Delivering an enhanced search experience

Jan 13, 2010 14:28 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is well aware that end users often rely on search engines in order to access medical information that otherwise could come only from doctors. The company insisted in the past that people searching for health info treaded carefully when it came down to interpreting or relying onto the results discovered, as search engines were in no way a replacement for actual doctors. In this regard, the Redmond giant announced new enhancements to its decision engine designed to add health search capabilities to Bing.

“The new enhanced Bing Health search experience is live – focusing on further enabling people to quickly get relevant information and make better decisions. We’re providing more content from new partners and augmenting instant answers with hard-to-discover data that helps users get more out of their health search experience, both on- and off-line,” explained Alain Rappaport, Bing general manager of Health Search.

Bing is now capable of presenting users with smart summaries, essentially excerpts of information it considers relevant from library of health resources. “Bing uncovers key related topics by analyzing an index of medical sources and extracting meaningful data automatically,” Rappaport said. For every specific query Bing will present the users with the possibility to explore additional medical topics, related to the original search. Results are accompanied by short lists of additional health conditions, medications, US medical centers, etc. Of course, in the traditional take in the new search engine from Microsoft, the company is pointing out that Bing is now better equipped to handle helping users not only get answers but also take a course of action that will lead to them bettering their health.

With the new enhanced health search capabilities, Bing offers users the possibility to drill down and explore additional information on top of the results returned to their queries. “We are looking forward to the next update as Bing Health continues in its mission to enable people to make better decisions in health,” Rappaport added.