indeed, i think the patient (and family) probably cares more about patient's health than the doctors (unfortunately true). my solution is along the lines of what healthtap is doing, the patient posts a question and a few real doctors respond back, the patient makes a better informed decision than rely on a single physician to make or break his/her life!

one big difference between what i am developing versus what healthtap is doing is that i want to develop some sort of scoring for doctors' responses so that we can help the patient make a better decision instead of being confused with 10 or 20 different responses. actually even worse, many doctor responses on healthtap and other such sites is something along the lines of "you should see your doctor", duh!