Advice for the ill, points for the doctors
Every sphere of life, it seems, can be turned into a game — including the way physicians offer medical advice and build a public reputation. HealthTap, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, has brought the vocabulary and mechanics of games to medicine.
At the company’s website, users post questions and doctors post brief answers. The service is free, and the doctors aren’t paid. Instead, they engage in gamelike competitions, earning points and climbing numbered levels. They can also receive nonmonetary awards — many of them whimsically named, like the “It’s Not Brain Surgery” prize, earned for answering 21 questions at the site.
Fellow physicians can show that they concur with the advice offered by clicking “Agree,” and users can show their appreciation with a “Thank” button. These clicks bring recognition to the contributors, too. Receiving 25 thanks gives a doctor a “Doogie Howser Award”; for 50, it’s a “Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable Award.”
Here’s an example of a question on HealthTap: “What does it mean when ur right side of ur body goes num?” The top-rated answer last week was as follows: “Stroke is likely. If that occurs at any time, anywhere, immediate emergency room evaluation should be done and the person should get there by ambulance. The earlier the intervention the better the result." Five other doctors agreed.
By participating, doctors who want to attract new patients have a chance to gain visibility. When searching for answers to a particular question, users can add a geographic filter, narrowing the search to doctors who are nearby. But doctors who already have busy practices and can’t accept new patients are less likely to be interested in participating on the site.
HealthTap started its Web site last May. It says that it has signed up more than 9,000 physicians and that it is adding 100 a day. The site does not carry advertising, and the company declines to comment about how it plans to generate revenue.
Aside from the badgelike awards, the site offers some social network features. Users can follow particular doctors and topics of interest; new answers related to these are displayed in an “activity feed” shown when users log on to the site.
The site offers a peer-based reputation system of its own devising. Next to each answer, users see the number of doctors who agree; with a click, they can see who the approving doctors are, as well as something that HealthTap calls a “reputation level,” which is built by accumulating HealthTap awards, “Agrees” from fellow physicians and other measurable activities at the site.
Neither the doctors’ specialties nor the levels are displayed next to doctors’ answers, but by clicking, the curious user can see that one answer was submitted, say, by a psychiatrist listed as “Level 7 Leading” and a dissenting one from an internist who had reached “Level 14 Distinguished.”
Ron Gutman, the chief executive of HealthTap, says this of its system: “In academic or big hospitals, a physician’s reputation is known only to fellow physicians. At HealthTap, professional reputation is transparent to patients as well as to peers.”
