Medstory es un buscador (según he leído fue comprado por Microsoft en el año 2007) que pretende facilitar las búsquedas complejas sobre medicina y salud en Internet. El método de búsqueda consiste en guiar al usuario para concretar los resultados en aquellos que sean más relevantes según el contexto en el que se encuentra. Para ello muestra diferentes conceptos relacionados con el término de búsqueda de manera que el usuario pueda añadirlos fácilmente a su estrategia de búsqueda, limitando así los resultados. Esto se encuentra en el apartado “Information that Matters” (Información que importa), pero también ofrecen otros apartados como “The web“, “News media“, “Audio Video“, “Clinical trials” y “Research articles” (los cuatro últimos permiten ordenar los resultados por relevancia o por fecha).

No he probado la herramienta mucho más, pero si alguien quiere probarla y contarnos sus impresiones, tiene el apartado comentarios de esta entrada a su disposición.

Traditionally, managers depended on experience and intuition to develop insights—“gut feel,” if you will. Most often a gut feel is based on past experiences.  Gut feel and intuition are important but in a fast-changing competitive environment, experience of the past is less and less valuable. Foresight, not hindsight, is of value. Foresight is a result of understanding, through structured and unstructured data, the unfolding of competitive dynamics…..Continue reading Analytical Tools Provide Business Insights

This is another one of those brief-mention articles, but it will give you a good sense of a health care space that is most definitely heating up. Matt Marshall makes some interesting points around health search and outlines the main players:

• Kosmix RightHealth (yours truly’s employer; www.righthealth.com)
• MedStory (now MSFT)
• Healia (now Meredith)
• HealthLine (raised $21mn)

Find the article here.
I disagree with several of their assertions (for instance, his references to Google’s “health search product”, which incidentally doesn’t exist) but I won’t go into detail because of the obvious bias.

Redundant Disclaimer: All these opinions are mine and have nothing to do with my employer.

Anyone who uses the Internet uses search engines a lot. Google has rocketed to the top of the world based primarily on its search engine, plus some smart ways to leverage that through ad revenue, etc. But, can search get better. I just looked at a beta of www.medstory.com and my answer is yes. It’s going to get a lot better. While medstory is set up primarily for health related searches, the basic concept is applicable to any number of subjects. Obviously, Microsoft thinks medstory’s search methods are valuable because according to this article in today’s Media Post, Microsoft has purchased the technology and sees it as a key part of its strategy to win the search wars. Ah, isn’t competition wonderful.