There’s a great new Las Vegas Startup company, HealClick, that is launching a yelp like service for medical treatments. They’ve launched a $50,000 Indiegogo campaign to raise money for their company. Check out that page for more info and a video of what they’re working on.
I love the concept of a Yelp for medical treatments. Certainly we see some of this happening already on websites like PatientsLikeMe and other communities. However, I love that HealClick is trying to create a more specific connection between a patient’s symptoms and treatments with those with similar experiences. In most of the existing patient communities you have to already know that you’re a diabetic or have lupus. From what I understand, the goal of HealClick is to help someone who hasn’t completely identified their health issues connect with other people with similar symptoms.
Plus, they’re focusing on complex immune-related illnesses that have overlapping symptoms and often no clear medical treatment. The ability to find and compare treatment options is very interesting. In these situations the patient is extremely motivated to find every option possible and the doctor just doesn’t have time.
Certainly this could open a pandora’s box where the rogue patient starts thinking they can treat themselves. However, from my experience that isn’t what happens or those patients would react this way regardless of what tools they use. More common is patients become informed of something new and then they consult with their doctor on the options they found.
Turns out, this is the shift that’s happening across all of medicine and not just chronic diseases. The patient is becoming more involved and more informed. Hopefully HealClick can provide some structure to how a patient learns about their health issues.
