Show HN: Instawell, an anonymous community for our health + New API

6 points by iusable 13 years ago | 9 comments

My co-founder & I wanted to log our health ups and downs, with each other, with strangers dealing with similar problems & maybe even with medical professionals. We are very proud to share our brand new service - Instawell.

Instawell is an anonymous public network for sharing health issues and connecting with doctors.

You post an issue, track it, update it, and get simple feedback. You can invite a friend to share the issue, so you can both track something while remaining anonymous to everyone else. People can discover others dealing with the same issues and around them.

Instawell is offered as a service at https://api.instawell.com and as a web app at http://instawell.com. We are working to release our mobile web version next week, alongwith a private beta for our iOS + Android versions.

Get started with Instawell right away:

1: Create an identity

$ curl -ssl3 -k --data "email=your@emailhere.com&password=yourpass" https://api.instawell.com/v1/users

2: Share your symptoms

$ curl -ssl3 -k --data "mysymptoms=Feel Tired, Aching Head" --header "X-instawell-token: YOURTOKENHERE" https://api.instawell.com/v1/sets/

3: Track your sets

$ curl -ssl3 -k --header "X-instawell-token: YOURTOKENHERE" "https://api.instawell.com/v1/sets/"

4: Do more on the web app.

There's a lot of fun stuff we are working and very excited to hear back from the HN community. We <3 Terminal but there are other sample code on the Docs link as well.

Web - http://instawell.com Docs - http://docs.instawellapiv1.apiary.io/ Blog - http://blog.instawell.com/post/53509254012/public-api

Share how you are feeling today :)

iusable 13 years ago |

Links - Web - http://instawell.com

Docs - http://docs.instawellapiv1.apiary.io/

Blog - http://blog.instawell.com/post/53509254012/public-api

SHOwnsYou 13 years ago |

I'm wondering if this is a solution in search of a problem.

There isn't much point to casually browsing the site right now - I can see that someone else has achy feet, but I get no deeper insight; no comment explaining their situation nor comments from others that may have been similarly encumbered in the past.

Additionally, I only really share my health concerns with one person that isn't a doctor, and she lives with me.

The faces seem like a distraction when sharing anonymously. Many of them don't have an intuitive meaning, so I figure they're just for fun.

Also I couldn't figure out how to login or register on the site. I found out it's not actually required to share a health status, but since you listed it in the Show HN post, I looked around for it.

I do like the look and feel of the site - very straightforward and great colors, fonts, and design.

iusable 13 years ago | |

Hey, thanks for posting :) The two of us were sitting here staring at our Google Analytics & hoping you would comment too!

"There isn't much point to casually browsing the site right now" - Correct, we just came out of private beta, so the amount of data we have and what we have done to visualize it is quite nascent.

Deeper insight - This is our biggest focus right now. People do have a way to comment via the 'Add Update' button on their posts. But most of our testers right now do this via the API so they aren't doing more than maintaining their lists.

Face - Fun! I can share some conversion numbers on this. It almost doubled. Especially the silly ones like the bird and the ManBat :P kinda help to lighten the tone.

Login/Register - There's a big bold button to register once you post your first symptom. And there's a less prominent login/register icon before you post.

Design - Thank you, but even as you saw there's so much more to do especially in the way of onboarding.

Best for Last - Problem -> Solution or Solution -> Problem. There are 3 use cases this makes a ton of sense for. And we have to work hard to demo them as soon as you come in! One of them is that when you and your girlfriend are busy, how can you track each other's issues and get the casual help you may need without taking a break from work or leaving the comfort of your couch.

Thank you for giving it a whirl and very useful feedback!

NovemberWest 13 years ago |

I wish I thought this were a good idea. Successful sites I have participated in started with being aimed at a particular diagnosis. I wish I thought this would work because it is clear to me that different diagnoses with symptoms in common often have related underlying causes. Unfortunately, this looks too nebulous to me. I hope I am wrong and I am routinely accused of erring in the opposite direction and making sites that are "too niche." But that's what it looks like to me.

PS Arguing with people who have given you feedback is not a great idea. It is a super common thing, but it really isn't a great idea.

Best of luck.

iusable 13 years ago | |

Hey Thanks for checking us out :)

At the risk of arguing with you, I am surprised you thought we argued in the previous comment reply. We thought SHOwnsYou was quite thoughtful in his feedback and had gone through the app. And the response was meant to be thoughtful as well. We genuinely found it useful and tried to emote that.

Just read it again and it still didn't read as argumentative.

I am not sure what the line in the sand is, just say 'thank you' I guess. :)

Thank you.

NovemberWest 13 years ago | | |

And I didn't say you had argued with anyone. I just get tired of trying to help people and getting fighty replies. I deleted my response to someone else over that very recently.

Fwiw: I worked for an insurance company for over 5 years, ran an alternative health site for a number of years which is being discontinued, and have participated in various health sites over the years. I really hope you have success with this. I just know it to be a tough space.

Peace.

PS I will add that it also goes over well on HN to upvote people if you appreciate the reply. That seems to frequently get overlooked, though I try to do it.