Google's Knowledge Graph To Provide Online Health Data Backed By Harvard Med School, Mayo Clinic

Lest anyone think this is a purely voluntary endeavor for the betterment of all mankind, Google's statement of goals suggests that the company's strategic intent is to become a health care intermediary positioned to capture both data and the relevant advertising potential from both pharmaceutical firms and medical care providers.

Given the aging populations in much of the developed, eg, monetizable world, this could be an interesting market. And the premium branding with Harvard and Mayo suggests that the benefits could flow to them as well as to Google. The next question is what Amazon and Facebook may also be planning. Totally sick (as it were). JL

Roland Moore-Colyer reports in the Inquirer:

"Our goal is to help you to navigate and explore health conditions related to your symptoms, and quickly get to the point where you can do more in-depth research on the web or talk to a health professional." By hoovering up a load of data from doctors and experts at Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic (Google can) create a list of symptoms based on quality medical information.The data was then injected into the seach engine's Knowledge Graph to produce more relevant and useful information.

HYPOCHONDRIACS CAN cancel their funeral plans, as Google has moved to limit paranoia about imminent death by tweaking the search engine to make identifying ailments more accurate.

If you feel a little peaky, you can now search for your symptoms and see more medically accurate information about your ailment and how to treat it.

Googling potential illnesses generally takes people down a rabbit warren of diseases, viruses, infections, infestations and mutations, all generally ending with something hideous. Such a process naturally causes more migraines and hot sweats than it solves. 

The company does not expect you to accept the search results and bypass visiting a doctor, but having proper medical information is a lot better than being led to a site that suggests you have kneejerkreactionitis as opposed to being just some snarky commentator.

"Our goal is to help you to navigate and explore health conditions related to your symptoms, and quickly get to the point where you can do more in-depth research on the web or talk to a health professional," said Google project manager Veronica Pinchin.

Google has managed to do this by hoovering up a load of data from doctors and experts at Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic to create a list of symptoms based on decent quality medical information.

The data was then injected into the seach engine's Knowledge Graph to produce more relevant and useful information.

In essence, this means that sickly types can distinguish hives from herpes, colds from constipation and migraines from meningitis. And doctors can probably avoid having to deal with visits from paranoid people suspecting that a simple bug bite is the onset of deadly feline flu.

Google is rolling out this update in the US.

Still, we’re glad that Google is working on useful stuff, as having an artificial intelligence that can trounce human pro Go players doesn’t exactly benefit everyday life.