Tuesday, April 03, 2007

whoissick.org - this could be big

PT Lee has recently started a new site that is focused on bringing heath information to the public by tracking and monitoring current and local sicknesses.

whoissick.org

Essentially, it is Web2.0/User generated content meets Healthcare through a Google Maps interface.

The genesis of the idea for Who Is Sick was actually from an acute need that our founder had when his wife started experiencing severe stomach pain while they were on vacation. With no way of knowing whether the pain was from appendicitis, food poisoning, or some other stomach illness, our vacationing couple went to the emergency room and waited for 4 hours (BTW - this was from 11pm until 3am) to be seen by a doctor...only to be told that there was a stomach flu going around and that if the pain didn't go away in 24 hours, to come back. Wow. 4 hours wait for that...in the middle of the night... (of course the doctor did check to see if it was appendicitis so they weren't all bad...).

Our founder thought, "if only there were a website that had current AND local sickness information, maybe we could have avoided the long wait." Needless to say, this started the wheels spinning and a couple of months later, Who Is Sick was born.

Our inspiration for the design of the site came from Craigslist and HousingMaps. One - a remarkably simple and intuitive user generated content site that has bucked the trend of "slick and cool" for simple and easy. The other - the first truly groundbreaking mashup that also put simplicity over full-featured functionality and complexity. We've done our best to provide the same type of experience.

About Us

Who Is Sick was started in 2006 with a mission to provide current and local sickness information to the public - without the hassle of dealing with hospitals or doctors. With a strong belief in the power of people and a faith that user generated content can be extremely valuable, our team set out to create an entirely new system for tracking and monitoring sickness information.

Given the relatively slower adoption of internet and "web 2.0' technology by much of the healthcare industry, our team of healthcare professionals, technology entrepreneurs, mothers, fathers, and caregivers set out to create a simple, user-friendly, and valuable website for the average consumer. We are currently building out our team and expanding our technology breadth across new and exciting areas of healthcare with Who Is Sick as our first offering. Stay tuned for more!

Check it out.

Insider is still trying to get his head around what potential it might have.

Flu epidemic tracking, drug side effect monitoring....

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