Healthline Leads Health Search Engines
February 14th, 2008
Health is a strategic consumer verticals that the major online providers are focusing on. Both Microsoft and Google plan to launch online health initiatives. Competitors include Revolution Health & Webmd.com but one of the best search engines in the health segment is Healthline.
Healthline.com has many innovative features to assist doctors providing patient care and consumers who are looking for health information and researching diseases and conditions.
Healthline.com features:
drug search – enhanced content and an “interaction checker” that can alert consumers to “possible interactions – with other drugs, herbs, supplements and even foods – based on your list of medications.”
“FDA alerts” recalls, side effects, photos of medications and “pill finder” that allows consumers to identify medications by their visual characteristics.
Tools and more tools – “170 new risk assessments, quizzes and calculators” licensed from StayWell consumer health education publisher and division of MediMedia USA.
Healthline marketplace – powered by HealthPricer provides health-related products that can be purchased online through affiliate relationships.
More content – new content partners: StayWell (as mentioned), AHFS (the American Hospital Formulary System) and Natural Standard, a provider of alternative medical and health information
80 percent internet users search for medical information online and companies who withhold medical information from online access are hindering their medical practices. 71 percent of consumers have used search engines to find health-related information including dieting, vitamins, alternative medicine. (source Jupiter Research)
Health online including the pharma and drug category, is worth billions of dollars annually in the US. (source IAB/PriceWaterhouseCoopers)
Healthline received financial backing from Aetna, GE/NBC, JHK Investments LLC, Kaiser Permanente, Mitsui & Co., Ltd., Reed Elsevier, US News & World Report, and VantagePoint Venture Partners.
