You think the economy is bad?  Maybe, but the tsunami of new companies creating health/medical tools on the web continues unhampered.  A few to highlight today:

* HealthyDirectorymoz.com — a comprehensive directory of health and medical websites. It currently lists 907 active websites that you can look up under a variety of categories. Note that diabetes is buried under “Diseases and Conditions/Endocrine Disorders.” Ugh.  But the directory’s quite impressive on the whole.  It’s creator Nicole M. recently wrote me via email:

I am 34 year old who was rendered T4 paraplegic 5 years ago. I have started a niche health directory called HealthDirectoryMoz because I am passionate about “QUALITY and USEFUL” health related websites.

Through this niche directory, I intend to create lasting value to patients, students & medical professionals and sincerely believe that we can have a mutually beneficial association …

* eHealthMe.com — another new site for patients who take more than one drug to check drug interactions and adverse effects, for both generic and brand name drugs. Please note that this one is still in beta testing.  The creators say the results are “multi-dimensional” (not sure what they mean here) and the service is anonymous and free.

Sites like this are critical, I suppose, when you consider the stats: “Drug interactions and adverse side effects contribute to 4,000 American’s death each week. Related costs are estimated to be $216 billion a year.”  Wow.  A good reminder to check those pills before you start popping them.

* MyHumanRace.com — also in beta testing, a new website “that tries to take a very granular approach by linking the power of social networking with a database that lists all of the diseases treated at a major medical center in the US, all of the genes in the human genome known to cause disease, and all of the commonly prescribed medications.”  Wow.

Its creator, an MD by the name of Sohrab Gollogly, writes to me:

I’m a practicing orthopedic spine surgeon in Monterey, California, and I’m really interested in how the internet can be used more effectively to help people with very specific disease states or genetic conditions find each other and harness the wisdom of collective decision making…  What I notice is that patients get a lot of erroneous information because they spell things incorrectly and there isn’t a lot of “shape” to some of the user created content on the web.

His project is meant to tackle that problem.  Go have a look and give him some feedback, will ya?

* Elephant Pharm — a new one-stop online pharmacy and “wellness store” for the San Francisco Bay Area.  I mention this because I’m sure there are many such regional sites popping up.  I wanted to note that the store itself doesn’t look bad, but the “wellness survey” they are running on the site kind of pissed me off. It is clearly a ploy to collect demographic data not “regarding public perception of wellness” as they state, but rather for their own marketing purposes.  Buyer, beware.

* Diabetes.Alltop.com — as Allison has noted, Alltop is an “online magazine rack” that aggregates the five most recent stories of the top 100 or so feeds of websites and blogs.  The diabetes area currently features myself, Allison, Kerri, the two Scotts, Bernard, Shannon and a bunch more of us loud voices in the D-blogosphere. Neat.

And last not least, for you Daddies:

* SavvyDaddy.com - an online community for great dads, created by medblogger Tony Chen, who also happens to be Director of New Business Development at a prominent midwestern hospital. If you’re passionate about being a great father and parent, do check it out.

On the D-front, Tony writes: “the social network continues to grow… and there are lots of dads with kids with diabetes that need a lot of support.“  Now there’s an assertion I can believe.

Happy health surfing!

Explore posts in the same categories: Diabetes Blogs and Web Stuff, Health 2.0

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)