Saving Lives: Healthline to Debut Drug Notebook Social Platform

Want to know if anyone else has had an adverse reaction to a medication? If other consumers have side effects similar to your own? Healthline’s new Drug Notebook just may be the website to help you find answers.

Finding out more about your medication, as well as the experiences of others using the same prescriptions, just got easier with Healthline’s new Drug Notebook social platform. No longer will you need to rely solely on your pharmacist or prescription flyer side effect information. Now you can compare notes with thousands of others to find out drug interactions, side effects, helpful instructions, and more.

Healthline, one of the fastest growing online health services, is announcing today that they have formed a partnership with First Life Research, a social media search company, to add Social Search to the Healthline Drug Notebook, a suite of drug information applications that includes Drug Interaction Checker, Pill Identifier, Drug Comparison, and more.

Healthline is a consumer site that reaches over 100 million consumers each month in partnership with Yahoo, AARP, and Aetna, among others. In addition to providing information on the latest research in medicine, Healthline offers Health Learning Centers, a disease information database (Disease A – Z), a symptom checker (Symptoms A – Z), 3D Body Maps, videos and slideshows,

To add to their already burgeoning databases, they are adding a much improved user experience by integrating social media into their Drug Notebook. Healthline’s Social Search, which will employ First Life’s Treato platform, will map more than a billion posts from health forums and blogs around the web.

This new tool will cover more than 11,000 drug brands, providing multiple perspectives and insights into drug information that consumers want—and need—to know. Consumers can filter conversations by popular topics, related drugs and interact with graphical summaries to view the most popular topics and drill down into specific threads.

By clicking on the “See What Others are Saying” links throughout the Drug Notebook, consumers can search social media and forum discussions about the medications they take and compare conversations about side effects, therapy switching, interactions with other medications, costs and effectiveness.

“Health care is inherently social, and technology that builds from social connections, and encourages collaboration and conversation will lead to a better patient experience and improved outcomes,” said West Shell, III, Chairman and CEO, Healthline Networks. “Drug information is one of the top treatment topics consumers search for—this new social search we created with the Treato platform will allow consumers to better understand their medications, as well as other choices, side effects and effectiveness straight from current user conversations.”

The Drug Notebook social platform will provide detailed information on specific medications including:

Easy Navigation: Each drug has its own Drug Notebook home page that provides quick information and links to available social data

Comprehensive Search: A broad list of available data to search, including side effects, interactions, safety alerts, clinical information, commentary from other consumers using the drug and images

Find Common Drug Names: The top 10 brand and generic names used for the drug will be listed for consumers to easily identify the medications for which they are seeking more information

Narrow Searches via Topic filters: Ability to filter by topic area on each specific drug, allowing users to easily narrow their search

Visual, Graphical summaries: Illustrations showing the most popular topics associated with the drug, frequency of posts on a specific topic and more

Sharing Options with Social Media Tools: Links for users to share any Healthline Social Search content.

In the future, the insights from Healthline’s Social Search powered by Treato will be expanded and integrated into Healthline’s full suite of search tools and condition-specific learning centers.

Posted in: HEALTH