Google Health is a new service from the leading search engine, Google. The service integrates with the normal search engine interface and is triggered by users entering health related queries.
When a users searches for medical information, a number of options become available at the top of the Seach Engine Results Page (SERP). These seem to be variable depending on how the results have been classified but include such options as ‘For Professionals’,'For Patients’, ‘Treatment’, ‘Symptoms’, ‘Tests and Diagnosis’, ‘Risk Factors’, ‘From Medical Establishment’ and ‘Alternative Medicine’.
Google Health is a product of the new Google Co-op system. According to Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, Google Co-op is the most exciting product launch of the year. Google Co-op allows external companies and individuals to help classify and refine Google’s SERPs. For certain subjects, such as Google Health, the SERPs will automatically contain the classifications defined by the Co-op. For other subjects, users are able to ’subscribe’ to Co-op members classification schemes (you can subscibe to NMM’s profile here).
Co-op contributors to Google Health include the National Library of Medicine, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health on the Net, Harvard Medical School, Mayo Clinic and others. See the full list here. The list also includes Enoch Choi as an individual contributor. Enoch has outlined some of the details on how he contributes sites on his weblog.
According to ZDNet, Google Health is under the leadership of Adam Bosworth, former VP of Engineering at BEA Systems.
Testing out Google Health is fairly straightforward, simply enter a health related query at www.google.com and click on the links at the top. Feel free to post a comment here with your opinions on the relevancy of the Google Health SERPs.
That Google Co-op page for the health topic seems like a relly great idea. I am using it now. Thanks for the tip