GoodRx launches well being information platform to fight medical misinformation
GoodRx, an organization greatest identified for its remedy worth transparency service, is launching a brand new well being info software designed to provide in-depth info to a number of the commonest well being questions and situations.
Dubbed GoodRx Well being, the service takes a multimodal strategy, and contains GoodRx Solutions, editorial content material aimed to assist inform sufferers about their situations and questions, Well being Wizard, which helps sufferers navigate complicated health-related selections, and Explainer movies.
“The vast majority of individuals nonetheless dwell within the messy, actual world of not sufficient time to go to their physician, not sufficient time to do what the physician tells them to do and barely sufficient time to get their prescriptions crammed,” Thomas Goetz, chief of analysis and communications officer at GoodRx, informed MobiHealthNews.
“So what we try to do with GoodRx Well being is so simple as making an attempt to create a greater, extra thorough, extra rigorous useful resource [that] drives higher decision-making for sufferers and displays immediately’s state of data and immediately’s editorial approaches.”
Goetz likened it to a Wirecutter for client merchandise or a NerdWallet for private funds, the place non-industry people can discover out extra about subjects. GoodRx has additionally employed a variety of staffers from these organizations to assist get the venture going.
“We try to create a listing of solutions and sources that do higher at fixing individuals’s questions or answering individuals’s questions and fixing individuals’s issues.”
Goetz famous that physicians typically go to Cochrane Evaluations to assemble sources on particular situations and to tell well being decision-making. This new software is trying to synthesize well being info, however on a client degree.
The GoodRx Solutions’ articles begin with a brief reply to a medical query. Because the reader scrolls an article, they’ll get extra particular info, and discover hyperlinks on the finish to extra research and sources. The authors lay out their methodology for answering any given questions, report any caveats and focus on what extra analysis is ongoing.
Readers may faucet into the platform for monetary steerage, FAQs on medicine and articles that debunk well being myths.
The corporate may also present info in video format. This comes after GoodRx introduced its acquisition of HealthiNation, a health-education video producer.
By way of enterprise mannequin, GoodRx Well being isn’t going the everyday commercial route.
“Our mannequin is to work with largely pharma producers, not simply to create show advertisements, however to create applications that assist our readers discover options to inform in the event that they’re available in the market for a model remedy to assist them get entree [to] that remedy largely by issues like affected person help applications, the place producers have arrange these applications to enroll individuals and make extra inexpensive medicine accessible,” Goetz stated.
WHY IT MATTERS
Within the wake of COVID-19, there was a worldwide rise of medical misinformation. The World Well being Group says analysis estimates that round 6,000 individuals world wide had been hospitalized within the first three months of 2020 as a result of coronavirus misinformation.
GoodRx is pitching this software as a technique to give higher well being info to individuals exterior the well being {industry}.
“We’re keen to do the onerous work. I imply, these pages take two months to create, and that is a degree of effort that I feel might be unusual. And the results of that’s one thing that’s extra helpful,” Goetz stated.
“We’re not providing medical recommendation, so it is not going to diagnose you. It is not going to prescribe a therapy, however it’ll provide you with a a lot clearer panorama of what your choices are.”
THE LARGER TREND
In 2020, GoodRx hit the general public markets. In March, the corporate reported its earnings within the first full yr, boasting $550.7 million in income for the total yr – a 42% enhance from the earlier yr.
Whereas the corporate bought its begin for its remedy price comparability software, it has not too long ago been increasing. In 2019, the corporate launched a digital care software, after buying telehealth firm HeyDoctor.
