Early reaction to Healthline beta

How is the world (of media) reacting to our beta launch? So far, it looks pretty good (whew!):

Chris Sherman, Search Engine Watch: Curing Medical Information Disorder

One of the coolest features is called a “health map,” a visual display of all of the concepts related to your query. Health maps resemble flow-charts, showing phases of diagnosis, treatment, alternatives and so on. Want to explore one of those areas in depth? Just click the relevant box on the flowchart and a new search is run. It’s a very slick way to display lots of information about complex subjects, at the same time making it easy to find relevant content without advanced searching.

How’s that for query refinement, Robert? 😉

Chris closes with the magic words that warm any Product Mgr’s heart: “easy to use”:

Healthline is one of the best, easiest to use health information sources I’ve yet found on the web. The “patient friendly” interface combined with first-rate, vetted content make it an excellent resource for anyone researching health related information.

More early media coverage:

• Larry Magid, CBS, Want Health Info? Less is More (good, detailed examples)
• Eric Auchard, Reuters, Healthline Offers Health Search System
• Erick Schonfeld, Business 2.0 Blog, Health Search (hey, I recognize that UI)
• Michael Bazeley, SiliconBeat, Healthline Search Engine Launches (I love that SB’s AdSense ads target “short courses on medical terminology” next to Michael’s write-up, when one of the big value-adds of Healthline is our built in synonymy! [grin])
• Red Herring, Health Search Engine Debuts
• Rafat Ali, PaidContent, Health Portal Launched With Big Funding (hmm, maybe I should ask for a raise?)

I’ll keep this updated for a day or two. And, while I love the media stuff (and really enjoyed getting some time with Chris Sherman, who seems like a great guy), I’m really looking forward to the uh, color, of the blogosphere. 😉

Update: After recovering my blog after my hosting provider crashed, I see that blogger reaction has started on a high note (it can only end badly from here, lol), with a great write-up by Michael Arrington (of TechCrunch fame) in Healthline – Reliable Medical Information. My two favorite quotes:

The HealthMaps feature is incredibly useful.

And…

This is an excellent resource.

More coverage in the blogosphere:

• Greg Sterling, Kelsey Group, Healthline: Vertical Health Search (which reminds me that I’ll have to post something around our opportunities in Local search at some point)
• Serge Lescouarnec, Healthline is a new and useful place
• telendro.com.es, Buscador médico (my Spanish hasn’t improved since the 9th grade, but I’m pretty sure he says he likes the HealthMaps very much and that the site is useful. Cool!)
• Shahid Shah, The Healthcare IT Guy, Healthline Medically Guided Search Unveiled (positive feedback from someone in the health tech biz, and, formerly at the American Red Cross — thanks Shahid)
• Judi Sohn, A View from Home, Healthline search – definitely beta (Judi has a solid experience searching for colon cancer, but dings us [rightly] for a gallbladder miss. We’re definitely not perfect, but Judi’s post gets us one step closer.)
• John Battelle, Searchblog, Healthline Vertical Search Launches
• Dr. Kent Bottles, SoundPractice.net, New Ways to Search for Healthcare Information (we have a lot of constituents to please, doctors key amongst them… looks like a passing grade; hat tip to the amazing Dr. Enoch Choi for pointing this out to me)

And, podcast lovers are getting some coverage too:

• Larry Magid, podcast interview of Healthline CEO West Shell, 3 minutes

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Health, Search, Health and Wellness, Web 2.0, Tags, Tagging, Healthline