As physician finder and rating websites continue to grow they are doing the next logical thing — launching apps for smartphones and tablets to go with their websites. That’s just what BetterDoctor has done. The health IT startup that debuted the service at Tech Crunch Disrupt in September last year made its app available through iTunes’s app store today.
The app includes 100 insurance plans and 600,000 doctors invited by the company to be included in its network. Users can search by specialty and also see the physician locations on a map in relation to where they’re based.
San Francisco-based BetterDoctor got its start because co-founder Ari Tulla got fed up with what he viewed as an inefficient process of searching for doctors for his own family’s health issues.
Insurance companies like UnitedHealth, Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield have been launching physician finder apps of their own to make it easier for members to locate physicians in their network in their region.
Although BetterDoctor vets physicians before listing them, some companies like ZocDoc combine a physician finder service with consumer reviews. ZocDoc launched its app in October 2010, but plenty of companies have been lining up to steal its marketshare.
One shortcoming of these services offered by startups is that they tend to be patchy, particularly for specialties like urology, with some reviews the result of only a couple of people contributing them.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
