HealthLine.com the consumer medical search engine website, was selected by InfoCommerce Group Inc. as a 2006 InfoCommerce Models of Excellence recipient.

According to HealthLine.com, it's unique Medically Guided Search combines the "largest known medical terminology classification system," (hmm I could be wrong but I think MeSH, developed by NLM is largest known medical terminology classification system with 22,000 descriptors and 151,000 supplementary concept headings....but who am I to question.) "developed by more than 1,100 physicians and informatics experts, with advanced search capabilities and hundreds of thousands of pages of physician-reviewed journal articles and encyclopedic information from the world's foremost medical information publishers." The MGS supposedly eliminates the time consuming process of sifting lots of irrelevant search results.

Russell Perkins, president of InfoCommerce Group, said, "I am particularly impressed by the numerous innovations in vertical search I see on the Healthline site such as an extremely detailed taxonomy that maps medical terminology to plain English; sophisticated navigation aids; a growing number of physician-reviewed articles clearly identified as such in search results; and integration of licensed and open Web content. Overall, it is a powerful package serving an important need."

Hmm Russell, you might want to take a look at MedlinePlus. A free government site which provides information from NLM, NIH, other government agencies (CDC, FDA, etc.), and health-related organizations (AHA, ACS, etc.). Preformulated MEDLINE searches are included in MedlinePlus and give easy access to millions of medical journal articles. MedlinePlus also has extensive information about drugs, an illustrated medical encyclopedia, interactive patient tutorials, and latest health news. Just a thought Russell.

Earlier last year (October 19, 2005) I briefly evaluated HealthLine.com. In my post I mentioned that Rita Vine at SiteLines was not impressed with HealthLine. Searching for information on lung cancer she said the site "offers little to rival the best quality ad-and-sponsorship-free medical content on the web through sites like MedlinePlus. I mentioned that comparing a search engine like HealthLine to the multi-layered (more than just a search engine)MedlinePlus.

So in light of the news that HealthLine is 2006 InfoCommerce Models of Excellence recipient, I have dug up my old review and decided to address my previous concern about site selection-specifically who is doing the selecting.

HealthLine has a more information regarding it's medical advisory board. Their medical advisory "is comprised of nationally and internationally recognized medical experts who serve to better the Healthline user experience by evaluating our website content, making recommendations on the vision and direction of the site, and providing input into Healthline's Medically Guided Search components." While I would like just a little bit more information about the grunt selectors (those on the front line not the medical advisory board) obviously it would probably be too lengthly and time consuming to list e-v-e-r-y site selector, but it would be nice to know they have X number of medical professionals across X disciplines and assortment of information professionals such as librarians, medical informatics, consumer health advocated, etc. However, the medical board who oversees the site is an impressive list of medical professionals.

I am not really big on the advertisements listed at the top and right side of the search display, I find it annoying and cluttering. However, you gotta pay the bills and the style in which they are displayed are not all that different from how Yahoo and Google display ads on their search result pages. (However, Yahoo and Google do have a nice line on separating the ads on the right hand side from search listings/content, which I think is more helpful to the eye.)

It is also important to remember that many of the sites and images found on HealthLine are also on and referenced from MedlinePlus and other government sites which can be found on many other search engines. Perhaps using HealthLine these sites are displayed more prominently in the search results than other non-medical search engines.

What is interesting to see is that both Google Co-op and HealthLine use mapping (HealthLine) or tagging (Google Co-op) to help consumers further define and broaden or narrow their search.

I still stand by my original statement in that it is a search engine similar to Yahoo in that you can search for information or browse through pre-selected topics. Unlike Yahoo, there is some filtering and quality control of information.