Show HN: Curenote, a health community for solving health problems | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Curenote, a health community for solving health problems

curenote.com

17 pointscurenote7 comments

I created Curenote, a social way for people to get help with their health problems.

Others who may have experienced the same health problem can offer their knowledge and advice on what they did to cure their ailment or illness.

People can offer their advice and support on topics such as cancer/diabetes, sexual health, drugs & alcohol, violence, diet & fitness and many more.

Please let me know what you think. Your honest feedback is much appreciated. Thanks!

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While I'm the first one to point out that Western medical doctors do not know everything, this is going too far in the opposite direction. Crowdsourcing your health without any credentials behind the answers? Sounds really sketchy to me...

I will address your concern. How do we know the validity of an answer if we don't know if the person giving the answers is a doctor?

That's a valid question. But that question basically assumes that only doctors have the answers. While doctors are certainly smart and know their stuff, that doesn't mean that other people who have experienced similar health situations are inept and unable to offer any value.

There are many cases where other people, who are not doctors, have helped others through the sharing of health information and personal experience.

Here is one notable case: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43757155/ns/today-today_health...

Curenote is NOT a substitute for seeing your doctor. But there are some cases where you may not need to go to the doctor where a simple remedy offered by others can help. There are cases where you might need to go to a doctor and other people can give you the support you need to help you.

I for one believe you have a very good point.

In fact it's always saddened me that experiences with different health issues isn't shared between doctors.

Until that is solved (and that will take a very very long time) you could potentially provide something of great value.

What does this provide over the thousands of hits I'll get on Google for searching, I dunno, "swelling on neck" or "adhd medication choices for children"? Usually accompanied by forum posts of people sharing their experiences and what have you.

I think this offers three things that googling up information doesn't.

#1 It's much more than just reading facts about an ailment. You're asking a health question about your personal situation and getting other peoples help, whether it's through their own experience, knowledge or whatever it may be. In some ways its even more reliable because you have other people to verify what worked for them and what didn't. You don't get that type of raw, personal information from referencing facts on a sheet of paper.

#2 You're not only getting raw information, but you get it targeted to your specific situation because you can ask questions. This means you can share different details and nuances about your situation and get answers that are directly related to that. Some people may have a paraticular health question and will resaearch online for hours and just find information that's not really targeted to their unique situation. Curenote lets you ask a specific question and get targeted answers.

#3 There are other health forums out there, but Curenote is designed to be easier to use and read, while looking beautiful and elegant. A lot of forums are badly designed with text that's hard to read, littered with ads all around, spam comments and hard to use navigations. Curenote strives to do better. It also only focuses on the key health topics that most people are inundated with everyday. These aren't just topics that affect the elderly, but teenagers and young adults as well.

I have a few problems with this answer (and perhaps your site itself):

Firstly, pretty much by definition, every situation will be unique. Factors that you may deem insignificant and not worthy of mentioning may be crucial in diagnosing a condition. A trained doctor should be aware of these factors, and ask pertinent questions to consider these factors. People unaware of such confounding factors may just pattern-match on the information you have provided, and come to an erroneous conclusion.

The "facts referenced on a sheet of paper" are (ideally) distilled from well-designed studies appropriately carried out (double-blinding, suitable controls, adequate statistical power, etc). This is arguably better than the "raw, personal information" which represents a single datum, with no control whatsoever. Granted, studies may not exist for a large range of conditions, or may be performed poorly, etc. I would still be wary of testimonials by unqualified people, however.

Secondly, which is something of a rehashing of the first point, the people asking the questions may not know enough to ask the right questions. I've heard this commonly referred to in the CS world as an "XY problem"[1]. Paraphrased, "You've concluded your problem is X, and you want to know a treatment, Y. Instead of asking about X, you ask about Y".

This may involve providing incomplete medical history to answer a question, or not have access to various diagnostic equipment, etc.

Thirdly, how does it "[focus] on the key health topics"? It looks something not dissimilar to a stackexchange site, perhaps without the editing/metacommenting/badges, etc. I assume some moderation will be in place to select these key health topics, and perhaps eliminate the spam? The main forms of communication (towards answering a posed question) appear to be adding answers, or voting up others. I'm not sure that's a suitable model for health issues - you're either going to end up with people upvoting things that they can (however vaguely) relate to, or adding additional answers to espouse their personal pet theory, adding noise to the discussion. I'd therefore look to the SE sites for ideas, such as communal editing, etc, but I think a score/badge related system is inappropriate for this subject.

Finally, I'm not sure of the legal situation, but I can certainly imagine that actual medical professionals would avoid answering questions, due to concerns about liability and professional ethics issues. Much the same occurs around law-related topics (disclaimers abound: IANAL, IANYL, etc). Without that countering opinion, I fear it may drift into placebos, rainbows and unicorns territory. I couldn't say for certain that will be the case, but the first question I looked at, the answer pointed to a thread on "earthclinic", with a huge number of people suggesting various vitamins, supplements with little or no justification for their use.

I realise this post is excessively negative, but I am deeply dubious of the value of "crowdsourcing" for situations in which lives may be at risk, and people could waste time waiting for answers, instead of going to the doctor or emergency room.

Perhaps the most useful way I think it could be used is as a sanity-check for actual diagnoses or treatments. "My doctor thinks I have X, and has prescribed Y, but there is no sign of improvement, any other ideas?".

Even then, I think it's fairly common practice to ask your doctor to refer you for a professional second opinion, which would probably be more useful. Then again, a fresh and distinct pair of eyes could pick up something a hurried, "treat as the most common case first" doctor might miss, as indicated by your facebook/autoimmune link upthread.

[1] http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=542341

I think you're taking the site for what it isn't instead for what it is. Curenote is not a replacement for seeing your doctor. It's a way of getting supplementary health advice from other people who may have experienced similar situations. This doesn't mean you have to follow their advice. You should always think about what they're suggesting to see if it makes sense to follow. A lot of people have a lot of health knowledge they can share. This is way for them to do just that.

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