I actually first heard about Healia through David Williams at Health Business Blog. At that time, I gave it a drive by but did not really take time to examine all of its features. However, I did think that I would give it a full test in the future when I needed to research something.

Then this week Tom Eng, the president of Healia, sent me a email and asked me to provide some feedback on the site. So for the last two days, I’ve been on an extensive driving road trip of all the features of Healia(Beta).

First- I absolutely love it and find it quite easy to use. The interface was intuitive to me. It is important to remember that Healia is not for diagnosis of disease! Instead it is for researching health conditions and treatment options. After my tour, I firmly believe Healia is on the right track for becoming a premier portal for health information research.

The filter system for information is what makes Healia great. There is such a variety of filters that easily makes a health information search pertinent and darn near exactly what you were looking for. Results can be tailored based on:

  1. Reading level (basic, advanced and for health professionals)
  2. Gender
  3. Race/ethnicity

Other thoughtful and fantastic features include:

    1. The ability to adjust the fonts! Great accomodation for those with vision problems and ADA compliant. This feature works well.
    2. HoN Code Accredited Filter. I’ve been quite a follower of the development of this code and how it is being implemented. I personally think this code should be promoted more as a model.
    3. Interactive Tools filter: allows people to easily find assessments and fun health quizes.
    4. Rollover explanations of the filters. Very helpful and concise. I love how these change font sizes when you adjust the fonts.
    I found the search result for average and advanced users to be very good. I liked that I got some things that I had not seen before when searching for similar targets.Healia is still working on sorting out spelling errors and alternative spellings for search terms. I honeslty cannot imagine how hard that task is when one must start from scratch. Please believe me, I’m not complaining. Healia does a pretty good job already with this, but there are a few holes (one expects that in Beta). To help with this, Healia has a feedback form on every page to help them flesh out areas that need some work.

    It would also be helpful if Healia had a function that would enable users to open links in a new window. I know how I do research. If I find an interesting link on a page, I click it and go there. I often get 5 or 10 pages away from my search results. I also may have a hodge-podge of open windows. Sometimes I close out of one of the windows and then I lose my search results. Then I have to go back and re-enter the search term and try to remember what page of results I was on. Opening results in a new window would help decrease that for me.

    As people become more involved in their own care, I think people will also be looking to connect with others who are going through the same health issues. Oftentimes information gleaned through message boards, advocacy groups and support sites is based on anecdotal experiences and not on scientific research. Yet, this kind of contact can engender hope and inspiration in difficult times. I think Healia could really benefit from a filter could return a list of patient support sites, message boards and/or advocacy groups (similar to the way they have done for interactive tools). Given the wide range of types of these kind of sites, I realize that this is a very difficult proposition. However, perhaps they could partner with well-respected advocacy groups to help them with this endeavor.

    Overall, I am delighted in Healia. These folks have created something wonderful and very useful. For a beta product, I think they are almost ready for prime time.

    Thanks to Tom for the invitation. I invite each of you to drive by and offer some constructive feedback too.

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