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A quick shout-out to all those who have claimed their profiles -- thank you for doing so! I was surprised by the number of people who did so in the first week, given that we only announced via a blog post. We really appreciate your engagement.

As you can guess, we've been working on allowing people to add information, and after that, the plan is to allow clinicians who aren't part of the National Provider Identifier database to register themselves. As we roll out those pieces, we'll announce it here.

A quick shout-out to all those who have claimed their profiles -- thank you for doing so! I was surprised by the number of people who did so in the first week, given that we only announced via a blog post. We really appreciate your engagement.

As you can guess, we've been working on allowing people to add information, and after that, the plan is to allow clinicians who aren't part of the National Provider Identifier database to register themselves. As we roll out those pieces, we'll announce it here.

Each DocSpot profile now sports a pithy but very important question: "Is this your profile"?

If you find yourself answering "yes" (assuming you're being honest with yourself and with us), you're in luck, because you can now claim your profile at our site and hide any incorrect or outdated information. This is a new feature for us and there might be a bug or two that hasn't quite yet flown away - so give it a try, and if anything is difficult, confusing, or just plain not working, please don't hesitate to shoot us an e-mail at support@docspot.com.

For now, claiming your profile allows you to hide or flag information that is out of date, incorrect, or private.

Each DocSpot profile now sports a pithy but very important question: "Is this your profile"?

If you find yourself answering "yes" (assuming you're being honest with yourself and with us), you're in luck, because you can now claim your profile at our site and hide any incorrect or outdated information. This is a new feature for us and there might be a bug or two that hasn't quite yet flown away - so give it a try, and if anything is difficult, confusing, or just plain not working, please don't hesitate to shoot us an e-mail at support@docspot.com.

For now, claiming your profile allows you to hide or flag information that is out of date, incorrect, or private.

Within the next couple of months, you will be able to add new information as well - whether you recently moved and want to update your address, or we don't have residency information for you but you would like to add it, or you would like to add an additional website or picture. Claiming your DocSpot profile is free of charge, as is hiding or adding information, because we want the information at our site to be as accurate and complete as possible, and we want as many people as possible to join us in this cause.

We also have a couple of safeguards in place to help ensure that you can trust the data you see at our site. Health care providers must verify their identity via a confirmation code sent to a phone or fax number that we know to be associated with the provider. Additionally, for medically relevant pieces of information such as disciplinary action or medical school, providers may mark the information as incorrect but not hide it. The information will then remain on their profile for the public to see, along with a note indicating that the provider has flagged it as incorrect.

The opportunity for health care providers to claim their profiles at our site has been a long time coming, and we're excited to finally release it and watch our community continue to grow. Will you join us?

We'd like to grow the team. Do you know anyone who might be interested? We're looking for someone who's smart, enthusiastic, and detail-oriented. Additional details can be found here.

We'd like to grow the team. Do you know anyone who might be interested? We're looking for someone who's smart, enthusiastic, and detail-oriented. Additional details can be found here.

Here's an interesting article about a patient who got three different recommended treatments from three different doctors. Two of the three doctors recommended destroying the thyroid gland, condemning the patient to a lifelong regimen of iodine pills. The third doctor's successful recommendation treated the patient's condition without the lifelong consequences.

Here's an interesting article about a patient who got three different recommended treatments from three different doctors. Two of the three doctors recommended destroying the thyroid gland, condemning the patient to a lifelong regimen of iodine pills. The third doctor's successful recommendation treated the patient's condition without the lifelong consequences.

What accounts for the differences in the doctors' prescribed treatments? Perhaps more importantly, what pieces of data could be used to predict these differences? After all, I would clearly prefer the third doctor myself. But how could I find such a doctor without having the visit all three? Does anyone know? Even if we were to simplify the problem to be able to see which doctors are more likely to prescribe medication versus lifestyle changes (which would be very useful to prospective patients), what data could consumers look at to simplify their search? If you have any ideas, let us know.

Here's an interesting article about people leaving fake reviews, or rather, the entire industry dedicated to online review manipulation. Obviously, online reviews are not specific to health care, and neither are the issues that plague it.

Here's an interesting article about people leaving fake reviews, or rather, the entire industry dedicated to online review manipulation. Obviously, online reviews are not specific to health care, and neither are the issues that plague it.

To be clear, online reviews by other patients almost always comes up as an important issue. We don't deny that others' perspectives are important; it's just that in this age where glowing reviews can be bought for $5, it's probably a good idea to look at the volume of reviews (a couple reviews probably doesn't mean too much) and other pieces of information about a provider (e.g. where the provider trained). We try to address both by connecting users to information from multiple sources. Have other ideas on how to help patients select a provider? Let us know.