HealthContentAdvisors

AARP Launches Health Tools on Its Website

• Posted August 27th 2008
• by Marji

AARP last week announced the addition of four new health tools to its website. The tools, which will enable site visitors to locate doctors and hospitals as well as learn more about their health conditions, were designed to provide users with a new reliable health information source.

The tools are accessible at www.aarp.org/health. One tool is Symptom Search, which is powered by Healthline Networks, using Medically Guided search technology to analyze user symptoms and produce a ranked list of likely causes. It also has a relational database of more than one million diseases, symptoms and their synonyms. Symptom Search also has personalization options that enable users to refine their searches to yield more relevant results.

Another tool is the Health Illustrated Encyclopedia, which is provided by A.D.A.M. This information resource is updated continuously and includes more than 3,600 articles and 2,000 images covering categories such as diseases and conditions; injuries; symptoms; nutrition; surgeries; test; poisoning; and special topics.

HealthGrades provides Doctor and Hospital Finder, which has been specially customized to AARP’s demographic. It helps users research doctors and compare the quality ratings of hospitals by specific location and medical condition or specialty. It also includes a “map it” feature powered by MapQuest that can show users the distance to a doctor’s office or hospital from their location. There is also a “patient experience” feature that allows uses to view patient ratings on doctors and provide their own.

The Drug Database & Interaction Checker, powered by Gold Standard, is a database that provides information about prescription drugs, over-the-counter products, and alternative medicines. It also has a MedCounselor Drug Interaction Alert that reveals and ranks interactions between prescription medications, over-the-counter, herbal and nutritional products, as well as lifestyle factors such as caffeine, tobacco and grapefruit juice.

An initial first thought about this could be, why would consumers turn to AARP for health tools instead of a traditional health information website? But the truth is, consumers will go to the information source that they trust. For that reason, this should be a successful venture for AARP. Individuals who already trust their other content will likely give these tools a try. AARP has certainly paid attention to what consumers want from health-related sites, such as more personalization features that can help them conduct more relevant searches related to their specific symptoms and overall needs. Plus, AARP knew where to get the functionality–the organization has partnered with well-established players, such as A.D.A.M. and HealthGrades, to ensure users have a positive and productive web experience.

And as more and more consumers turn to the Internet for health resources, this suite of new tools has the potential to become a main driver of traffic to the AARP website, thus helping the organization bring more attention to its other online offerings.