Ask a doctor online


Asking a doctor some medical questions online could seem like a no brainer choice when you want to get a professional’s advice about your condition, symptoms or treatment, but you should be aware of some specifics before you do that.

  1. First and foremost, find the right community to ask you question. Don’t rush into the first forum you find which seems to be related to what you’re looking for.
  2. Read before you post. Read some of the previously answered questions. See what’s the quality of the provided answers, are people genuinely happy with the answers they get? Are they getting these answers from real doctors / physicians or are they getting them from anonymous users?
  3. Stay anonymous! After all, you’re about to reveal some sensitive information about yourself.
  4. When asking the question, provide as many details as possible. Ask the question, as if you’re asking your local physician. Here’s a good guide on how to describe medical symptoms to a doctor:
    http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2014/05/08/how-to-describe-medical-symptoms-to-your-doctors
    While providing the details, remember to stay anonymous and avoid mentioning real names, places, etc., unless, of course, you want to reveal such information.

So, you’ve just posted your medical question, what’s next?

  1. Don’t have high hopes! Even if you get a professional’s answer quickly, prepare for it to be so generic as to be far less helpful than a simple Google search. After all, it’s unethical for doctors to provide personalized medical advice to someone they haven’t seen.
  2. If you get a definitive answer to your question, don’t take it for granted. Take it as a good advice which you should discuss further with a real doctor in person.

But which are the good health / medical communities where you can post your question?

  1. HealthTap (http://www.healthtap.com)
    HealthTap has grown phenomenally fast from its early inception and it says it has now 55,000 top U.S. doctors answering the users’ questions. Normally you’ll get an answer in a matter of few hours. But that’s a shortcoming too, because such rapid-fire answers are usually a vague list of possible diagnoses, often ending with a quote like: “You need to see a doc for a proper exam to narrow down the causes.”
    Nevertheless, HealthTap keeps growing and it manages to provide a great service through its web based app and through its mobile apps.
  2. MedHelp forums (http://www.medhelp.org/forums/list)
    According to the site, MedHelp helps more than 12 million people each month to find answers to their medical questions. The forums seem quite active too and are split into “Ask a Doctor” Forums and “Medical Support Communities”. Even if you get a generic and not very helpful answer from a doctor, you can still ask the community members for help.
  3. WebMD (http://answers.webmd.com/ask)
    Most of the people know WebMD as the largest health portal, hosting thousands of articles and resources on various health and medical topics. There are a lot of experts and community members, answering users’ questions on WebMD but the WebMD “Ask Your Question” process will guide you first through finding similar questions (already answered), and then it will allow you to ask the question you have. This could be a little uncomfortable if you’re in a hurry to ask a specific question and if you want to skip the step where you get a generic answer to your problem.
  4. Reddit AskDocs (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskDocs) / Medical (http://www.reddit.com/r/medical)
    Both communities are fairly new (compared to the above mentioned) but they’re rapidly growing and already answering a good amount of questions. Some questions may be left unanswered, but hopefully those will decrease as more doctors join these communities and start helping people.

But how can Healee help you in your attempt to get a good answer to your medical / health question?

  1. With Healee you can share your health data (or part of it) with a click of a button. And you can do this securely and anonymously. This could save you a lot of efforts, trying to describe all the important details about your condition, symptoms, treatments, etc. Just enter your question and share the link to your health data. And the best part is that the data you’re sharing is not “static” but “active”. This means that the people who’re trying to answer your question will see the latest updates as you continue changing your health data, and they’ll be able to run the same reports as you do. And this could be really helpful.
  2. We’ve introduced a new feature in the latest version of our mobile apps for iOS / Android. You can now post a question to Reddit AskDocs / Medical directly from Healee. Just share the health data you want to, and click the “Ask a doctor” button. It’s easy as that! We’ll also soon add more “providers” to this features, meaning that you’ll be able to post a question to multiple health community sites at once. This could significantly increase your chance of getting a better answer to your medical question.

You can read more about Healee and how it can help you manage your health data more effectively here. Should you have any questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.