Last night, at Ignite Seattle, I heard an excellent talk by Keith Schorsch, CEO of PeerWisdom, a new startup focusing on bring health information to consumers, based on Keith’s personal experiences. I think the field in general is due for a shot in the arm. I am not sure who will do it, or how. The dangers of confusing information are all too real, and as we gain more control of our own information, e.g. when genotyping individuals becomes sufficiently inexpensive, and molecular medicine becomes intrinsically related to patient care, then the problems are only going to become more complex. The challenge lies in bringing together medical and scientific expertise, individual experiences and data mining in such a way that allows individuals to have maximal knowledge about their conditions. Partial knowledge can be very dangerous, so companies like PeerWisdom have their task cut out, but I am always hopeful that someone or other can make the entire healthcare information searching process intuitive and robust. Of course, previous arguments on the need to make healthcare and biological information searchable and shareable remain as valid as ever.
I had the opportunity to chat with Keith briefly at the end of the event. While I am not a 100% sure about their implementation, I am very interested in trying it out and seeing how it works. Hopefully I will get an invitation to test it out soon.
Further reading:
Microsoft, Google and healthcare
Freebase – the scientists perspective
The integrated future of healthcare
Technorati Tags: Healthcare, BioIT, Information, PeerWisdom, Startup
4 Comments
The internet is awash with medical data?
This is a loaded statement. What medical “data” I ask. Looking at the rather sparse peerwisdom site I have no idea what they are going to be about.
The internet is awash with medical data?
This is a loaded statement. What medical “data” I ask. Looking at the rather sparse peerwisdom site I have no idea what they are going to be about.
It is a loaded statement. The internet is full of data, some good, some bad. The data I am referring to primarily is data related to diseases, symptoms and treatments. There is a reason the Microsoft’s and Google’s of the world are taking the healthcare vertical search issue so seriously. News items which say things like Google, MD (searching for symptoms on Google) is as successful as diagnoses by a real life MD makes things only more troubling in my eyes, since there is no quality control right now.
In the case of PeerWisdom, the idea is that the data comes from peers and experts who have some knowledge of a particular ailment. That’s about all I know. Given the people involved, I am sure this is not some wishy-washy attempt, of course the results are still an unknown.
It is a loaded statement. The internet is full of data, some good, some bad. The data I am referring to primarily is data related to diseases, symptoms and treatments. There is a reason the Microsoft's and Google's of the world are taking the healthcare vertical search issue so seriously. News items which say things like Google, MD (searching for symptoms on Google) is as successful as diagnoses by a real life MD makes things only more troubling in my eyes, since there is no quality control right now.
In the case of PeerWisdom, the idea is that the data comes from peers and experts who have some knowledge of a particular ailment. That's about all I know. Given the people involved, I am sure this is not some wishy-washy attempt, of course the results are still an unknown.
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