Finally, a healthcare search engine that works

January 23, 2006 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |
healthline2.jpg

San Francisco healthcare search engine startup Healthline has just raised $14 million in another round of venture capital. It was going to announce the funding tomorrow, but Michael Arrington at TechCrunch scoops it.

No surprise, as we mentioned back in October this was likely to happen.

And as Mike mentions, the site is getting some buzz in tomorrow’s New York Times, which says Healthline is performing favorably alongside sites such as Google and WebMD:


Type “cold” into Google, for instance, and the site displays links to information on everything from nasal maladies to Cold, the rock band. Do the same thing on WebMD, and the site will post many links, but only to its own content….

…Type “cold” into Healthline’s search box, by contrast, and the site presents you with a map of different respiratory diseases and disorders, along with a list of links to Web sites with information – but not commercial products – related to those disorders.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • The problem with HealthLine, WebMD, Google and their ilk is that they simply serve up what amounts to a "medical encyclopedia".

    That's good and accurate, but not really helpful to regular people, who need more live, interactive and down-to-earth explainations of their health choices.

    Watch us deliver just that (www.healthvoices.com)

    Dmitriy Kruglyak
  • Kosmix is also quite good for a health search engine - www.kosmix.com. I liked categorization of the results.