The Greystone.Net Blog

I’m always intrigued by questions from clients regarding the value of licensed healthcare content. Nobody really argues that if you want complete and current healthcare information, you need to license it. Doing that yourself would be a logistical nightmare.

But many argue whether it’s worth the money, doubting that patients want that kind of information from their hospital vs. WebMD or something like that, and some are starting to wonder whether the search engines are counting it against them because it represents duplicate content that’s found on many other hospital and health system sites.

A quick disclaimer before we continue: Greystone.Net is no longer in the health content business. We sold that to StayWell more than two years ago.

That said, here’s what the data shows:

• People who use the Web to research health conditions look at multiple sites. And while people don’t immediately think of their hospital as a source of that information, they also trust the information from their healthcare provider more than most other sources. That suggests they don’t go looking for the content on their local hospital site, but they wind up finding it via search engines, and liking what they find (more on that below).
• For some sites, the healthcare content is among the most popular. On some high traffic sites, the health content gets four times the visits of the next most popular area of content.
• One reason the content gets so much traffic is that search engines like it. So while you might not want to license the same content as your leading competitor, the current evidence suggests having it on your site is a benefit with search engines.

And there’s one thing hospital and health systems can offer consumers that is unique: Paths to sources of help, whether that’s a local doctor, a support group, a clinical trial, etc.

If you aren’t linking your services and offerings to your healthcare content, then maybe you aren’t getting the most from your resources.