Contributed by Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions LLC

The healthcare industry has been quite resilient to economic downturns and is expecting to see a growth in the market largely due to the large, affluent and aging “baby boomer” population. Several technological innovations are springing up in the healthcare industry to take advantage of this growth. This article is a showcase of innovations in the healthcare industry that are Internet based.

I have presented below online healthcare innovations in various categories that could help consumer patients and medical practitioners.

1. Online access to physicians and health experts:
http://www.hellohealth.com/ The site allows you to talk to health experts, schedule appointments with doctors, do virtual meetings with them and even do follow-ups online.
http://www.zocdoc.com/ Free website that helps you find and schedule appointments with local doctors. http://www.justanswer.com/ Ask a question and get an answer from qualified health experts or doctors. This site is not free, but is quite inexpensive to use.
http://www.americanwell.com/ Online care for consumers that provides 24×7 access to physicians. The cost of using this service is not clearly indicated on their website.
http://www.freemd.com/ Interact with a virtual video doctor who asks you questions about your symptoms and makes a recommendation to you.

2. Tools for self-service healthcare management:
http://www.sugarstats.com/ Helps you keep track of your sugar levels to manage your diabetes on your own.
https://www.mymedlab.com/ Helps you schedule and order clinical tests on your own. You can go to a local lab to give a sample and get the test results online.
http://doublecheckmd.com/DTHome.do Helps you find out if any symptoms or abnormal lab tests are caused by drug interactions or side-effects.
http://engagewithgrace.org/Questions.aspx Helps you answer 5 basic questions and lets your relatives know your preferences in case you are debilitated in a terminal illness.

3. Medical information repositories and search engines:
The following sites provide a large amount of information on various symptoms, diseases, preventions and treatments: http://www.webmd.com, http://www.medpedia.com/, and http://www.healia.com/

4. Support groups/Patients helping patients:
People suffering from the same ailment can learn from each other and find a support group that helps. Sites like http://www.inspire.com/ and http://www.patientslikeme.com/ provide that.
http://www.ratemds.com/social/ The RateMDs site helps you review and give a rating to your doctor. The aggregate ratings and rankings for doctors are also available for you to check out.

5. Electronic health records on the web.
Many companies are getting into the space of helping consumers get secure access to their electronic medical records. The following three companies are the major innovators in the field:
http://dossia.org/, https://www.google.com/health and http://www.healthvault.com/

6. Managing costs of healthcare:
https://www.changehealthcare.com Helps consumers track their healthcare bills, compare costs of prescriptions and doctor visits so they can save money.
http://healthcare.intuit.com/ Free health expense tracker that integrates with health insurance plans from Cigna and UntedHealthCare.

7. Social Network for doctors:
Doctors can find valuable insight from connecting with each other and collaborating on certain cases. These social networks are exclusively for physicians: https://www.ozmosis.com/home http://www.sermo.com/

The various web based healthcare innovations featured here are just beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible in the healthcare innovation landscape, especially given the pervasiveness of the web today. We expect to see more valuable tools in the future as the internet matures and as technology entrepreneurs focus on capitalizing on the growing healthcare market.

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