Today Microsoft announced some new health search capabilities for its Bing search engine. The "decision engine" is now providing more content from new partners and instant answers with "hard-to-discover data", the company says.

Users can find instant, specialized information about illnesses, treatments, medical facilities, etc. when entering health-related queries.

"Bing discovers a relevant document in its library of health resources and presents a smart summary related to the query," explains Bing's Alain Rappaport. "In addition, Bing uncovers key related topics by analyzing an index of medical sources and extracting meaningful data automatically. In this case, the user receives instant guidance through short lists of other conditions related to the query (for example, “obesity”), medications that are important to know about (for example, “insulin”) and US medical centers that are active in the field. Users may select any of these points of interest to continue their search in a new area."


A user can click on a medical facility and find more information about it, like patient ratings and other nearby facilities.

In addition to the new features Bing Health is simply covering a broader range of health and "better living" subjects. Users can find information for queries like "holiday weight gain", "baby milk allergy", etc.


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