I was hesitant at first to sign up due to these websites requesting information of yourself. But with MedHelp I did not feel uncomfortable filling any of the information out. Actually, MedHelp allows you to fill out what information you want to at first, then allows you to go back and fill in what you may have passed up.
This allows the user to check out the site first off then make up their mind as to whether or not they want to stick around. The first information that the user is asked for is basic: nickname, password, and email address. Furthermore, the user is asked about weight, height, and what interests the user to become apart of this online community.
From there the user is able to open up an completely different community for the health world. I was shocked at how much information was on one website for a health community. As a user you are presented with journals, forums, experts, health tools, health information galore!, trackers, and so much more.
MedHelp has been around since ealy 1994, therefore it has had plenty of changed in the last 18 years. With 18 years of experience in this business I can see the benfit of having a big history. MedHelp must also be popular among the online health community for being able to survive such a long time.
Personally, I could see myself utilizing MedHelp with the trackers. The trackers make it simple and easy to set a goal and see yourself progress towards it. For instance, as a user, I may want to lose 10 pounds in two months. With MedHelp I am able to have a start and end date of the goal, title the trackers, who can see the tracker online, send myself updates daily, and design a graph to see my progress through pictures. Although this tracker may seem simple, I think it is benficial to have other users seeing your progress. They could easily encourage me in my weight loss and so forth.
The Experts section of Medhelp includes over "200 doctors and experts from top medical institutions". I feel more comfortable with this than say Wikipedia because the doctors and experts are chosen by MedHelp. They are not self proclaimed doctors or experts. This make me feel more comfortable as a user to trust MedHelp and the experts utilizing the site.
Through the experts section you are also able to become involved in a Health Chat or find a doctor for yourself. Again, all of the options on MedHelp shows its history of being in the online health community.
Inorder for a health organzation to better utilize such a community as MedHelp they would need to select an individual to respresent them through the experts section. The health organization would not likely be able to become apart of the community on their own. An individual who is apart of the organization who would be considered an expert could promote them through chats on MedHelp.
A benefit of obtaining an individual to respresent an organzation on MedHelp would be the large amount of traffic that MedHelp has on a monthly basis. These large numbers are shown on Alexa. This particular article breaks down everything on the MedHelp website. This would help the health organzaition segment their audience through MedHelp if they chose to use it.
The CrunchBase website published an article on MedHelp and named it the largest online health community and platform company. I agree with this article in that MedHelp contains "trusted information and advice tailored to comsumers' personal health needs"
Nice..!! Online health communities really helps to provide patients and their families with the ways, methods and techniques to read in regards to the sickness.
ReplyDeleteOnline health community