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by kliao 4487 days ago
Regarding idea #1 - "We’re looking for an iconic consumer company to reinvent health information."

This would be great. I wish there was something out there that provided objective up-to-date interpretations of health-related medical publications applicable to everyday living. For example, conventional knowledge vilifies saturated fats, but new research seems to indicate otherwise. Numerous diets exist all clamining to be optimal and backed by science. What scares me is finding out 20 years from now, all efforts at maintaining a healthy lifestyle were completely misdirected and in fact, unecessary or even detrimental. What are some ways to accomplish a completely unbiased health guide? It could be based on meta-analysis of academic publications, crowd-sourced, or expert peer-reviews...just something that weighs the reliability of research, points out any deficiencies, and fights the propagation of sensational headlines like "Red meat kills you!" anytime some journalist misinterprets a dubiously controlled experiment on lab rats that shows a statistically insignificant correlation between two variables.
2 comments
chestnut-tree 4487 days ago
The NHS website does a pretty good job. It's obviously aimed at the UK populace, but presumably the info is accessible to anyone with an internet connection - http://www.nhs.uk/

Their "Behind the headlines" blog picks apart popular health stories reported in the (UK) press - http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx

I can't say I would necessarily trust a consumer company for health information, but that's probably an attitude shaped by having a state-funded, not-for-profit health system.

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angersock 4487 days ago
Right, sure, but remember that you can be beaten to market and in market by anybody selling quack advice that plays better to what people want to here.

The quality and veracity of a lifestyle product is largely unimportant.

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