July 7, 2009 by Matt Thomas
As anyone who’s ever had to undergo an even vaguely serious medical procedure can tell you, it’s a scary time. The first impulse of people put into this position can be to hit the internet immediately and search for ‘the facts,’ what to expect, how to prepare, etc. The problem with this is that you find yourself trawling through a huge amount of information, a lot of it contradictory and from people who perhaps don’t know the full facts or have no personal experience. These web searchers can often end up even more scared and confused than they were before.
This is why Healthtalk Online was created. The new website, based at Oxford University, acts as a resource of interviews with sufferers of various conditions. These interviews provide a unique insight into what it is like to actually undergoe treatments for conditions like cancer and also more common information about pregnancy etc.
The site is nothing if not comprehensive, with around £120,000 dedicated to collating the 30-50 in-depth interviews deemed necessary to cover each condition well enough and to ensure accuracy. That second point is really the major strength of this site, that the information within can be relied upon 100%. It’s a decidedly non 2.0 approach, with old-school journalistic integrity and fact checking replacing UGC.
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