Microsoft purchases health information search engine

The name of that engine (and company) is Medstory. (A graphic explanation of what the engine does is below, from the engine's homepage.)

And here's a brief NY Times article on the search engine (text below), its unique approach to search, and Microsoft's (as well as others') desire to enter the consumer health information industry. If Microsoft was just testing the waters with an earlier acquisition (here's my post on it) last year, then it seems to have dived into the uncharted waters.

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February 27, 2007

Microsoft to Buy Health Information Search Engine
By Steve Lohr

Microsoft’s drive into the health care market is just getting under way, but the company signaled yesterday that one important ingredient in its plan will be a specialized search engine tailored to deliver useful medical information to consumers.

Microsoft is buying Medstory Inc., a small start-up in Foster City, Calif. Its search software applies artificial intelligence techniques to medical and health information in medical journals, government documents and on the Internet.
The terms of the Medstory acquisition were not disclosed.

The Medstory purchase, said Peter Neupert, vice president for health strategy at Microsoft, was a first step in a broader company strategy to assemble technologies that would “improve the consumer experience in health care.”
“Clearly,” Mr. Neupert said, “search is a critical part of that better end-to-end experience for consumers.”

The acquisition follows Microsoft’s purchase last year of Azyxxi, a clinical health care software system that retrieves and quickly displays patient information from many sources, including scanned documents, X-rays, M.R.I. scans and ultrasound images.

The Microsoft move comes at a time of increased investment in online health ventures, rising traffic at consumer health sites on the Web and profits at the most popular sites. Last month, a venture firm headed by Stephen M. Case, the former chief executive of America Online, introduced an ambitious new consumer health site, RevolutionHealth.com.

WebMD, the leading health-related site, last week reported strong quarterly profit of $8.9 million on revenue of $80.6 million, surpassing Wall Street’s expectations. The stock price of WebMD — an Internet pioneer in health information that struggled for years — has surged in the last year.

In health-related search, Healthline Networks, a start-up in San Francisco, reports rising traffic on its Web site and a growing string of deals to provide the search engine for sites of other companies, including Merck and PacifiCare. At Google, Adam Bosworth, a vice president for engineering, is leading the effort to develop a health-information offering.

These companies and others are seeking ways to build businesses on the Internet that profit from what is called consumer-driven health care. The notion is that shifts in demographics, economics, technology and policy will inevitably mean that individuals will want to, and be forced to, make more health care decisions themselves.

Aging baby boomers, accustomed to personal choice and to technology, tend to want a say in their treatment decisions. And the Internet is already an important source of health information. Eight million people in the United States go online for health information every day, according to a study last year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit group.

Financially, the pressure by Medicare and private health insurers to hold down costs and shift more of the burden to individuals, analysts say, will force people to make more health care spending choices.

In Medstory, Microsoft is acquiring “some of the best deep technology” in the emerging field of medical search, said Esther Dyson, an industry analyst who is also an investor in Medstory. That technology, Ms. Dyson said, is “not so much a search engine, but an ontology engine,” with a capability to find and identify concepts in health and not just sort through words and Web links.

The longer-range goal, Mr. Neupert said, is to link personal information like age, sex, drug regimens, family history and even genetic markers to search. The ideal is that search results are tailored individually, identifying treatments, drug interactions and medical journal articles of interest.

“Health search could be way more relevant,” he said. “You don’t need to see thousands of results. What you want to know is, what does this mean to me personally?”

Dr. Alain T. Rappaport, the founder and chief executive of Medstory, said he was impressed by the importance Microsoft placed on “intelligent search” in health care and by the promise that Microsoft’s global reach and resources could accelerate the spread of the technology his team developed.

Microsoft had talked to Healthline recently about using its health search service, said West Shell III, the chief executive of Healthline. “This means Microsoft has decided to go it alone,” Mr. Shell said.

Depressed? Try some Omega-3 fatty acids

Last year when I was on my child psychiatry rotation, I had to present a paper on treatment. In my research I learned that Omega 3 fatty acids have been shown to lower rates of violent behavior in an English prison, as reported in this long Guardian article under the heading "Prison trial".

This has led some people to indict the lack of Omega 3 fatty acids in the modern diet as the reason for a general increase in violence. I don't know if I buy it, but here's one explanation of the theory. (The Sydney Morning Herald piece also supplied the graphic you see below.)

Using a new health information search engine today, I search "Omega 3 fatty acids" to see the latest medical study articles on it, and this is what I found in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. It concludes:

"Meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials demonstrate a statistically significant benefit in unipolar and bipolar depression (p = .02). The results were highly heterogeneous, indicating that it is important to examine the characteristics of each individual study to note the differences in design and execution. There is less evidence of benefit in schizophrenia."

This is neat, since it means that Omega 3 fatty acids could be a powerful multi-purpose drug as it has been shown to have cardioprotective effects as well (here's a post on that from some time ago).

A new and better way to vaccinate kids against the flu

From the NY Times Febrary 20th op/ed piece.

Less Flu, Less Squalling

FluMist vaccine, a nasal spray that has never quite caught on in the marketplace, turns out to do a better job of protecting young children than a standard flu shot. This is a double blessing: better protection, and without those dreaded needles that send children into crying fits and turn parents into mush.

The good news came from a study involving some 7,800 children 6 months to 5 years old. The results, published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine, were striking. The children given FluMist came down with 55 percent fewer cases of the flu than did those given the standard shot. The only cautionary note was that in children younger than 1 year, and in older children with a history of wheezing illness, there were slightly more hospitalizations in the FluMist group.

The results could open the way for the Food and Drug Administration to approve the use of FluMist in young children. Currently, it is approved for healthy people 5 to 49 years old who aren’t pregnant. One big barrier that has slowed its use, the fact that it had to be stored in a freezer, was removed last month with F.D.A. approval of a version that can be stored in refrigerators, just as the injectable vaccines are. That should make it easier for schools, pharmacies and doctors to use the spray.

More widespread and effective vaccination of children would also be a boon for parents. Children are notorious Typhoid Marys who spread the virus in day care centers and schools and take it home. Anything that protects children should make everyone feel better.

The NEJM abstract.

Flumist website.

And if you didn't get the "Typhoid Mary" reference, you can get it here.