Derek Streat founded Seattle startup Medify after his two-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a serious, life-threatening autoimmune condition in 2009. He said his family struggled to find health information that was both understandable and relevant to decisions they faced. Medify’s answer, launched in 2011, was a digital layer for finding medical research, treatment information, experts, and patient experiences. Alliance Health Networks acquired the company in May 2012; the available record does not establish whether Medify’s original product or its claimed clinical ambitions continued afterward.
Why Streat founded Medify
Streat described his daughter’s illness as the personal catalyst for Medify. He said that access to good doctors did not remove the difficulty of finding information between appointments: research could be highly technical, general health sites could lack depth, and online discussion could be hard to organize or assess. The 2011 profile does not identify his daughter’s diagnosis, so it should not be inferred from the description of her condition. The illness explains the company’s motivation; it is not evidence that Medify provided clinical care or found a treatment.
At the time, Streat argued that people were conducting 10 million health-information searches a day. That figure was quoted in 2011 and attributed to him; it is not a current search-volume estimate.
Medify’s proposed middle layer
Medify aimed to sit between readable but potentially broad consumer health sites, technical medical literature, general search engines, and patient forums. Its premise was that people needed more than links: they needed ways to discover and organize evidence, understand its relevance, and bring useful questions to clinicians.
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| Information source | Strength | Limitation Medify said it could address |
|---|---|---|
| General health websites | Accessible explanations | Could be too broad or shallow for a specific, serious health question |
| Medical journals and research databases | Detailed research and evidence | Technical language and formats can be difficult for many patients to navigate |
| Search engines | Broad discovery across the web | Results may be noisy, unevenly relevant, or hard to evaluate |
| Discussion forums | Personal experience and peer support | Organization, quality, and reliability can vary |
| Medify’s proposed layer | Structured discovery of research, treatments, experts, and patient experiences | Its usefulness depended on source provenance, clinical context, and clear limits—matters not independently established in the launch coverage |
A University of Washington lecture description in April 2012 characterized Medify.com as using interactive discovery tools and visualizations to make medical research easier for patients to understand, including material about treatments, experts, patient populations, and outcomes. The intended role was to help users prepare for or inform conversations with professionals, not replace those professionals.
What Medify said its technology and data could do
Streat described the company’s “secret sauce” as technology that mined information about patient experiences from disparate sources and made resulting facts discoverable, trackable, and shareable. Medify said it had processed billions of facts, indexed hundreds of millions of patient experiences, and added more than six million new experiences in one month. The company also described its material as medically backed or professionally vetted.
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These were company claims reported in 2011, not independently audited measurements. The available descriptions do not establish the underlying source list, extraction and validation methods, database design, or what counted as an “experience” or an outcome. The phrase “medically vetted” likewise does not specify who reviewed which material or by what process. The 2012 university lecture description offered additional product context, but it was an event description, not a peer-reviewed technical evaluation.
The team, prior experience, and funding
Streat was Medify’s co-founder and CEO; Jay Bartot was co-founder and CTO. The startup included former Farecast technology personnel. Streat had ties to AdReady and Classmates.com, while Bartot had worked on Netbot, AdRelevance, Sightward, and Farecast. Farecast, a travel-price prediction company, was later acquired by Microsoft. Medify presented the team’s experience with data mining and prediction as relevant to organizing complex information, but experience in those fields does not by itself demonstrate medical or clinical validity.
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What the idea required to work safely
Making health information easier to find is not the same as establishing which treatment works for a particular person. Patient accounts can be valuable context, but they may reflect different disease severity, treatment histories, ages, or other conditions. A user interface can make evidence more accessible while also making uncertain or weakly supported findings look authoritative.
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For a product like Medify to support sound decisions, users would need to understand where claims came from, how comparable the patients were, and whether a result came from a clinical study, observational data, or an individual account. The system would also need to distinguish association from causation, preserve uncertainty, handle outdated or conflicting information, and explain medical review in concrete terms. Personalization raises privacy questions, while advertising or partnerships can create incentives that affect what users see. The available accounts of Medify do not document how it addressed these safeguards or show that it improved medical outcomes.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What happened to Medify
Alliance Health Networks acquired Medify in May 2012 in a deal whose value was not disclosed. Alliance operated disease-specific online health communities, including Diabetic Connect. Contemporary coverage said the acquisition was intended to strengthen Alliance’s Seattle operations; Streat called it his and Bartot’s fifth exit. The acquisition is the documented outcome. The sources do not establish later user numbers, revenue, product continuity, or clinical impact.
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Medify’s place in the health-information story
Medify’s founding thesis was that people facing serious illness needed a more navigable route through scattered medical information and patient experience. That remains a distinct product ambition from proving that an algorithm, database, or interface can safely guide care. The launch-era reporting documents the ambition and the company’s claims, while the 2012 acquisition documents its business outcome; neither establishes that the promised system transformed health decisions.
The name can also cause confusion today. The current sites Medify.net and Medify Health describe different healthcare businesses. The available sources do not connect either one to the Seattle startup founded by Streat and Bartot.
Sources: GeekWire’s August 22, 2011 profile; University of Washington lecture description, April 3, 2012; USC Center for Health Journalism, March 29, 2012; Voyager Capital archive; GeekWire’s May 2012 acquisition report; and Voyager Capital’s acquisition announcement.
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