DIY Healthcare Reform a Click Away

As the information age matures, ordinary folks have access to used car values, recipes, scholarly reports, baseball statistics, plans for building a backyard chicken coop, videos of dancing cats -- you name it. And if you're one of nearly 47 million Americans who don't have health insurance, you also have Web-based options for self-diagnosing illnesses or treating chronic conditions, including WebMD.

Now there's a newer, arguably more-robust option: HealthBase. Its secret sauce is the use of semantic Web technology, which allows the browser to actually read relevant content from numerous sources, as explained in an article by FastCompany.

Here's the gist of how HealthBase works, according to the article:

"When you search a condition, treatment or drug on HealthBase, it performs a semantic search of all the other health-related sites on the Web. That means it doesn't just look at the titles of the articles and spit back a result, it reads into the actual text to deliver you really useful content."

OK, but how does it really work? I guess the answer to that question lies somewhere in the intricacies of the code itself, which is way beyond my pay grade.

The important thing is that it's simple to use and allows users to cross-reference various sources, which it lists on the left-hand column. Wikipedia results often come up, though, so make sure you understand where each piece of information actually comes from. One of the highlights is that unlike WebMD, HealthBase doesn't clutter your search results with ads.

But if you think you need medicine, you may want to stick with a professional (although most prescription drugs are available online, too).

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