MedHelp
Open-knowledge reference entry
MedHelp was an American private corporation that was founded in February 1994 and pioneered the field of consumer health information and communities on the Internet, before WebMD, Microsoft or Yahoo!.
Overview
MedHelp partners with doctors from hospitals and medical research institutions to deliver online discussion boards on healthcare topics. The company's slogan is "Finding Cures Together."
In December 2008, MedHelp was ranked 3,090 in the Alexa Internet 3 month traffic rankings of all sites on the web and gets over 7 million unique visitors each month.
History
The founders of MedHelp, Cindy Thompson and Phil Garfinkel, met in December 1993, while conducting research in CompuServe's Med-Sig Forum. Both had family members that had struggled with life-threatening illnesses. They discussed the difficulties they encountered in obtaining medical information in lay terminology. Cindy mentioned that one of her dreams was to create a service where patients would be able to contact leading physicians and scientists, who could answer specific questions, in lay terminology, regarding their diagnoses. Based on that vision, they incorporated the company on February 14, 1994 and launched the MedHelp bulletin board system (BBS) on April 1, 1994 with a 386 computer, two modems, and two phone lines.
In 1995, MedHelp updated its BBS so that it could also be accessed by the emerging Web browsers. At that point, only a handful of institutions such as the University of Iowa and Columbia University School of Medicine delivered health information on the Internet.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “MedHelp” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through MedHelp, Open-knowledge and entry, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “open-knowledge reference entry” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6804925. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 2008, 1993 and 1995.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “MedHelp”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow MedHelp primary sources, MedHelp archive and MedHelp research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “MedHelp”?
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “MedHelp” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.