This is an engine that checks patient symptoms against rare or unusual conditions and is apparently only to be used by medical professionals. This is stressed quite often, and given that there's already a condition 'cybercondriac' this is an engine that should be left well alone if you worry about having some weird disease. It's called FindZebra because the term "zebra" is a medical slang for a surprising diagnosis. Physicians are taught since medical school to concentrate on the more common diseases: "when you hear a gallop, you should think about a horse, not a zebra".
The engine indexes about 30,000 medical articles on rare and genetic diseases which are freely available on the internet, from obvious sources such as Wikipedia to Health on the Net Foundation and the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center. The project website is at the Technical University of Denmark, Rare Disease Information Retrieval Project.
Once again, since they stress it so much: "FindZebra should only be used by medical professionals. Although the articles indexed by the system have been written by medical professionals or reviewed by medical associations, it is strongly recommended that, as a patient, you consult you local health care provider. FindZebra does not replace professional health care, and cannot be held responsible for erroneous use of the information provided through the system." Does that make you less, or more likely to try it out? Yes... thought so!
Now, looking for that "needle in the haystack" when it comes to weird symptoms and rare diseases can be easier to find. It's like having a metal detector or powerful magnet to locate the needle. I think it's brilliant! As someone who is in the trenches of medical marketing all day long, I'm definitely going to be asking physician clients if they know about this FindZebra project! Thanks!
-Kim, Owner of EggStream Marketing
Posted by: Kim Virrueta | April 13, 2013 at 03:40 AM