Yesterday I posted about Google playing health care specialist by serving up different options for terms it deems to be medically related, like "sore knee" or "depression" and so on. Today I came across this article in the Chicago Tribune about a study done, called "Googling for a Diagnosis" that was published in the British Medical Journal. BMJ also devotes an editorial to the idea of using a search engine like Google for diagnosing illnesses. The editorial introduces a word that has been tossed around Web 2.0 forums and over coffee tables at cafes where you find linguists in heated arguments. The word: semantics.
If you've done much search engine optimization, you know that search engines have slowly incorporated LSI agreements into algorithms. Most see it as a way to weed out much of the junk found on the Web by making grammar count. Part of that all-encompassing goal of generating the most relevant results for any given search query. The BMJ editorial builds on that idea, challenging search engines to "identify which words in a document represent symptoms, diagnoses, drug names, or parts of the body, let alone reason about these concepts."
Certainly would beat looking things up in the PDR now wouldn't it?
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Just wanted to mention our patient activist and physician oriented Health Search startup "CureHunter". One of our main design goals is to bring patients and physicians closer to the research so they can make the most educated decisions possible and truly begin to practice Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) in real-time.
...without giving anyone your medical records!
Please check it out if you get the chance.
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