Internet Health Care Magazine Cites Value of lifeclinic.com Site

July/August 2001 issue

In a broad review of healthcare Web sites in its July/August 2001 issue, Internet Health Care Magazine prominently featured the lifeclinic.com site as an example of a disease-specific site that offers value to its users.

The associate editor of the publication, which was recently renamed Technology in Practice, chose lifeclinic.com to open the article as an example of a site that “is attracting consumers who appreciate the depth of information and the online health management tools such sites offer.” The article quotes a user newly diagnosed with hypertension who found the information she sought at bloodpressure.com, the site founded by cardiologist Thomas Pickering, M.D., which was folded into lifeclinic.com last year. “It gave me everything I wanted to know about high blood pressure -- what causes it, the medications out there, the side effects.” Referring to the site’s online discussion groups, this user noted, “I found out that there were other people my age who also had hypertension. Just talking to them brought my blood pressure down.”

Research is showing that Internet users are looking for different applications and features from Web sites depending on what disease they have. “Concentrating on a single medical condition makes sense for Web site developers, enabling them to target content-development efforts and service offerings to effectively reach an easily definable group of consumers,“ the article says. Such a strategy, it notes, provides an advantage over more general health Web sites. By trying to cover all conditions, such sites are very broad, very generalized. The article quotes studies from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) which show that very active Internet users in general tend to prefer disease-specific Web sites. “There is a lot of promise for disease-specific sites,” according to BCG vice-president Deborah Lovich.

The article contrasts disease-specific sites such as lifeclinic.com with broader sites. “The value of a disease-specific site is that by focusing on one disease, you are able to provide more in-depth information than a general, encyclopedic site is able to do,” according to the article. “For generalist sites, it’s tough to really create the true value-added proposition to the patient when you are trying to handle that much content in that many specialties.”

Douglas Goldstein, an e-health consultant, predicts, “In the long run, disease-specific Web e-services that have relationships with physicians and other providers will be the ones that come out ahead. . . . Web e-services that seek to enhance and energize the doctor-patient relationship . . . are the ones that are going to be successful.”

“Health-tracking applications: Consumers are entering blood glucose data, blood pressure readings and more into Web site applications that chart the numbers and give a visual representation of that member’s health charted over a period of time

“Such applications have the capability to attract visitors and have them come back repeatedly. For example, Sheryl Rodriguez, an information systems manager from Bakersfield, Ohio, and one of her co-workers both have hypertension. They take their blood pressure twice a day and log their readings into a tracking application on lifeclinic.com. They’re betting to see who will lower their blood pressure the most. Rodriguez also started a lifeclinic.com account for her mother. ‘My mom doesn’t use computers, so I signed her up. My daughter, who’s 7, helps Grandma put numbers in.’

“Advice from professionals: Disease-specific Web sites often offer an advice feature that enables consumers to e-mail questions to doctors or nurses who specialize in the disease. For example, New York cardiologist Thomas Pickering, MD, answers many of the questions submitted to lifeclinic.com. Users know him by name.”

Such depth and focus, according to consultants, build traffic and give consumers more reasons to visit often.