Get the Story with Medstory

Posted by Ellen

February 27, 2007

An article in the Wall St. Journal yesterday turned me on to Medstory, which is being bought by Microsoft bringing Microsoft into the business of health and medicine. Medstory is a health-related search engine that is suppose to help the user focus in on the content most important to them through an “intelligent search” of a topic. It’s only fitting for me to be writing about a health-centered search engine since the last couple of days I’ve been at the hospital with my father who ended up with a bad infection. Very timely to say the least.

I decided to do a search on a health condition I know oh so well called fibromyalgia to see if Medstory offered a better search than if I used a regular search engine like Google or went to a health site like WebMD.

Medstory, Google and WebMD all had a section to refine my search on fibromyalgia (Medstory and Google at the top of the search results, WebMD on a sidebar). Where Medstory breaks away from the other two is how you can refine the search, either by combining items, like fibromyalgia and fatigue, or by performing a separate search for fatigue. I liked having the option of whether I wanted to combine the terms or not.

I also liked the way the refinement area worked with a smaller window opening with the different choices for an item, like with a medication if I wanted to see side effects. The choices under each refinement were pertinent to the item. And, if I wanted more refinements to choose from I just had to click on “view more.”

Medstory does tell the story of a health condition with all the players related to the term. It also has separate tabs for Health and Research, or basically patient and health-care provider sections. The search results are also broken down by information on the web, in the news media, clinical trials and research articles. In the future I’m sure that web search results will be powered by Microsoft. Also, under news media items from the Wall St. Journal are included.

A couple of items I would like to see included in Medstory are

An autocomplete feature so when you are typing in a search term it works to complete the term you are looking for. If Medstory is an “intelligent search” it should make an intelligent guess as to the condition or item you are searching for.
Under refinements an area that lists forums, groups and social networks that deal with the condition or item being searched on. For example I know that Daily Strength has a community dedicated to fibromyalgia.

So, even after a couple of days at the hospital and probably more to come I still found Medstory refreshing and informative. I was able to refine my search, see the new treatments (procedures) being discussed for fibromyalgia, drugs being used, clinical trials and notable people in the field of fibromyalgia research and treatment.

With the acquisition of Medstory by Microsoft it looks like it will be incorporated into Microsoft’s vision of providing easily accessible health and medicine information. Microsoft could incorporate MSN groups and pages from Windows Live Spaces that brings the whole social networking component into a really nice health and medicine information provider.