A brief break from the daily grind for a couple of interesting (to me at least) shoutouts...
My Grandmother is featured on Page 10 of the Chicago Sun Times today, writing about the Virgina Tech tragedy.
JC Jones, a RN and member of the Informatics team at Healthline, shares similar thoughts on the incident in a post on Healthline Connects.
I find myself in agreement with both perspectives, while of course worrying about the civil rights we all know and cherish. Moreso though, I fear that the argument about impairing civil rights of the one will come at the expense of the civil rights of the many (or really, that "playing the CR card" will prevent a meaningful dialog).
While I have no desire to live in a real life Gattaca, one wonders how many more Virgina Tech's we'll need to experience before we collectively come to terms with the fact that we're not all created exactly equal, and that those who are unfortunate enough to have disorders that limit their judgement or self-control must either be treated or have their rights (to certain things, e.g., weapons) restricted sufficiently to protect society, especially if they are given special benefits in defense of the crimes they commit.
I shudder that I'm typing such thoughts; it's not what I was raised to believe... but it has been my experience. Your thoughts?
Shortly thereafter, he added the following to his post:
"Hours after sending these links to subscribers, I received a note from Kaywin Davis:
"You just did me a great service: I’m 72 and probably one of your oldest subscribers. I’ve not been feeling well and assumed it was just part of getting old. When I saw your health link I decided to check it out (Symptom Search). I typed in my symptoms and received a diagnosis. I called my doctor and he ordered a blood test. The prognosis is I have pernicious anemia. The doctor stated it was treatable and prescribed ferrous sulfate and vitamin C. Thank you for the wonderful and timely link. "
Dude. That’s awesome!"
Awesome indeed! As I mentioned when I joined Healthline and implied when we launched Symptom Search, being able to work on a product that truly makes a difference in people's lives is a core part of Valley culture and my personal passion. I'm grateful to Chris for sharing this with others (and posting a testimonial, something we should probably do with the feedback we get every day!) because through his simple gift of a link he was able to help someone live a healthier and happier life. That feels great!
As long as I'm breaking my four month hiatus, I figured I'd take a second to give a hat tip back to Lee Odden, who was both kind and delirious enough to name buzzhit! a must read SEM blog.
Thanks so much for the nod Lee; I'll see what I can do about earning that title in 2007 without violating NDAs and what not (life was so much simpler before)!
It's hard to believe it's been a little over four months since my last post. So much has happened personally and professionally during that time... though as I reflect back on it now as I sit down to write this post, it seems little more than a blur.
Nonetheless, I'm very excited to share a bit of news about a new development at Healthline. As you all know, I've done my best to not use buzzhit! as a platform exclusively for Healthline (ie, not mentioning the launch of our Health Blogs, HealthLinks, our deal with USNews & World Report and others, etc)... but on this occasion, I think it's worth a few words...
Healthline has just released a new product named Symptom Search. Very simply, this is the most comprehensive (and I personally would argue, relevant) consumer symptom research tool on the web today. More importantly, it's data driven, with a search interface, which means it's quick and easy to use for anyone that knows how to search (and thankfully, that's pretty much everyone).
Using Symptom Search is easy. Simply start typing in your symptom and Symptom Search will start recommending symptoms that match. Add one and get results. Add another, and narrow your results. (Extra cool -- once you've added your first symptom, you can use the Add Related Symptoms feature, which automatically calculates the most likely co-occuring symptoms based on those you've added so far.)
The results are ranked based on CDC data, data mining and input from our team of clinicians. Results are actually articles, so you can read further about the disease and conditions that might be causing your symptoms. And of course, each of those result articles include HealthLinks, which means you can dig deeper into any of the concepts you might not understand within the article.
One of the things I'm particularly pleased with is how well the feature integrates with our site, in particular our core web SERP. Here's an example for the symptom wheezing. Yes, like every other search engine on the planet, we can give you a list of articles about wheezing; but now, we can give you clinical guidance based on actual evidence (vs., say, statistical clustering of a web corpus) on what might be causing your wheezing.
Symptoms are a huge area of interest for health consumers... but this only one type of vertical search within the vertical of Health that we can improve upon. I can't wait to share more with you throughout the remainder of 2007!
(One quick sad note; Symptom Search launches in beta without full support for Mac OS X, so please test it on a Windoze platform. And yes, we do plan on fully supporting the Mac. )
Press release follows for those who might be interested in a more detailed walkthrough of features and what not.
NEW HEALTHLINE SYMPTOM SEARCH DRAMATICALLY IMPROVES ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR ONLINE HEALTH RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
First “Search-driven” Symptom Tool Gives Consumers the Ability to Research the Most Comprehensive List of Symptoms and Possible Causes Currently Available
SAN FRANCISCO – February 13, 2007 – Healthline Networks (www.healthline.com), the leading provider of intelligent health information services, today unveiled Symptom Search, the first search-driven symptom exploration tool. Symptom Search is the only Internet symptom tool to use a semantic medical taxonomy – a relational database of over 1 million diseases, symptoms and their synonyms – to analyze queries and produce ranked results. The latest extension of Healthline’s Medically Guided Search™ platform, Symptom Search provides consumers with more relevant, accurate, and faster results than competing symptom research products.
Symptom Search includes My Symptoms List™, an entirely new way for consumers to create a personalized combination of symptoms to refine their search results and narrow the list of possible causes. Healthline then ranks Symptom Search results using proprietary search algorithms that incorporate five years of current and historical Centers for Disease Control (CDC) incidence data, input from multiple authoritative medical reference libraries, and oversight from Healthline’s team of doctors and nurses. This data analysis, and thousands of hours of clinician review, ensures that the SymptomRank™ search algorithms cover the broadest range of conditions with the greatest accuracy.
“As a physician and heavy Internet user, I know that my patients are increasingly using the Web to research symptoms – it’s a great way, in the privacy of your own home, to explore topics you think you may want to talk to your doctor about,” said Enoch Choi, M.D., a family practice physician based in Palo Alto, Calif. “Healthline’s Symptom Search makes this task quicker and more relevant than ever before – and empowers patients to have better doctor interactions.”
Many existing consumer symptom research tools use static “interview” formats that do not have the flexibility, breadth of information, or relevance of a search-driven resource. As a result, current symptom checkers offer a limited ability to combine symptoms and can only research one-tenth the number of symptoms and one-fifth the number of possible causes currently covered by Healthline’s Symptom Search product. Symptom Search is fully integrated into Healthline.com, giving health information seekers the ability to research their condition through authoritative, doctor-reviewed articles from the world’s foremost medical information publishers.
Other features and benefits of Symptom Search include:
· GUIDED RESEARCH: The Symptom Search “type-ahead” feature allows users to start with the general terms that are frequently top of mind and suggests additional terms to help quickly narrow their search for symptoms. For example, if a user begins to type in “c-o-u-g-h,” they will not only see “cough,” but a medically-reviewed list of 20 other types of coughs such as painful cough, hacking cough, night cough, and so on, to guide and refine the symptom search.
· SEARCH ON RELATED SYMPTOMS: The Related Symptoms feature recognizes user inputs, like “fever” and “muscle aches,” and suggests symptoms that frequently occur in health articles mapped to these symptoms – complete with definitions and illustrations.
· COMPREHENSIVENESS: Symptom Search covers more than 3,500 symptoms and 900 diseases – more than ten times the number of symptoms covered by WebMD, MayoClinic or any major consumer symptom research tool.
· INTERACTIVE, SEARCH DRIVEN APPROACH: To offer the ability to explore possible causes and learn as they go, Symptom Search allows consumers to enter any combination of symptoms they choose. They can also quickly remove a symptom or clear their Symptom List to start again. Other tools don’t allow for the same experimentation and exploration; typically, symptom combinations are very limited, if they are available at all.
· QUALITY/CONFIDENCE: In order to design the best search algorithms and provide consumers with relevant, high quality results, Healthline analyzed raw data from multiple years of CDC surveys to rank the likelihood that a health condition would be detected. This is unique among both clinical and consumer symptom research resources.
“Symptom Search offers a much more interactive, useful way for individuals to research health concerns, helping prepare them for conversations with their physicians,” said Paul Auerbach, M.D., clinical professor of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University and chair of Healthline’s Medical Advisory Board. “Through the unmatched breadth of data to which it has access, Symptom Search provides consumers with a comprehensive tool that helps them more quickly navigate through the discovery process, whether they are dealing with a potential medical emergency or simply trying to distinguish between influenza and viral gastroenteritis.”
About Healthline
Healthline Networks offers an innovative approach to meeting the needs of today’s health information seeker. The company’s unique consumer healthcare taxonomy, begun in 1999 in collaboration with 1,100 medical specialists, powers a suite of intelligent health search, navigation and content services. Combining advanced search technology with deep medical expertise, Healthline and its business partners – a network of trusted destination sites that include publishers, portals, search engines, employers and health plans – help consumers navigate the complex world of healthcare information, empowering them to make more confident, informed decisions. Headquartered in San Francisco, Healthline is backed by VantagePoint Venture Partners, Reed Elsevier Ventures, Mitsui & Co., Ltd., and JHK Investments, LLC.
I got an invite out of the blue to sit down with Charlotte Ziems of the Guidewire Group a couple of weeks ago. Basically, it was a chance to offer "perspective" on an "effort" (no NDA, but why be rude) they have underway, as well as their approach to said.
Meeting Charlotte was fantastic. Eminently personable (and obviously smart and experienced), we hit it off quickly. I looked down to check the time only once during the conversation (a rarity these days given everything going down), and found that our hour had elapsed before I could finish my coffee (surely a sign I was talking too much!). Hopefully it won't be the last meet-up.
Guidewire's got a lot going on, not the least of which is an upcoming Leadership Forum, which looks excellent, not only for its beautiful location, but also because friend and fellow PointCast alum Don Albert will be speaking in his new role as GM Sky, North America. Congrats Don!
Contents of this post have been removed at the company's request (no drama, they're just uncomfortable announcing their investors broadly at this stage).
Instead, it turns out they're publishing a huge dataset (not SEOed pages) for all takers to play with (and for which someone can win a $1MM prize). I immediately thought of Pandora, Aggregate Knowledge and StumbleUpon (and, if I read the tea leaves correctly from the takeaways from a recent "Social Search" conference, perhaps Digg too...); could any of these guys walk away with a cool million and some great publicity for work they've already got (largely or in partly) in the bag? Hmm...
I have one (perhaps two if I'm blessed to find two seriously stellar folks) product management opening(s) on my team at Healthline. If you, or someone you know, is a fit, please email me at moreinfo AT buzzhit DOT com. (Recruiters welcome, but please be sure to send sanitized resumes.)
I'll skip the formal job description and keep it simple:
- You've done the strategic research, business modeling and functional design for consumer facing web offerings used by millions of consumers (or hundreds of thousands of hard core users) - You understand the balance between getting stuff done and building process in a fluid, competitive, start-up environment - You understand the balance between user experience and business objectives in designing compelling offerings
Ideal (any one or combination of the following): - Search experience (web or any vertical) - Medical degree (RN, MD, etc) - Informatics experience (i.e., working with taxonomies/ontologies) - Content experience (licensing, producing, monetizing, optimizing)
I have the following opening available on my team at Healthline. Please email me at moreinfo AT buzzhit DOT com if you, or someone you know, is a fit. (Recruiters welcome, but please email me a sanitized resume.)
And yes... I will eventually start posting things other than job listings... ;-)
- - -
Director, Content Strategy and Production
Reports to the Vice President, Product Management
Opportunity The Director, Content Strategy and Production is responsible for developing and executing the company’s strategy for licensed and proprietary consumer health information, including: identification, acquisition, writing, reviewing, editing, search engine optimizing (SEO), online publishing and revenue generation. Further, the Director will oversee (and enhance) the company’s emerging blog network, from recruiting new bloggers, to maximizing revenue, to dealing with day-to-day operations and support issues. Finally, the Director will be a key member of the Product team, providing ideas and analysis in support of new product and service offerings.
Responsibilities
Build and manage a network of high-quality freelance medical editors, physician article authors and physician content reviewers
Develop and manage the process of creating, reviewing, editing, search engine optimizing and publishing Web content
Assume soft P&L responsibility for content creation, acquisition, licensing vs. monetization
Analyze and understand search, traffic, advertising and medical trends in order to prioritize content for acquisition, creation, etc
Identify, evaluate and negotiate with third-party sources of medical content
Work closely with VP, Product and Product Manager’s to support the information needs of new products and services
Requirements
Experience in a web production environment with HTML, XML and rich-media content systems.
Significant web publishing (process and systems) experience
Experience managing a large network of geographically-dispersed freelance writers or editors
Comprehensive understanding of content classification and categorization (i.e., taxonomies and ontologies)
Strong management skills and experience managing a team
Skills and experience in evaluating content, traffic and advertising from a financial perspective required
Experience with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a plus
A medical credential (MD, RN, etc) or advance degree preferred
Some business development exposure preferred
About Healthline (www.healthline.com) Healthline offers an innovative approach to meeting the needs of health information seekers. Developed in collaboration with 1,100 medical specialists, Healthline’s powerful consumer healthcare taxonomy – the largest of its kind – drives its suite of medically guided search and navigation services. Healthline offers two primary routes to delivering its intelligent health information services to consumers and business partners: through its website, Healthline.com, or through a network of trusted destination sites that include publishers, employers and health plans. Headquartered in San Francisco, Healthline is backed by VantagePoint Venture Partners, Reed Elsevier Ventures, Mitsui & Co., Ltd., and JHK Investments, LLC.
What to do when you haven't blogged in so long that people introduce you with the caveat "yeah, he used to blog"? Post ANYTHING!
So, as a public service, here's a job opp that was presented to me the other day (it's feeling very 1999 again...) w/ permission to post from the recruiter. Enjoy. (And yes, this means free advertising for some start-up that I can't vouch for, so do your own homework!)
--- I am with a company by the name of MyThings, Inc., we are a unique B2B and B2C proposition that has recently expanded operations into the US. We have already built a successful, revenue generating business in Europe, and we now want to tackle the consumer market in the US and abroad. MyThings recently received funding from Accel Partners, a top-tier Silicon Valley VC firm, and we are now in the process of building up our core management team within the US. Currently we are looking to fill the role of Director of Product Management. This is a very strategic role within the organization and will report directly to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).
I am working side-by-side with Robin Reed at Reed Shay, the most prestigious executive search firm in the Silicon Valley (www.reedshay.com ), and our goal is to network with senior executives so we can find the highest caliber candidate possible. The Director of Product Management role will be filled by an entrepreneurial-minded individual, with considerable consumer Internet experience. If you would like to hear more about this company, I would love to talk with you. Whether you are interested in the position, have someone you want to refer, or you just want to learn more about the company, let's talk. I have added more detail below for your review, I look forward to speaking with you.
Take care, Christy Reddy HR Coordinator and Recruiting Czar MyThings, Inc. (650) 248-1174 cr AT mythings DOT com
Analysis of online business and technology trends, including: Search and Directory, Digital Media, Social Networking, RSS, and E-commerce. Written by buzzhit!'sTony Gentile.
