Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are on the move in the online health space, and it's not hard to see the attraction. Use of social networking health sites and search engines is growing briskly, so to find out where the sector is headed, I spoke with
Kosmix RightHealth's co-founder
Venky Harinarayan.
According to Harinarayan 5% to 10% of all Web searches are on health. "People want more detailed information about chronic conditions, and they want to build online communities to discuss this information," he says.
And within the next 18 months or so, Harinarayan says, a period of experimentation and creating new properties may give way to consolidation. Sites such as
Careseek.com, a nursing site that allows nurses to do
rating and reviewing of doctors, may not really be standalone sites, he says. Recent deals, such as intelligent search site
Medstory being
acquired by Microsoft and
Healia, which was bought by Meredith Corp., may be harbingers of what's to come.
There are two challenges right now in the online health space, according
to Harinarayan.
Physicians, who are also in the
process of transitioning over to electronic medical records, have to be in sync with the consumers and
the technology and information available to them.
Another challenge
will be privacy as more companies have access to private medical
information they will have to manage. "The challenge at rating
site and social networking sites will be privacy. People are putting
their information online in social networks now, so there will be a lot
of talk about who controls the data. There are a lot of privacy
loopholes," Harinarayan says. -
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