Praxeon Blog

We hate to brag but...

Yesterday, Curbside.MD made it's big debut at the first annual Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.  There were over 500 attendees.  And when the audience had a chance to vote for the best medical search engine - they selected Curbside.MD - over Healthline, Kosmix, Medstory and Healia.  We were #1!

It was a wonderful affirmation of our hard work and progress to date.  But we're not done yet.  We have exciting works in progress with personalized search and news, new content and a site that will be devoted exclusively for patients and their caregivers.  Look for more details on all of these exciting developments in the coming weeks!

Thanks to all of our users and supporters who have carried us to this moment.  And a special thanks to Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya for putting on such a terrific event.  We hope to be at the next Health 2.0 Conference in the spring of 2008.

Personalized Health News

Today we are starting a pilot program for an exciting new capability : personalized health news.

Personalized health information is our new mantra. Our first innovation in this area was personalized search, which we have been offering for a few months now. When you ask a question of Curbside.MD, you can choose your health profile and the search results you see are aligned to that profile. Here's an example. Dudley Demo is a 50 year old white male. His medical history includes HIV/AIDS, PCP pneumonia, thrush, shingles, and depression. His medications include bactrium, diflucan, combivir, and viracept. When Dudley Demo issues a simple search for 'headache', the results are dramatically influenced by his health profile, giving him extremely specific and relevant information.

Next, Dudley wants to stay informed. Our new News feature provides him (and you!) with the best health news that is most relevant to his personal health profile. I can't include a link because only Dudley can see his news page; so I'm attaching a screenshot instead. Each day, Dudley can visit Curbside.MD News and read his personalized health news. Today Dudley is learning (unfortunately) that viracept may have been contaminated with a carcinogen during its manufacture.

The process for setting up personalized search and news is quite simple.

1. Use the 'Sign in' link on Curbside.MD to sign in to your account. You will have the opportunity to register if you haven't done so already.
2. Visit My Account, then click the link to 'Create a new health profile'. Of course, your health information is kept private and confidential; we never show it to other users or share it with anyone else.
3. When you enter a search on the Curbside.MD Search page, you can choose your health profile from the dropdown list under the search box and the search results will be customized to you.
4. Visit the Curbside.MD News page for personalized news that is continuously updated.

That's it! Please keep us informed of your experiences by commenting on this blog post, or using the Feedback link on Curbside.MD. This is a brand new feature so we greatly welcome your comments and suggestions.