Overview of Online Healthcare Communities

If you have not seen the statistics yet, a quick preview:

1. US spends almost 16% of its GDP on healthcare – $2 Trillion. This equates to approximately $6697 per person. No other country spends more.
2. Over 56% of us insured are covered by employer sponsored plans, about 30% by Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP. The rest (14%) are insured.
3. Healthcare costs have been increasing 2.5% more than US GDP and more than double the rate of inflation over the last 30+ years.
4. Spending on drugs (prescription) is about 10% of the total spend.

There are 5 major constituents in the healthcare “space” – Patients, Providers (Physicians, Nurses, etc.), Payers (Insurance providers), Government & Pharma/Biotech/Drug companies. There are several others (Employers, etc., but the 5 major ones influence it to a large extent.

The major trend is towards “consumerization” of healthcare – providing and arming patients with more information at their fingertips so they can make better choices. Hence online communities (where patients, doctors, etc.) can connect and get information quickly so they can make decisions or get second opinions.

Over the next few weeks I will have a series of posts on the healthcare community space, but here are the companies I am reviewing.

There are several (about 50) broad and niche sites focusing on several disciplines or diseases so its going to be difficult to categorize them. For policy information I recommend the Healthcare Blog. Others talking about it more eloquently than I do are Paul Krugman and also do visit the Kaiser Foundation.

Here’s the list of communities that I have reviewed. There are several more for sure, but I am looking at comScore and other metrics to get a sense for the ones with traction / traffic before I dig deeper.

1. WebMD
2. Medhelp.ORG
3. SteadyHealth
4. HealthyPlace
5. Revolution
   Health
6. Health
   Talk
7. Health Line
8. Health
   Board
9. Health
   Vault (Microsoft)
10. My Self
    Help
11. Healthy Circles
12. Kryptiq
13. Pure Wellness
14. Sound Health
    Solutions
15. US
    Wellness
16. American
    Heart Association
17. Cap Med
18. Daily
    Strength
19. Zoc Doc
20. Patients
    Like Me
21. I C You
22. Organized
    Wisdom
23. Relief in
    Site
24. Nurses
    Rate Doctors
25. Health Tools Online
26. M D
    Junction
27. Gimme20
28. Psych Central
29. Hesperian
30. My Health
    Gate
31. Health
    Grades
32. Patients
    are powerful
33. iVillage Your Total Health
34. Health
    Central
35. Vimo
36. Healthline
37. TauMed
38. Wegohealth