Feb 13, 2012 at 12:19pm ET by Greg Sterling

Roughly 100 million people in the US search for health information on a monthly basis, according to 2011 comScore data. Google has seen these queries up close and recently concluded that it doesn't do a great job of servicing them. The company is thus introducing improved results that shorten the time from symptom-related search to discovery of potential medical causes and conditions. Google Chief Health Strategist Roni Zeiger, MD, says the company sees users search on health symptoms and then almost immediately turn around and search for conditions they discovered in those initial search r [...]

Google’s New Privacy Policy May Violate HIPAA, Congresswoman Says

Feb 3, 2012 at 8:55am ET by Matt McGee

Several members of Congress continued to express reservations about Google's new privacy policy after a closed-door meeting on Thursday, with one House member saying that Google's handling of sensitive medical searches may violate HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Members of the House Energy and Commerce committee grilled Pablo Chavez, Google's director of public policy, and Google attorney Michael Yang for about two hours. After the meeting, several of the Representatives expressed their unhappiness with Google's answers on a variety of privacy issues -- quest [...]

Related Topics: Google: Health | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Top News

Google Health To Be Shuttered On January 1, 2012

Jun 24, 2011 at 3:20pm ET by Matt McGee

Google Health, the company's attempt to improve health care by letting consumers move medical data online and control who can access it, is shutting down. The service will be retired on January 1, 2012. In a blog post announcing the news, Google says the product didn't catch on as it had hoped: Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven't found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread [...]

Related Topics: Google: Health | Top News

Google Adds Emergency Help To Search Results In 13 Countries

Nov 11, 2010 at 5:32pm ET by Matt McGee

Expanding on something it's been doing in the U.S. since last year, Google is now showing emergency information at the top of the search results in 13 countries. This means that searchers who type in queries that are the equivalent of English phrases like "poison control" and "emergency" will see special information above the search results. Here are two examples from Google's blog post: Google says the new results are available in these countries: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom [...]

Google Translate Adds Latin, Google Renews Flu Search, & Adds Languages To Video Alerts

Oct 11, 2010 at 9:19am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced a few new small features added recently. (1) Google Translate added Latin as a new language. Google said, "although considered a “dead language” by many, Latin is still studied by hundreds of thousands of students worldwide and is the predecessor to many modern tongues." I am sure those who study in this language welcome it to Google Translate. (2) Google has updated their flu shot location search in collaboration with the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services (HHS). The flu season is right around the corner and it might pay for you to get your shot earl [...]

Related Topics: Google: Alerts | Google: Health | Google: Translate

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