amandalotti

Structured data for effectiveness is on our radar! It's a bigger project than you'd think. Thanks for the comment.

Hey there - I'm that Angelotti :).

My problem with this approach: As I'm quoted as saying in Jim's article, I just think it's a non-starter for most people to do this, ie keep an inventory of sorts in their medicine cabinet and recombine them as needed. Jim is thinking like a doctor, not like your average, non-medically-trained person. There's a reason pharma makes combo products — people do like getting multiple ingredients in one pill. It's convenient! Most people have neither the patience nor the medical education to recombine individual generic ingredients on their own. And trying to do so could actually put them at higher risk for drug interactions or other human error. You have to read and reconcile warnings and directions labels from 3 or 4 different product packages, instead of just one.

fair enough! yeah as we've been playing with the design, the generics have moved around a bit. we're still playing, and we absolutely mean to stress generics. that said, from the user's perspective, the thing that's easiest to find on the store shelf is the brand-name product, and then look next to that on the shelf to find the generic equivalent.

that's actually how we built the tool. the symptoms you select are each tied to active ingredients that they treat, and then we show you products (including generic/store brands) that contain those ingredients in the comparison table below. do you think this isn't coming across as we'd hoped?

thanks for the tip! we're on it

We're still thinking through how to approach this, but it's definitely on our radar. Honestly, in my old role in clinical medicine, I'd counsel parents only to treat symptoms if their child seemed uncomfortable or fussy. If they're playing and eating and acting normally, leave em alone. If they seem uncomfortable, children's motrin or ibuprofen is enough to relieve much of their discomfort.

Of course here's my disclaimer that this is not medical advice, and you should talk to a pediatrician. :)

yeah i wrote a pretty comprehensive blog post about this - ie when it's better NOT to treat a fever http://www.iodine.com/blog/should-you-treat-a-fever/

I'm an MD, and I used to avoid treating cold symptoms for these exact reasons, until I came down with a nasty sinus infection that was a complication of my cold virus. Basically, because I left my sinuses all stuffed up, I created a nidus for infection -- ie the perfect environment for bacteria to breed -- so I had a cold for a week, and then I had a bacterial sinusitis for another 2 weeks and finally broke down to take antibiotics. I could have avoided the sinus infection (and the antibiotics to tamp it down) if I'd just taken a decongestant when I had the cold. And the side benefit is my cold would have felt less miserable, too. And it wasn't about not taking time off from work because a lot of this was during a vacation anyway.

Point is, treating cold symptoms can actually prevent complications, so it's not all bad.

Hey, I'm an MD at Iodine. Basically, zinc works. A Cochrane meta-analysis from 2013 showed that zinc lozenges reduce the severity and duration of common cold symptoms. It’s the closest thing we have yet to a cure for the common cold. Get the lozenges in particular (other forms don’t seem to work as well), and take ‘em on a full stomach or you can get really nauseated.

http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001364/ARI_zinc-for-the-comm...

Hi Tom this is a great q. I'm the MD on the team here at Iodine.

As you know, many people already stop taking their antibiotics without finishing the full course. According to our internal research, people get most freaked out about side effects when they didn't expect them or didn't know they might happen, and when they didn't know it was a common or normal response to a medication. It's our hypothesis that surfacing this data (much of which does already exist online) will actually help with what clinicians refer to as "anticipatory guidance" -- helping people know what to expect -- and that this could reassure people when they do have a side effect, and help them realize that it's temporary. Good anticipatory guidance doesn't always happen in the exam room due to time constraints, etc. In a couple studies we cited in an Iodine blog post recently, docs spend an average of 12 seconds talking with patients about side effects of a new med, and 50% of these new med convos don't mention expected side effects at all. http://www.iodine.com/blog/11-questions-to-ask-about-medicat....

Additionally, our content will develop with more info about how to take a med, including this really important caveat about antibiotics. Another one I can think of is acetaminophen and its really important risk/warning about liver failure.

We still have a lot of work to do at Iodine, but we think we've got a good start. And overall, we think that more transparency is better, even when it comes to antibiotics, to help people have more informed conversations with their doctors about this stuff.