A number of high-profile partners care enough to want to share health care information on a new Web platform, scheduled to bow in 2010.
WebMD founder and Discovery Communications' chief of global digital strategy Jeff Arnold and Dr. Mehmet Oz are teaming on Sharecare, where consumers will be able to ask, learn and act on questions about health. Others partners in Sharecare.com, which is slated to launch next year, include Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions, Web developer and operator HSW International and Sony Pictures Television.
HSW is developing Sharecare Inc.'s customizable social QA platform, which is built on a comprehensive information architecture. The platform features social and portability tools that will shift the paradigm for interaction between professional and consumer content and seamlessly extend the content experience to other Web sites.
A subset of the initial questions and answers powered by Sharecare and its content contributors is now available in the "Ask Dr Oz section" on " on www.doctoroz.com, the Web site of nationally syndicated The Dr. Oz Show, co-produced by Harpo and SPT.
"Sharecare's vision is to build an ecosystem that simplifies the search for health and wellness information by organizing all of the questions of health and providing multiple answers representing different points of view. Our contributors will range from renowned celebrity physicians to acclaimed hospitals of excellence to best selling authors to local caregivers to online healthcare consumers," said Arnold is also serving as chief architect of Sharecare. "Leveraging the power of social networking, our contributors ‘share care' through both personal experience and expert knowledge, bringing online healthcare into the 21st century."
