HealthCare.com, an online directory of health care providers that competes in the so-called health 2.0 space with companies such as OrganizedWisdom, announced on Thursday that it has acquired BrokersWeb, a targeted, performance-based online-advertising firm that caters to health insurance brokers, for an undisclosed sum. With the acquisition, it gains control of BrokersWeb's consumer health insurance search engine, Health Insurance Finders.
"The acquisition of BrokersWeb strengthens our presence and fits within HealthCare.com's mission to help consumers make better health care decisions," said Matias de Tezanos, founder and chief executive of HealthCare.com. "From a business standpoint, the acquisition brings together a leading media property and a proprietary monetization platform that HealthCare.com will be able to expand."
BrokersWeb provides more than 250 health industry advertisers with pay-per-click advertising generated from health insurance queries. The company allows advertisers to bid for placement in its paid listings and provides them with return-on-investment analytics to help them make informed ad campaign decisions.
According to company spokesman Jose Vargas, Health Insurance Finders will continue to operate as a standalone site, though some of its features will help enrich HealthCare.com.
The president of CEO of TauMed.com, Tauseef Bashir, attributes this extra depth to a proprietary search engine, which finds articles by theme, not just those with matching keyword tags. When I tried the phrase "birth control," I found that related articles from different parts of the site (news, health tips, blogs) appeared. Nothing irrelevant was placed on the first page of search results, whereas on Google-powered WebMD, the second item listed was only loosely connected to the search term.
Several other features of TauMed are promising. One of the newly added features is "My Health Space." This function lets members create a personal Web site containing links to articles, TauMed support groups and doctors. "My Health Share" is a blog-style forum where users can sound off on a host of health topics. Both functions are aimed at building a solid community of users and medical professionals.
I found that most of the blog-style forum's posts are answered by other TauMed members. This may be good for light issues ("Does pulling my hair in a ponytail too tight cause headaches?"), but less useful or even dangerous for serious medical concerns. While I would like to see the editorial board step in as experts and not just hidden moderators, Bashir's intention with the blog community is to create a comfortable environment for discussion, not necessarily diagnosis.
The site could be helpful for patients researching ongoing conditions because of the bookmarking capabilities on "My Health Space." If I want to research diabetes, for example, I could easily create a full library with credible resources and connect to a community around the topic. While TauMed is off to a good start, I'm uncertain of how comfortable users will be sharing their medical woes in a social-networking setting, without the promise of receiving a doctor's expert advice.
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