President Bush is not the only one pressing for more information to be available to healthcare consumers.
According to Adam Bosworth, vice president of Google, the private industry giant is actively leveraging its power to help clear the muddy waters faced by its users searching for healthcare information.
At the Fourth Health Information Technology Summit held in Washington, D.C., March 28-30, Bosworth explained: "it's personal."
Google administrators have struggled with serious illness in their families and have wanted information on diseases and healthcare providers that even a typical Google search cannot reveal. "It bitterly brought home to us that there is not enough information out there," Bosworth said.
That's when the company decided to improve the information that comes up in a Google search on health information, Bosworth said.
"Google is already involved in the health arena," Bosworth said. "A large percentage of all Google queries are searches on health issues." According to Bosworth, the queries break out into four categories:
• Searches on symptoms - trying to find what might be wrong
• Searches on a particular illness and treatments available
• Searches to find providers expert in treating a particular illness
• Searches on how to live with an illness or disease
Google searches generally tend to bring the most popular information to the top, Bosworth said. However the most popular information is not always the best information when it comes healthcare.
Ten months ago, Google launched a program to help find the most reliable information on healthcare through the use of experts, then Google programmed its search engine to place this information at the top of a search.
"Reliability is really just a start," Bosworth said. "Relevance is also key. Many times patients print out 20 pages of irrelevant information (from an online search) and take it to their doctors to discuss."
Bosworth conceded that often doctors do not agree on which course of treatment is best, but consumers deserve to be armed with the most and best information possible. Especially lacking is information on doctors, such as how many times they've performed a particular procedure, their mortality rates, and exactly how those numbers should be interpreted, Bosworth said.
Google plans to find a way of providing this missing information, but the company plans on taking its time. "We plan on going very carefully because of the importance and delicacy of this area," Bosworth said. "We are learning as we go."
Currently, Google has already altered information on medical searches to provide a breakdown of search topics to refine the search for Google customers. When Google detects a search on a healthcare issue, it offers various topics to refine the search, such as treatments, symptoms, causes, tests, alternative medicine, information for health professionals and patients and information from medical authorities. Customers can click on the topics and expand the search in the direction they want to go, Bosworth said.
Google is also considering setting up a way to further assist customers through some sort of personal coaching on searches, though Bosworth said the company is still researching how this might be done.