Just to prove that I haven't completely descended into Crazy Old Crone territory, I feel the need to say something nice about what fertility consumers can find in the online race for their attention.
Not many of you know this yet, but there's a relative newcomer to the crowded racecourse of Internet sites for health care information and community. The reason you don't know about it is the very reason that I think it's a worthwhile spot with which to be familiar.
There's usually not a lot of marketing money in University-associated collaborations that are interdisciplinary and transparent. So
Medpedia relies on word-of-mouth to spread the good news of their existence.
How do
I know about Medpedia?
Before the site went live last year, they made the rounds of fertility specialists and related sideshow folks, like me, asking for volunteers to offer up feedback as Medpedia grows and to field a few community questions. They've been around for about a year now, though they pushed out of the gate pretty quietly. Besides being because of that whole marketing-money issue, the folks who put Medpedia together wanted to be sure it's fully deserving of whatever claims they make about its benefits to "anyone with an interest in health, medicine and the body, including medical professionals, medical organizations (for-profit and non-profit), and the general public."
Speaking of the site's makers, feel free to 'meet' the group that funds and maintains Medpedia --
Ooga Labs. No, not "labs" as in medical laboratory. Ooga's a lab full of geeks.
And since I'm so keen on who's guarding the henhouse, here's
Ooga's explanation of where Medpedia is coming from, so to speak:
"Medpedia integrates 1) a collaborative information resource (like Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, etc.) with 2) a professional network (like LinkedIn), with 3) patient communities, and 4) a HIPPA-compliant tele-health communications platform to tie everyone together in real time. The company is funded by Ooga, run by a team of people inside Ooga, and is advised by an all star roster of Medical luminaries."
[from http://www.oogalabs.com/companies#medpedia]
And for further oomph, check out
Medpedia's Record of Merit, which lists all the venerable groups and individuals who first came forward in 2008 to help birth Medpedia.
Why, there's even an I
nfertility Community. Yes, I'm one of its administrative members. No, those of us involved do not get paid. Near as I can tell, we medical geeks who signed up to hang out at Medpedia are doing so out of a sincere desire to make good information available to anyone who wants to find it. Some of us just like to write a lot, of course.
Why am I just now writing about Medpedia?
Well, my Facebook friends have already heard about it. So it's not exactly the first time. But the thing that's got my attention now is
Medpedia's new Clinical Trials platform. You can search for a slew of opportunities where you might participate in research, sometimes with pretty nifty benefits like paid medication.
Besides just being a place where you can kvetch and ponder the plight of your physical condition, I think Medpedia is just about as thoroughbred as a Web community can get. It only needs a few spectators to get the ball rolling and we're talking the Wikipedia of medicine here, folks.
Tag. You're It. Spread the word.