Frederic Llordachs*, Y, Barcelona, Spain Aline Noizet, Y, Spain Track: Business Presentation Topic: Consumer empowerment, patient-physician relationship, and sociotechnical issues Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2014-08-19

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With the idea of making easier for patients to contact with healthcare professionals, Doctoralia recently added a new service, completely integrated in its platform, called Ask an Expert. As of today, it has launched in 9 of the 21 countries where Doctoralia operates.
The service is free for professionals and patients.
Patients can ask a simple question about a medicine or a disease on our platform, in an anonymous way. Each question is revised by Doctoralia’s medical team before being send to the professionals who agreed to answer questions. Patients’s questions have to be simple, and can’t require a diagnostic or 2nd opinión. Ask an Expert doesn’t pretend to replace a consultation but to avoid unecessary visits to consultants (question about medical interactions, side effects etc)

Benefits for the patient:
. questions are anonymous
. answered by professionals registered on Doctoralia (patients can check their background, curriculum, diploma, comments left by other patients etc)
. questions can be answered by various professionals, confirming or contrasting their fellow’s answers
Questions are answered in approx. 24 hours

Benefits for the healthcare professional:
. Increasing their visibility and credibility by ‘demonstrating’ their knowledge in their specialty
. professionals can ‘agree’ with their fellows regarding a specific answer, giving them more credibility. This also helps patients choosing a profesional.
. Those answering questions receive more visits to their profiles and attract more new patients

Professionals who registered to participate in Ask an Expert are sent questions related to their specialty, and can choose the ones they want to answer. Those answers are also validated by our medical team. Before being published on the medicine/treatment page and on the professional’s website.

Some numbers about Spain:
2.000 consultants answering questions
40.000 questions asked
25.000 answers