rtrivedi

Thanks! Will do asap and push out a new build.

Thanks. Fixed in the app description.

Thanks for the praise. I definitely have considered the legal ramifications. I'm going to do my best to keep the data up to date. However, I've attached a disclaimer in the app that explains the data may not always be accurate. It should be used for informational purposes only.

Good point. The times that are reported are what the government has captured as time until you get to see a doctor. I haven't confirmed but I think you're right. If it's a life threatening situation the hospital will probably treat you right away (I sure hope they will, anyway). I'm also not sure who makes the call whether or not you should get treated right away.

Cool! I'll take a look :)

Thanks for the links. I'd like to help build a world where people have access to useful information as easily as possible. Of course, with ease of access to information people will need to become more responsible. I'm hopeful we can get there :)

Great!

Cool! Let's talk :)

Yup, exactly. Recently I traveled to California and used the app to familiarize myself. I noticed that the closest hospital was 30+ minutes away. It was just good info even though I never really needed it.

Hmm, this is a tough one. Given that it's just a different visualization on publicly accessible data, does the app have to safeguard against this in a special way? I used a disclaimer in the app, and went into detail in the privacy policy about how the app claims no responsibility to how the data is used. Do you have any suggestions as to a good way to handle these types of situations in general?

Great ideas.

(1) I will add in the functionality to show nearby hospitals without average wait times. It seems easy enough and very useful without search functionality. FWIW, if the government doesn't report wait times, I default to the average ER wait time for your state. If there is no average ER wait time for your state, then I use the national ER wait time reported by the gov. May I ask where in the country you are located?

One thing to note, I explicitly query for hospitals within a 10 mile radius. I figure if it's more than 10 miles out, it's probably not worth the drive. Maybe I should rethink that assumption...

(2) The search functionality is definitely coming in an update. I've heard that it would be useful from numerous people.

Wow, this is incredibly useful info. Thank you! It still baffles me that in some cases hospitals won't begin to treat you because of liability issues. I guess that's a different discussion though...

In general, if you're ever in doubt, it's best to call 911. Let the professionals handle it.

Thanks! Hopefully in the next update.

I totally agree. One thing I made sure to do was make it very clear in the app (via a disclaimer) that the data is not real time and the app should not be used in emergency situations. I even tell them to call 911 whenever in doubt.

I think Health Scout is very useful but definitely shouldn't be used in life and death situations. Maybe I should make the disclaimer even more prominent...

I want to be as open as possible about where the data comes from. It's pretty darn important to understand potential flaws in the system and I'm hoping to identify and (help) fix it.

The data comes from http://www.medicare.gov/. If you dig deep enough you'll see that the government does extensive surveys on each hospital and tries to catalog everything.

Two important deficiencies in the data that I am thinking about:

(a) Data is updated in real time. (b) There is no existing mechanism for Health Scout to help updating the gov data.

I agree the above will take some work and I intend to try through Health Scout :)

The registered emergency rooms are catalogued on the medicare website (medicare.gov). The government has a list of all the emergency rooms in the USA. They also do a survey of each hospital periodically to keep there data up to date.

Unfortunately, these updates aren't in real time. I'm hoping I can provide people live data through my app through a feedback/reporting mechanism. It took a fair bit of time to extract all the data available and I had to do some aggregation myself.

The app doesn't yet include a notification centre widget but that's a great idea! I'm putting that on the list of potential feature adds :). Thank you!

I found this out the hard way. Even though I live within walking distance of an emergency room, the 911 operator told me to wait for an ambulance to arrive (even though it wasn't an emergency). The net result was me waiting 20 minutes for an ambulance to arrive and take me to the hospital, instead of walking to the hospital in 10 minutes. Luckily my insurance covered the ambulance ride to the hospital!

The data comes from http://medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html

It has a pretty good amount of useful data if you're interested in searching around :).

To answer your second question: I'm not. For the V1 of the app, I'm relying on the government data being valid. However, I'm currently building an in-app feedback form that will allow users to (a) report real-time wait times if they are in the hospital, and (b) report closed ERs / incorrect addresses etc.

While on vacation, I spoke to a mother who often had to be aware of emergency rooms around her because her child had health problems. I built this simple app for her. It's my first app and I'm looking for suggestions on how to make it better. Right now it only works in the USA but I'm hoping to expand to Canada very soon.