Believing that health sites need their own ad network, Healthline is bringing its semantic search technology to advertising. The health search engine is launching the Health Media Network, an ad network that will place contextual ads on health Websites. It is like an AdSense for health sites. But instead of relying simply on matching keywords on the page where the ad is being served, Healthline says it can serve ads that match the health concepts on the page. So an article that mentions the medical term “costochondritis” (an inflammation of the rib) might serve up an ad for ibuprofen (the most common treatment). Healthline has created a taxonomy of 200,000 related health terms and concepts for its search engine, and is using the same underlying technology for it new ad network. It will be powering contextual health ads on its own search engine as well as partner sites such as United Health’s upcoming MyOptumHealth; AARP, Health.com, HealthPricer, JustAnswer, and USNews.com. All told these sites reach 10 million people a month, says the company. Healthline itself has shown more zig-zag performance, most recently attracting 3.4 million visitors to its site worldwide in April, according to comScore. That was down from 5 million the month before. CrunchBase Information Healthline Google Health Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Healthline has dipped it’s hand into a $21 million series B financing led by GE/NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between GE Commercial Finance’s Media, Communications and Entertainment business and NBC Universal. This is on top of their $14 million round last January. The round also includes smaller investments from Aetna Ventures, LLC, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, U.S. News and World Report, and previous investors VantagePoint Venture Partners and Reed Elsevier Ventures. They’ve also struck some deals with Aetna, AOL, Ask.com, and NBC Universal’s iVillage Total Health to use their search and navigation technology. AOL used to have a content deal with WebMD, has since opted for other content partners, with Healthline joining to power their search. Health search remains a strong vertical because searching for health related info doesn’t simply use keywords, but include symptoms and related diseases. There are a host of other health search engines in this space. Microsoft’s recently acquired their closest competitor, Medstory, which competes directly with Healthline’s recently released symptom search. Other search engines include Healia, Kosmix, and even health meta-search engine Mamahealth.com. Google has their own lesser known health search engine based on the Co-op platform. → Read More
Two new health related services came our way this morning; they couldn’t be more different but both could prove useful. The first is Healthline’s new Symptom Search. The successful online medical resource site Heathline has added a new search function that is definitely worth a look. Symptom search lets you enter one or multiple symptoms you’re experiencing and displays licenced articles from medical professionals about conditions that could be causing those symptoms. It’s an elegant tool that brings back results ranging from conditions that could cause just the symptoms you identify through more serious conditions that could be indicated by other symptoms in addition to the ones you’ve identified. For example, if you type in “cough” you’ll be shown first an article explaining that “Coughing is an important way to keep your throat and airways clear. However, excessive coughing may mean you have an underlying disease or disorder.” Subsequent articles become increasingly serious; if for example you are actually experiencing a cough, sharp rib pain, a fever and you’re hot to the touch then you should check out the article on Bronchitis. Symptom search is integrated into Healthline’s primary search function and has a page of its own. The company claims it’s got the first symptom search service on the web. Whether that’s true or not, this one looks particularly good. This is a great example of quality vertical search that’s likely to be used extensively. If you’re in need of a more social solution – CheckTonight is a new service which purports to offer online verification of negative STD test results from your doctor. (Your test results via your doctor, that is, your doctor’s night life is none of any one’s business.) CheckTonight users print up a medical release form, take it to their doctor’s office and presuming your test results are negative you can become a CheckTonight member. (For a $25 annual fee – that’s like the cost of 5 drinks at a bar!) Members must be retested every 6 months and positive test results are never stored in the system. Then, when you’re getting frisky with someone you’ve just met – you can get a text message from CheckTonight verifying that you’re Doctor-certified STD free! (For an additional $3 fee per text message.) If you don’t make the cut at CheckTonight, see our coverage of Prescription4Love. I don’t know about you, but I either trust some one’s word or I don’t – no text message delivered to their → Read More
San Fransico-based medical search engine Healthline (launched in October 2005) just raised $14 million in a recapitalized Series A round of financing. They also are written up by Bob Tedeschi in tomorrow’s New York Times. The round was led by Vantage Point. Reed Elsevier and Mitsui (Mitsui recently invested in Feedster as well) also participated in the round. This was a recap round for Healthline, which has raised a total of around $30 million since its founding in 1999. It is an absolutely wonderful search engine. → Read More
Company: HealthLine Launched: October 16, 2005 Location: San Francisco HealthLine, a very smart medical search engine with web 2.0 features, launched this evening. Tony Gentile, HealthLine’s VP Product Management, writes about it here. First, its a good search engine. Normal language is translated into medical terms, and refinement options are shown for related information. For instance, a search for breast cancer shows refinement options for “treatment” and “symptoms”, as well as links to the broader search of “cancer”. The HealthMaps feature is incredibly useful. It is a visual display of information relevant to your query. Do a search for “cancer” and click on the top left link just above the first result to see this. Clicking on any of the visual cues will give additional refined information. You can also see the HealthMap feature in the screen shot above. Refinements, along with HealthMaps, is a very good way to find relevant information with a single search on a term even loosely related to the information you are looking for. Healthline also offers browsing by channel, with topics ranging from Acne to Yeast Infections. If you become a member, you can create news alerts, and tag and save search results. You can also write reviews of articles and rate other reviews. This is an excellent resource. → Read More
