Ian Mulvany

June 28, 2021

how much value can you get out of web scraping - quite a lot apparently!

I was recently pointed to the following company - H1 https://www.h1.co. Their website claims to be creating a healthier future by delivering a platform that connects stakeholders. 

When you look at their product video you see that what they are building is a platform that automatically builds profiles of doctors. There is an emphasis on who they are influenced by, what contributions they have made to congress, what is being said by or about them on social media. 

It's a direct evolution of what we can do with the tools that have emerged as a result of surveillance capatilisim. 

You might think of it as an "Altmetric for people", or an automated linked-in for doctors. 

Personally, this does wig me out a little bit. 

They have been going for about four years, and have raised just over $70M (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/h1). 

It shows that there is a lot of perceived value in aggregation, and when targeted to a field where there is a high transactional value, you can easily see how one could build really interesting augmenting tools, but on the other hand I can see how a tool like this could increase the risk averseness of medical professionals which could also lead to increased costs in the system. 

How might one determine whether a platform like this leads to a genuinely healthier future, rather than perhaps a more litigious one? 


About Ian Mulvany

Hi, I'm Ian - I work on academic publishing systems. You can find out more about me at mulvany.net. I'm always interested in engaging with folk on these topics, if you have made your way here don't hesitate to reach out if there is anything you want to share, discuss, or ask for help with!