Just when I thought that the uses for recommendation systems were already exhausted…
CureTogether is a site that lets you enter your medical conditions (strictly anonymous, only aggregated data are public), and get recommended for… other “co-morbid” conditions you may have. In other words, “people who have your disease usually also have that one too, perhaps you have it too?”
Beyond the obvious jokes, this truly has potential. You don’t only get “recommended” for conditions, but rather also for treatments and causes. We all know that sometimes we have our own personal treatment that works only for us. What if it works for people in our profile, and sharing that profile, anonymously, will help similar people as well? so far this direction is not explicit enough in how the site works, possibly for lack of sufficient data, but you can infer it as you go through the questionnaires.
The data mining aspect of having a resource such as CureTogether’s database is naturally extremely valuable. CureTogether’s founders share some of their findings on their blog. The power of applying computer science analytics and experimentation methodologies – sharpened by web-derived needs – to social sciences and others, reminded me of Ben Schneiderman’s talk on “Science 2.0“. The idea that computer science can contribute methodologies that stretch beyond the confines of computing machines is a mind-boggling one, at least for me.
But would you trust collaborative filtering with your health? it’s no wonder that the main popular conditions on the site are far from life threatening, and the popular ones are such with unclear causes and treatments, such as migraines, back pains and allergies. Still, the benefit on these alone will probably be sufficient for most users to justify signing up.
