Disclaimer: A blog post[0] on this topic ended up on HN's front page recently (which had a link to GlacierMD) but I'd already written this whole "Show HN" spiel so I figured I'd submit it anyway. Hopefully this doesn't come across as too spammy! (The previous post was really more about the problem, not my proposed solution.)

Anyway, thanks for checking out GlacierMD—a consumer health tool I've been hacking on for the last few months.

I chose long COVID as the first condition because (sadly) lots of people have it[1] and the research is changing rapidly[2]. Unlike other health references—which are editorial-driven—GlacierMD's data is structured, so (eventually) you'll be able to sort, filter, and compare different symptoms, treatments, and conditions.

All the data is based directly on peer-reviewed evidence. Right now the "primary-research-to-user-friendly-summaries" pipeline is partially automated, and eventually the plan is to automate it to the point where it's cost effective to offer this information at a consumer price point. (Unlike UpToDate and other physician references, which have awesome information but are priced waaaay outside the budget of most consumers.) Another advantage of this pipeline: it runs daily, which means GlacierMD's data is a lot fresher than most other long COVID resources.

Long-time HN readers might remember a postmortem[3] about a similar concept I had five years ago—hopefully I've taken some of those lessons to heart!

I'm always looking for feedback—I'll do my best to respond to comments here but feel free to email me at tom@tjcx.me. Thanks for reading!

[0] https://blog.tjcx.me/p/why-is-webmd-so-awful [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/coronavirus/ [3] https://blog.tjcx.me/p/40k-fantastic-startup-idea