SHN began in Portland, Oregon, in 1996 by Jim Kean, Bill Kelly, and Kris Nybakken, who worked together at a CD-ROM publishing firm, Creative Multimedia.

[7] In 2017, Internet Brands, a company owned by private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) agreed to purchase WebMD Health Corporation for approximately $2.8 billion.

[11] In 2013, the Chicago Tribune reported that WebMD, "has struggled with a fall in advertising revenue with pharmaceutical companies slashing marketing budgets as several blockbuster drugs go off patent."

They publish WebMD the Magazine, a patient-directed publication distributed bimonthly free of charge to 85 percent of physician waiting rooms.

[19][20] Writing in The New York Times Magazine in 2011, Virginia Heffernan criticized WebMD for biasing readers toward drugs that are sold by the site's pharmaceutical sponsors, even when they are unnecessary.

"[21] Julia Belluz of Vox criticized WebMD in 2016 ("The Truth about WebMD, a Hypochondriac's Nightmare and Big Pharma's Dream") for encouraging hypochondria and for promoting treatments for which evidence of safety and effectiveness is weak or non-existent, such as green coffee supplements for weight loss, vagus nerve stimulation for depression, and fish-oil/omega-3 supplements for high cholesterol.

[23] In 2016, a survey of doctors found WebMD and its sister company Medscape to have incomplete medical information lacking depth and also numerous cases of misinformation on their sites.