02 November 2006

GREAT NEW MEDICAL SEARCH ENGINE, AND ANOTHER ONE TOO


HEALIA is a super new consumer health search engine. It was developed with a grant from the USA National Cancer Institute. It’s only in beta now, but works wonderfully. I did a couple of my favorite searches and got very good, relevant, results.

Results are presented, along with lists of suggested similar, more general, and more specific searches. You can also filter by any one or more of the following: professional; male or female; kids, teens or seniors; African, Asian, Hispanic, or Native heritage; basic or advanced; HONcode, URAC accredited, or privacy policy rated sites; easy to scan, fast loading, for text browsers, or interactive tools. Very impressive.

I also tried another recommended site, Mamma. It is a “smart” metasearch engine, created as a master’s thesis in 1996, and now run by Mamma Media Solutions. It searches most of the major medical sites and the deep web (though it doesn’t exactly how it does it). I performed my two test searches and got fewer good results. The list was preceded by “identified” sponsored links, but I found some questionable links in the rest of the results, too. There are some suggested alternative search topics, but the filters are only found under Power Search. They include choosing directories, indexes, pay-per-click, and adult content reduction. On the whole, a less powerful and desirable site.

URLs:
HEALIA: http://www.healia.com
Mamma: http://www.mamma.com

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the great coverage of the medical engines for consumers!

I also recommend you and your readers get to know the Web’s best set of professional search engines for doctors. Take a look at SearchMedica.com, a series of free to use specialty-specific search engines, including SearchMedica Primary Care, Psychiatry and Oncology/Hematology. The clinical research tools connect physicians and other medical professionals to credible, medical Web sites and online journals specific to these specialties, with more set to launch in the future.

SearchMedica.com indexes only authoritative medical information, approved for inclusion by medical editors and a physician editorial board. SearchMedica is more comprehensive than searchable article indexes and more specific, trustworthy and useful than broad, consumer-targeted search engines. With options for making searches as targeted as desired, SearchMedica is the perfect web search tool for busy healthcare providers across a range of specialties.

Since SearchMedica.com is advertiser supported, medical professionals pay nothing to use the specialty search engines. All SearchMedica search results are independent and unbiased. They contain well-known, credible journals, peer-reviewed research, and evidence-based articles written for practicing healthcare professionals. In addition to ranking search results according to relevance, SearchMedica also organizes results into categories such as practical articles and news, research reviews and editorials, evidence-based articles and meta-analyses, practice guidelines, clinical trials for patients, continuing medical education, and alternative-complementary medicine. Try it out at www.SearchMedica.com.