Google to Improve Health Information Searches

Search engine giant Google has announced that it will be improving user searches for health information.

According to Google product manager Prem Ramaswami, 5 percent of all searches on Google are for health-related information. Ramaswami said the company plans to launch the improved health information search capabilities in the U.S. in the next few days, presenting relevant—and vetted—medical facts from the Google Knowledge Graph, a knowledge base used to enhance search results with semantic-search information gathered from a wide variety of sources.

“We’ll show you typical symptoms and treatments, as well as details on how common the condition is—whether it’s critical, if it’s contagious, what ages it affects, and more,” he writes in his blog post announcing the new capabilities. “For some conditions you’ll also see high-quality illustrations from licensed medical illustrators. Once you get this basic info from Google, you should find it easier to do more research on other sites around the web, or know what questions to ask your doctor.”

Ramaswami says the project’s architects worked with a team of medical doctors to carefully compile, curate, and review this information.

“All of the gathered facts represent real-life clinical knowledge from these doctors and high-quality medical sources across the web, and the information has been checked by medical doctors at Google and the Mayo Clinic for accuracy,” he reveals, adding that the feature is not intended to substitute for medical advice.

The new Google search capabilities have personal significance for Ramaswami, who frantically searched for information when his infant son fell out of bed while the family was staying in a hotel in rural Vermont.

“I was concerned that he might have a concussion,” writes Ramaswami. “I wasn’t able to search and quickly find the information I urgently needed (and I work at Google!).”