New rating, reference site launches at Health 2.0

Clarimed, a new healthcare rating agency offering independent information and reference tools, has launched its new online service at the Health 2.0 conference. The site features analytical insights into medical devices, diseases, procedures and manufacturers.

Founder and CEO Nora Iluri points out that other industries with complicated products, such as cars and mutual funds, have rating agencies – JD Powers and Morningstar, respectively – that provide information and ratings to help inform consumers, professionals and institutions.

Clarimed, which bills itself as the first independent rating agency for healthcare, seeks to fill the information gap between scientific portals and websites for consumers that cater to fear, uncertainty and doubt, says Iluri.

“Clarimed’s mission is to provide well-organized, consumer-focused information, in addition to product ratings and other user experiences and opinions," she says.

Iluri, who has a PhD in bioengineering from MIT, is an entrepreneur who sold her last start-up, Zoragen, a molecular diagnostics company for prenatal screening and cancer diagnostics. With Clarimed, she seeks to harness official government data and other information sources to provide core analytics and ratings.

With healthcare lacking such an independent and objective entity, she contends, consumers, physicians, purchasing organizations and payers often base their decisions on brand names rather than quality and performance.

Moreover, without a transparent rating entity for healthcare products, manufacturers have less incentive to risk going through another round of FDA approvals for improvements that individual consumers and buyers cannot perceive, she argues. While there are some websites that aim to rate providers, there has yet to be a site that rates medical products.

Clarimed's growing healthcare reference database is aimed at laymen and professionals alike. Its core features include:

•  Standardized, user-friendly, content-rich information on more than 125,000 medical devices, diseases, procedures and manufacturers
• Ratings of healthcare products across three major (efficacy, safety, usability) and 11 minor dimensions
• The ability to share personal experiences on a particular disease, procedure, or any healthcare products, including how individuals are coping with their problems and how to use or select a particular product
• Safety information, such as recall and adverse event statistics by product, category or company, including trends, type of adverse event (e.g. hospitalization, death), where adverse events typically happen and who are the typical users when something goes wrong
• An FDA approval reference, offering detailed information about when and for what a particular healthcare product was approved, and what type of changes the manufacturer has made to these products over the years

"At a fundamental level, Clarimed will bring transparency to the healthcare market, enabling users to make better healthcare decisions," says Iluri.

Mike Miliard

Managing Editor of Healthcare IT News

Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeMiliardHITN