Some highlights from Steve Lohr's NYTimes article, Microsoft to Acquire Health Search Engine:
- The Medstory purchase, according to Microsoft, was a first step in a broader company strategy to assemble technologies that will “improve the consumer experience in health care.
- The Microsoft move comes at a time of increased investment in online health ventures, rising traffic at consumer health sites on the Web and profits at the most popular sites.
- WebMD, the leading health-related site, last week reported strong quarterly profit of $8.9 million on revenue of $80.6 million, surpassing Wall Street’s expectations. The stock price of WebMD — an Internet pioneer in health information that struggled for years — has surged in the last year.
- Aging baby boomers, fond of personal choice and technologically literate, tend to want a say in their treatment decisions. And the Internet is already an important source of health information. Eight million people in the United States go online for health information every day, according to a study last year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit group.
- The longer-range goal is to link personal information like age, sex, drug regimens, family history and even genetic markers to search. The ideal is that search results are tailored individually, identifying treatments, drug interactions and medical journal articles of interest.
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