Healthline’s semantic search engine adds treatment and doctor search
Healthline Networks, a health search engine that uses semantic technology to help you understand your symptoms and the best drugs to treat them, is adding two new features today: TreatmentSearch and DocSearch. Now you can use Healthline’s technology to not only find out why you’re not feeling so great, but also to see detailed information about how to make yourself better.
Now, when you search for strep throat, you can also see the gamut of possible treatments, from prescribed medications to over-the-counter medications to self-care and diet. The company says TreatmentSearch includes 4,500 treatment options, broken down into 1,200 medications and 3,300 medical, surgical and alternative therapies. The data comes from sources such as ADAM, Cerner Multum, Gale Cengage, Harvard Health Publishing, Natural Standard, and StayWell. Healthline also lets you search a database of 1.3 million doctors and even get a cost estimate of your treatment. Some practical points: The doctor search will eventually list the insurance they support, but doesn’t yet, and the cost estimate feature is still in beta testing.
The San Francisco company already offers SymtomSearch, DrugSearch, and Learning Centers. It uses semantic to understand how different keywords are related to each other, so you don’t have to worry about thinking up the correct combination of keywords. It even launched a network for health-related advertising called HealthSTAT On-Demand.
Chief executive West Shell says Healthline’s comprehensiveness helps it stand out.
“WebMD and MayoClinic have static symptom checkers, but nothing remotely close to the interactive symptom search product,” he says. “And then there are symptom checkers that may have a doctor search product that, again, is pretty limited.”
Healthline says it serves 40 million customers, either through its own website or through partners. The company has raised a total of $58 million in venture funding.
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About the Author, Anthony Ha
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
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