Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bill_from_tampa 3971 days ago
If a person knows their actual, true, legitimate diagnosis, there are many places for web help (google scholar, for example, can lead the persistent patient to research based PDF's that can be quite helpful).

However, many patients have symptoms, or signs of disease, but have not had a "true" diagnosis made. The doc they saw may be uninformed, the necessary test may only be available at the Mayo Clinic, there may be confusion because of unusual symptoms that are possibly but not definitively associated with the correct diagnosis -- there are many reasons why an ill person may not know their "correct" diagnosis.

So another web site that catalogs information about "known" diagnoses may be helpful to some patients, it will not be a universal cure for lack of information, because a correct diagnosis is necessary before a patient can search for information about that diagnosis online! Also, there are hundreds (thousands) of medical textbooks that do what you are proposing to do, filled with incredibly useful information, that is all behind a paywall and not available to the casual searcher.

But more information is always better, so good luck with your endeavor!