Collaborative Symptometer

Well starting off from where I ended in my previous post.

We don’t want to be a company like Friendster or WebMD. We just want to be Gencache.

Thought I’d write about how the Symptometer works.

1. We have created a Profile generator or we call it the Symptometer. Here an individual can go in and describe in common people terms the perceived symptoms that he or she is experiencing.

2. The profile name is maintained as long as you keep entering the symptoms for the same profile detail name e.g. knee pain with the same initial recommendation e.g. knee cap.

3. The moment you change your recommendation for knee pain, the system will create a new profile for you e.g. knee pain with recommendation "physiotherapy" and maintains the perceived symptoms associated with the new profile

4. You will have the option to archive or save the profile as a previous profile if it no longer exists.

As you use Gencache more frequently, you will notice that you can create trust levels for people and filter out information and profile searches accordingly. Also based on a trust level, "you" can decide whether you want to share your symptoms with another individual.

When you invite other support group members, friends or family, they will be automatically linked to you.

We have a lot of rules built into the system for sharing data.
E.g. one has to be linked "directly or indirectly" to another individual and the other individual "has" to consent to sharing symptoms for collaboration.


Collaboration aspects:

1. If you have knee pain and wish to collaborate with another individual who has knee pain, you can do a side-by-side comparison of the other individual's perceived symptoms as compared to your perceived symptoms.

2. Presently, you can obviously use the system even without a healthcare condition, by submitting articles of interest for people to read.

Gencache - here we are

Hello!

I'm part of the founding team for Gencache http://www.gencache.com , a company focused on creating social networking solutions for healthcare collaboration.

Started Gencache earlier this year after noticing that most of the health portals out there do not have too much of an interaction or collaboration between members going, other than replies to message boards.

Was spending lots and lots of time wading through healthcare messaging boards, ocean of messages and replies to a message, regarding any healthcare condition or symptoms.

One might ask: Why spend so much time on the internet? Why not go to a physician and get an official opinion?

The answer to that has always been a fascinating mystery to me.

I have always had this "delay" in getting myself to go for a doctor visit or an annual medical checkup.

Personally find it better to quickly do some research on the internet. Then I feel as though I am prepared to ask the right (or one may say perceived) questions when I go for a visit to the doctors office.

I totally agree though that the internet in no way replaces an official opinion from a healthcare professional or a physician.

In my healthcare related searches on the web, found it pretty frustrating that I could not get a time point comparison between some individuals having the same demographics as myself.

So thought and thought and.....

Thought of providing a web service that combined aspects of the social networking model (linking people) and adding to that a unique way to share and collaborate about their healthcare experiences.

So took a shot at coming up with the actual web offering and not just remain stuck with an idea.

Phew the product development was a pretty decent effort, especially since we literally bootstrapped all the way, getting consultants/friends in on a need basis.

Launched a preview version of Alpha on September 4, 2004. It was by invitation only for demos at that point.

We have now opened up Gencache for everyone as of last week.

We would love your feedback and hope you can try out the service. Please remember that we are still in Alpha, and every feedback that you provide us with makes our product better from a healthcare collaboration perspective.

Do check us out

http://www.gencache.com

Cheers,
Jay

Ok!
Questions about
Whether we plan to be a company like WebMD ?
Whether we plan to be a company like Friendster or LinkedIn ?

I'll answer those soon in my next post.