HealthTap, the online network that lets doctors answer anonymous queries, says it has surpassed one million registered users, marking its growing popularity as a destination for folks seeking personalized medical advice.
MUNICH, GERMANY - JUNE 29: Ron Gutman of Healthtap speaks during the Digital Life Design women conference (DLDwomen) at Bavarian National Museum on June 29, 2011 in Munich, Germany. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
The Internet is a wild place for health-related content, where searching for advice on a headache can get you to a diagnosis of “brain tumor” in four clicks or less. HealthTap founder Ron Gutman sought to solve this when he started his company two years go as an alternative to Google GOOG -1.31% searches and health-themed websites littered with Viagra ads.
The network he created, HealthTap, twins anonymous queries from registered users with licensed doctors who have been vetted by the company. It’s personalized healthcare, Gutman says, adding that his users spend an average of 21 minutes per sessions on the site and mobile apps. The one-million-user mark was an “extremely important milestone for the business,” he says.
Though users must submit a name and email address, and their queries will be public, their names and identifying details will not. “We are the exact opposite of Facebook ,” says Gutman. “We are default anonymous.” Doctors are named however, and roughly 37,000 from across the U.S. are registered with the site.
Questions submitted by users are scanned for key words and funnelled to doctors with the relevant specialty. Each one is limited to 150 characters, unless the user wants to pay a 99-cent donation to charity to extend their word limit.
Users get a notification when their question is answered, typically within a few hours. It used to be that the more questions doctors answered, the higher their rating, or Docscore, on HealthTap. Thisled to criticisms that its doctors could game the system with rapid-fire answers that weren’t necessarily to a user’s benefit.
Gutman says HealthTap has stopped counting answers. “We’re attuned to gaming,” he says. “We have algorithms looking for these things.” Answers also get the the thumbs up or down from other doctors on the network — a form of peer review — which he says keeps cheating at bay.
Doctors increasingly realize they need to cultivate online reputations, and HealthTap is a credible way to do that, he argues. It helps that more are also using iPads at work, and could use them to answer questions between patient visits.
Gutman is originally from Israel but moved toCalifornia 15 years ago to study at Stanford University. When I met him at HealthTap’s Palo Alto offices, he sported Silicon Valley casual-wear of plaid shirt with jeans and projected enormous enthusiasm for the world-changing potential of his small company. Sometimes a little too much. Gutman claims for instance that HealthTap has received 4,863 notes from users thanking the company for saving their lives. A closer look at how the site works, though, shows that a “thank you for saving my life” note is a simple click on a multiple-choice question at the end of each doctor’s answer. HealthTap may have saved lives, but probably not this many.
Many will see this as part and parcel of the hype around “webifying” healthcare to solve the chronic problems of bureaucracy and cost.Forbes’ David Whelan gave a good rundown here of how hot Silicon Valley names like ZocDoc and Revolution Health have tried this for some time, and many have failed.
Besides the hype, there’s another problem with HealthTap: with questions and answers so truncated, many doctors’ answers are a vague list of possible diagnoses, often ending with a quote like: “[You] need to see a doc for a proper exam to narrow down the causes.” HealthTap even states on it site that it does not offer full diagnoses or treatment, effectively admitting that it doles out generic advice in a bid to avoid malpractice liability.
Yet in spite of all the hype and superficial answers, the site has grown phenomenally fast from its early inception. The big lure seems to be that it guarantees person-to-person interaction, which Gutman talks up again. “The relationship between doctor and patient is core to everything to do with healthcare,” he says.
Gutman started HealthTap two years ago as a social networking site for local pregnant women in Palo Alto. He found their engagement with the site increased dramatically when he invited a handful of obstetricians and paediatricians to answer several of their questions each day on its forum. “The user engagement propagated doctor engagement,” he remembers. “Both got excited about the interaction.”
Gutman has since grown HealthTap into a larger network of doctors divided into 128 specialities like oncology and paediatrics, and in 2011 raised $11.5 million in Series A funding. Among the investors: Google chairman Eric Schmidt and the Mayfield Fund. “We’re smart about how we’re using our money,” says Gutman. “We don’t have big costs with production or advertising.” The company did buy Q&A site Avvo last November for an undisclosed amount, which doubled its network of doctors. But it’s not yet profitable.
HealthTap shuns ads. Yet Gutman’s ideas for making money could help turn HealthTap into less of a superficial chat fest, and more of a focused advisory, helping Americans avoid paying for a doctor’s visit in which little beyond a simple Q&A takes place.
As such, Gutman plans to expand the site’s current premium service — you can pay 99 cents for a longer question or a few bucks more for a one-on-one consultation — to options like quicker access to doctors and a choice of physician. Users can already hold private, online consultations with HealthTap’s doctors in which they can securely upload photos of themselves and medical files. HealthTap’s users tend to be either those with chronic conditions, who use the site frequently, and younger users in better health, who will stop by for a quick visit. Premium payments could be subscription based, or ad hoc depending on the need.
“We’re experimenting with price points,” says Gutman. “It’s not just focus groups and user testing. It’s also about honing the product. We have to ask, ‘What is the service we’re providing?’” He adds that HealthTap’s investors have been pushing for a date for the launch of its monetization strategy, but it will happen “when we’re ready. We need to feel really good about it.”
Forbes.com
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