Marrisa Mayer, taking over the Google Health initiative from Adam Bosworth, who recently left the company, announced at the Web 2.0 conference yesterday that people could "expect a lot of activity in the coming months," ahead of an early 2008 launch. According to InformationWeek, covering the interview: Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Mayer outlined the ways in which the search giant plans to bring its immense data storage and organization capacities to the field of medical care and patient records. Google is already the starting point for a large majority of the health-rel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Health | Search Engines: Health & Medical Search Engines

As part of its push into four strategic vertical search segments, Microsoft has unveiled "HealthVault," which aims to be part medical search engine, part repository of personal data and health information that can be selectively disclosed to doctors and other interested parties. Mary Jo Foley has considerable detail on how it will work. Of course, the big questions and issues revolve around privacy and security. It's pretty clear that more consumer medical records and personal health information will make their way online over time. The concept of a single repository of health information th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Microsoft: Bing | Search Engines: Health & Medical Search Engines

From time to time in the past, Google's Adam Bosworth has posted on health-related questions. Many people have speculated that health would be a vertical to get special attention from Google. And there have thus been "Google Health" rumors for a long time. Yesterday Bosworth posted again and linked to notes from a speech he delivered at American Medical Association of Informatics conference. The post excerpts the high-level points from the speech about: * Discovery - Consumers should be able to discover the most relevant health information possible * Action - Consumers should have direct [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Other | Search Engines: Health & Medical Search Engines

Microsoft to Buy Health Information Search Engine at the New York Times reports that Microsoft is buying the Medstory health search engine. Microsoft plans on building out a specialized search engine focused on delivering medical information to consumers, the story reports. There are a number of health search engines including the leader: WebMD, RevolutionHealth, Google is working one up with Adam Bosworth, and some smaller players. Postscript: Here is the Microsoft press release. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Microsoft: Other Search | Search Engines: Health & Medical Search Engines