Redmond, Washington — Today Microsoft has unveiled some new health search features to its health search capabilities running into its Bing search engines many health-related inquiries, according to a blog post on the Bing Community site.
Users can instantly discover detailed and comprehensive explanation about illnesses, treatments, medical facilities, etc. when entering health-related queries.
“We are delivering more data from new partners and improving instant answers with hard-to-discover information that helps users get more extensive explanation out of their health search experience, both on- and off-line,” blogged Alain Rappaport, Microsoft’s General Manager of Health Search.
Among the new improvements is the introduction of a “smart summary” related to a user’s query. If a user clicks on a medical center in the aforementioned example, s/he would see patient ratings for hospitals, as well as other nearby facilities and points of interest.
“Bing detects a relevant document in its library of health resources and presents a smart summary related to the query,” explains Rappaport.
So for example you search for “Type 2 diabetes” in your search results, Bing unfolds key related topics by analyzing an index of medical sources and extracting meaningful data automatically. In this case, the user receives instant guidance through short lists of other conditions related to the query (for example, “obesity”), medications that are important to know about (for example, “insulin”) and US medical centers that are active in the field. Users may select any of these points of interest to continue their search in a new area.”
Medications also would get the instant-answers treatment. For a particular medication, a searcher would see related medications and possible side effects, according to the blog post. Microsoft also has broadened the index of sources it is searching in health to include new content from previously omitted providers, Rappaport said.
This new Bing instant answers expands not only the general type of health queries but specific ones as well. It allows users to quickly explore other point of interest relevant to the health search query.
Health is one of a handful of areas on which Microsoft is focusing on with its Bing work. A search for a hospital, for instance, could return not only the medical center’s Web site, but also its patient satisfaction rates and other nearby hospitals.
In addition to the new features Bing Health is simply covering a broader range of health and “better living” subjects. Users can find information for queries like “holiday weight gain,” “baby milk allergy,” etc.
Bing Health is just one of the visible results of Microsoft’s recent focus on health-related products. The Redmond-based company continues to tweak and expand its new search engine, as it slowly but steadily gains market share.