Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

Kinda interesting, though maybe you can give some context of who the target market is. Am I as a person with a symptom supposed to decide for myself what type of specialist I need? Or is this for other doctors to find a specialist for their patients?

The problem with #1 of course is "how did I decide what type of specialist I need"? I started by looking for "sleep", not expecting that you had subdivided into different specialists within sleep. Great. Ok, I now have a list of specialists, but how did I know that I needed a specialist in Central Apnea, as an example. If I am qualified to no the specifics of a disease, I'm probably already speaking to a doctor, so ....

Are other doctors the target market? If so, is this the right UI for them? Or would a "LinkedIn for medical" be a better experience, allowing doctors to "connect", review/recommend each other, etc etc

The current UX doesn't actually give any usable info on the doctor, aside from their contact details, on the searches I've looked at. I have no idea what your "Expert Physician", or "Expertise Team" rankings mean. Or the "Clinical Trials" phases. There are no links for me to do anything.

Thanks for great question. Our model is physician/enterprise subscription. This is primarily meant to be sold to health systems and health plans, and used by physicians (who refer and collaborate). However, it is also meant to power patient-facing "doctor search" on the insurance company website or health system website. You as a person would not use this site to guess a disease based on your symptoms. Symptom based search is generally very noisy (there are a few symptoms but thousands of diseases). The uses cases: (a) you know your condition/were diagnosed and looking for the right specialist; (b) there is a suspicion that you have a certain condition. In each case, either your primary physician will refer you or you want to select a specialist yourself (half of all referrals are self-referrals; this is consumerism in healthcare). By the way, try "sleep disorders", the most general term.

You are right about the UI. This site is for beta testing. We are adding About page in a week or so that will explain more what we do and what those scores mean. We haven't invested in enterprise designs yet.

Ok, that makes some sense.

Having done no research on your market, and knowing absolutely nothing, my armchair quaterback with a blown knee and beer gut says...

1) ditch the insurance search thing, unless you can get an insurance company to pay you for it early. It is too difficult for you to describe the benefit here, and is it in the insurance companies best interest? It's barely in the best interest of the patient...because they don't know enough about what they are searching for

2) Have you figured out a moat around the doctors and knowing their expertise? Data is not a moat. Your algorithm is not a moat. You may be on to something, I have no idea. Do doctors use linkedin? if not, is there an opportunity to build a network for doctors. Don't forget, LinkedIn is still backed by search. Should you be building a doctor-to-doctor focused LinkedIn that operates on linking specialties?

Also, this isn't only about doctor to patient, there is also doctor to doctor learning opportunities.

I like the 2nd idea, we're definitely exploring it, thanks.

Exactly. How do you measure expertise? Is a layperson expected to know if they would qualify for Phase 1/2/3 clinical trials?

See reply above

Re clinical trials, a person would learn from their physician whether they qualify and should look for one. It's challenging even for physicians to know which other physicians run trial. Our site indicates for each physician whether or not they participate in trials, and the specific phase.

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