me on this one because this review is going rely on a lot of copying and pasting from the Web sites and marketing info of the firms under discussion. But that is often the best way to explicate matters. As noted above, I attended the Health 2.0 conference—the theme of which was, “User-Generated Healthcare.” In the case of Omgili Health (a sub-section of Omgili) and iMedix, which has been written up very interestingly here: we are talking, “User-Generated Healthcare Content.”

And Omgili has the expertise and the reach to capture a lot of that (and there is a lot of it out there) and render it findable.

Now, I work in a medical library and many information professionals pooh-pooh the chitchat of disease and consumer health message boards and justifiably worry about the quality of information (which ranges from homespun commonsense to innocuous quackery to the downright dangerous and fraudulent) that can be conveyed in such venues. But I have spent many hours on the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis pages of the online patient community Patients Like Me and came away convinced that when such sites are overseen in a responsible manner they are invaluable sources of practical information and mutual support and comfort to those in distress and in need of help that often they are not able to get (or at least expeditiously) from the medical establishment for reasons of income or geography.

Here is where Omgili’s strength is in this sphere. It makes it clear that this is not the world of peer-reviewed meta-analysis-laden land of PubMed. Rather, in the words of Omgili, “Omgili is your way to find “subjective information”. As opposed to traditional search engines, which search for sites and pages, Omgili finds consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions. Most of the questions have already been answered – find the answers through Omgili. Most of the technical problems have been solved – find the solutions through Omgili. Most of the experiences have already been described -find these descriptions through Omgili. Omgili is a crawler based, vertical search engine that scans millions of online discussions worldwide in over 100,000 boards, forums and other discussion based resources.”

Now that is a very valuable service and is something that is not being done effectively in the health care search space to my knowledge.

For instance, I spend many hours a day trawling the Web looking for grants for health care researchers. As I do so, I visit site upon site related to disease and medical science. Many disease-related sites are aimed at tiny audiences (e.g., those interested in research in very rare chromosomal disorders). But these sites often feature fascinating discussions or commentary on issues related to disease and disability, legislation and advocacy issues, medical devices and innovations in such fields and practical advice for dealing with all the awful complexities of insurance that the chronically or suddenly ill must confront. Kudos to Omgili Health for making it possible for those suddenly faced not only with life-threatening illness but financial hardship to save time and find social support in key decisions in various stages of their illnesses. This is health search at its finest and an example what the Web can be in its best moments. Yes, much of the info one might find would be fluff for the worried well and of the superficial variety. But in these days of unemployment and strained family budgets, helping users find simple home remedies or sound advice from helpful laymen is a public service and could save some lives—it could be the case that a consumer using Omgili Health might be urged by a concerned fellow user to get to a doctor.

As to iMedix, I was quite impressed by the handsomeness of the site and the range of videos available and found it quite touching that someone had gone to the trouble of creating a simple but extremely useful video on, Use of cough assist for clearing lungs of ALS person using a ventilator:

I had only read about that technique and it was an immense help to see the devoted layperson caregiver and the generous ALS patient demonstrating its use for the benefit of others they may never know they have so helped. Devices like that can be frightening for those facing them as patients and as caregivers and videos like this courtesy of iMedix hugely allay anxiety and make the once scary into something manageable and even reassuringly routine.

We are all so lucky to be living in an era where even the most devastating illnesses can be coped with better thanks to such sites. Knowledge truly is power and more and more of knowledge is getting out onto the Internet.

For instance, the other day at work I wrote up for a health educator an introduction to online patient communities and also mentioned discussion boards and to do so had to bop over to many sites and create a long list of links. Talk about time-consuming and scattershot search methodologies. Omgili Health will make tasks like that easier for those of us in medical settings and in public health and certainly for consumers. Let us hope it will also be able to similarly aggregate material from the growing number of wikis on health topics. Nobody seems to be doing that and that may be hard technologically, given that many wikis lie behind corporate or organizational firewalls. But Omgili Health has made a good start at similar tasks and iMedix is raising the bar for the use in consumer health search of the bells and whistles of Web 2.0. And there is lot to be said for bells and whistles—as I write these words I am listening to this useful backgrounder on ALS: What’s Up Wit’ That? ALS Association:

This is a useful, edifying discussion that I had not encountered before elsewhere that —and that is the mark of a good health site.

Omgili Health and iMedix—synergy in action for the benefit of all those interested in good quality consumer health info in many formats and media.

Author: Hope Leman