 | |
| Type of business | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1999 [1] (as YourDoctor.com) |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California & New York, New York, United States |
| Owner | Healthline Media (Red Ventures) |
| Products | Health information services |
| Employees | 279 (2018) |
| URL | www |
Healthline Media, Inc. is an American website and provider of health information headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1999, and purchased by Red Ventures in 2019.
Healthline Media runs healthline.com, which publishes health and wellness information. [2] It also has provided health content to third party websites. In 2010, Healthline Media signed an agreement to provide medical and health-related content to Yahoo! Health. [3] Other partners have included AARP.com, The Dr. Oz Show web site, [4] and insurance company Aetna. [5]
A 2020 study of readability ranked Healthline the second hardest to read (highest education level required) among the top five Google search results for "phenylketonuria", excluding Wikipedia. [6]
Healthline Media was founded in 1999 by endocrine specialist James Norman as YourDoctor.com. [4] In 2006, the company re-launched as Healthline Networks. [7]
In 2011, Healthline was reported to be losing money because it was licensing its content from others. The company invested $1 million to develop its own content. [8] By 2013, it had over $21 million in revenue and 105 employees, with offices in New York City and San Francisco. [7] Deloitte ranked Healthline Media as one of the top 500 fastest-growing technology companies in North America from 2010 to 2013. [9]
In January 2016, Healthline raised $95 million in growth equity financing through Summit Partners. [10] [8] Under the terms of the agreement, Healthline's media business was established as a standalone entity with David Kopp as CEO. The firm acquired the health news website Medical News Today and reference website MediLexicon in May 2016. [11]
In July 2019, Healthline was acquired by Red Ventures. In August 2020, Healthline acquired Psych Central. [12]
While some writers have used terms like "reliable" [13] to describe Healthline, others have questioned both the quality of its content and its usability and readability.
For example, the site Health News Review said a Healthline article about a new medication used promotional language copied from the drug-maker's press release, neglected to cite side effects, and framed the drug's claimed benefits in misleading language that failed to accurately reflect the evidence in a peer-reviewed medical journal. [14] [15] Another news reviewer noted that an article on depression cited studies that had not been peer-reviewed, but provided "multiple perspectives from both within and outside the research articles" without exaggeration. [16]
In a study using coverage of neck pain to evaluate a tool designed to review health websites, researchers from the University of Brighton gave Healthline a score of "good". In particular, the website received high marks in areas such as accuracy, readability, disclosure of sources and ownership, and usability, with lower scores in areas such as comprehensiveness and accessibility. [17]
Healthline's quality has been assessed as falling towards the middle of health information websites. A study of top-ranking health websites published in 2021 evaluated its quality as "good", lower than MedlinePlus's "excellent" scores but higher than affiliate Medical News Today's "fair/good" ranking. [18] It is included on Wikipedia's spam blacklist due to its publication of misinformation. [19]
Aetna Inc. is an American managed health care company that sells traditional and consumer directed health care insurance and related services, such as medical, pharmaceutical, dental, behavioral health, long-term care, and disability plans, primarily through employer-paid insurance and benefit programs, and through Medicare. Since November 28, 2018, the company has been a subsidiary of CVS Health.
Health On the Net Foundation (HON) was a Swiss not-for-profit organization based in Geneva which promoted a code of conduct for websites providing health information and offered certificates to those in compliance.
MedlinePlus is an online information service produced by the United States National Library of Medicine. The service provides curated consumer health information in English and Spanish with select content in additional languages. The site brings together information from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), other U.S. government agencies, and health-related organizations. There is also a site optimized for display on mobile devices, in both English and Spanish. In 2015, about 400 million people from around the world used MedlinePlus. The service is funded by the NLM and is free to users.
WebMD is an American corporation which publishes online news and information about human health and well-being. The WebMD website also includes information about drugs and is an important healthcare information website and the most popular consumer-oriented health site.
eHealth describes healthcare services which are supported by digital processes, communication or technology such as electronic prescribing, Telehealth, or Electronic Health Records (EHRs). The term "eHealth" originated in the 1990s, initially conceived as "Internet medicine," but has since evolved to have a broader range of technologies and innovations aimed at enhancing healthcare delivery and accessibility. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), eHealth encompasses not only internet-based healthcare services but also modern advancements such as artificial intelligence, mHealth, and telehealth, which collectively aim to improve accessibility and efficiency in healthcare delivery. Usage of the term varies widely. A study in 2005 found 51 unique definitions of eHealth, reflecting its diverse applications and interpretations. While some argue that it is interchangeable with health informatics as a broad term covering electronic/digital processes in health, others use it in the narrower sense of healthcare practice specifically facilitated by the Internet. It also includes health applications and links on mobile phones, referred to as mHealth or m-Health.. Key components of eHealth include electronic health records (EHRs), telemedicine, health information exchange, mobile health applications, wearable devices, and online health information. For example, diabetes monitoring apps allow patients to track health metrics in real time, bridging the gap between home and clinical care. These technologies enable healthcare providers, patients, and other stakeholders to access, manage, and exchange health information more effectively, leading to improved communication, decision-making, and overall healthcare outcomes.
Medical News Today is a web-based outlet for medical information and news, targeted at both the general public and physicians. All posted content is available online, and the earliest available article dates from May 2003. The website was founded in 2003 by Alastair Hazell and Christian Nordqvist. It was acquired by Healthline Media in April 2016.
eMedicine is an online clinical medical knowledge base founded in 1996 by doctors Scott Plantz and Jonathan Adler, and computer engineers Joanne Berezin and Jeffrey Berezin. The eMedicine website consists of approximately 6,800 medical topic review articles, each of which is associated with a clinical subspecialty "textbook". The knowledge base includes over 25,000 clinically multimedia files.
Utilization management (UM) or utilization review is the use of managed care techniques such as prior authorization that allow payers, particularly health insurance companies, to manage the cost of health care benefits by assessing its medical appropriateness before it is provided, by using evidence-based criteria or guidelines.
The reliability of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors, who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; its English-language edition has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Red Ventures is an American media company that owns and operates brands such as Lonely Planet, The Points Guy, Healthline, and Bankrate. Red Ventures focuses on news, advice, and review websites. The company's corporate headquarters is located in Fort Mill, South Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Healthgrades Marketplace, LLC, known as Healthgrades, is a US company that provides information about physicians, hospitals, and healthcare providers. Healthgrades is part of RVO Health, a partnership between Red Ventures and Optum, part of UnitedHealth Group. Healthgrades has amassed information on over three million U.S. health care providers. The company was founded by Kerry Hicks, David Hicks, Peter Fatianow, John Neal, and Sarah Lochran, and is based in Denver, Colorado. Jeff Hallock serves as RVO Health's CEO. According to USA Today, Healthgrades is the first comprehensive physician rating and comparison database. The application is part of a trend in health technology in the United States towards consumer-driven healthcare.
The Wikipedia online encyclopedia has, since the late 2000s, served as a popular source for health information for both laypersons and, in many cases, health care practitioners. Health-related articles on Wikipedia are popularly accessed as results from search engines, which frequently deliver links to Wikipedia articles. Independent assessments have been made of the number and demographics of people who seek health information on Wikipedia, the scope of health information on Wikipedia, and the quality and reliability of the information on Wikipedia.
Health information on the Internet refers to all health-related information communicated through or available on the Internet.
James M. Heilman is a Canadian emergency physician, Wikipedian, and advocate for the improvement of Wikipedia's health-related content. He encourages other clinicians to contribute to the online encyclopedia.
Psych Central is a mental health information and news website. Psych Central is overseen by mental health professionals who create and oversee all the content published on the site. The site was created in 1995. The site was named as one of the Internet's 50 Best Websites in 2008 by Time, and has approximately 6 million unique visitors per month. PsychCentral was acquired by Healthline in August 2020. Former attorney and author, Faye McCray was appointed Editor-In-Chief in 2021.
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is an affinity group for contributors with shared goals within the Wikimedia movement. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sibling projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration.
Website audit is a full analysis of all the factors that affect a website's visibility in search engines. This standard method gives a complete insight into any website, overall traffic, and individual pages. Website audit is completed solely for marketing purposes. The goal is to detect weak points in campaigns that affect web performance.
Optum, Inc. is an American healthcare company that provides technology services, pharmacy care services and various direct healthcare services.
Vaccine Safety Net (VSN) is a global network of websites aimed at helping people judge the quality of online information on vaccine safety. It was established in 2003 by the World Health Organization (WHO), which had previously set up the independent Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS), prompted by concern from public health officials regarding the dissemination of potentially harmful health information via the web. By appraising websites, using credibility and content criteria defined by GACVS, the VSN has been developed to deliver information that is easy to access and up-to-date. As of 2020, the initiative has 89 member sites in 40 countries and 35 languages.