Are you one of the millions of people who rely upon WebMD to help you learn your about illnesses that you are suffering from? If so, you will be happy to learn that the founder of WebMD, Jeff Arnold, is planning to launch a new and improved version of the Website, which will be known as Sharecare.

Due to launch in early 2010, Sharecare is expected to be much like WebMD, but to include some of the things that its predecessor was missing. This includes featuring a celebrity doctor on the site as well as integrating a search engine optimization strategy. The Website, which is currently in soft launch, is also enjoying some significant financial backing. In fact, it is enjoying a partnership with Harpo Productions and Sony Pictures television, which is also providing the venture with a partial investment. Furthermore, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is slated to be one of the marquee physicians for the site, has already started promoting the new site on his television show.

The new Website is also receiving partial funding from Discovery Communications. This isn’t the first time that Arnold has worked with Discover Communications. In fact, the company purchased Arnold’s How Stuff Works website back in 2007 for a whopping $250 million. With Sharecare, however, Discovery Communications plans to provide video content through its Discovery Health library.

In order to make certain Sharecare provides the most accurate information possible while also helping doctors get recognition in the field, the site is also partnering with some impressive medical institutions. Some of these include John Hopkins Medicine, The Cleveland Clinic and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Several publishing houses have also agreed to include content from their publications on the site, though site visitors will have to pay a small fee in order to access the information. Some publishers who will be incorporated into the site include Harmony Books, Simon & Schuster, and Harper Collins.

Another interesting aspect to the new Website is the fact that it will serve as a social networking site as well as a medical resource. In fact, the site has been desribed as “Facebook meets WebMD” due to the fact that site visitors can ask questions or select from a variety of topics in order to choose a doctor, book or advertiser that is related to the topic.

Site visitors will also be able to select “Knowledge Partners” who provide advice on their pages, much in the same way as Twitter or Facebook. In fact, Dove has already signed on to be the site’s exclusive launch partner. By providing an in-house skincare expert to provide answers to questions posted by users, the company hopes to build trust with consumers while also providing them with a valuable service.

“We said to Unilever [the parent company of Dove], ‘If you want to own skincare, instead of you giving us a 30-second ad, we want you to give us the scientific answer behind these questions because you’ve been doing this for 51 years,’” said Arnold.

During the soft launch, Dove has done just that. In fact, the company has received 3,000 questions through DrOz.com and has answered 200 of them per week.