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Oct. 18, 2007

Google has publicly said that its long-expected Google Health initiative is slated to be launched early next year.

The news came today, as Google's Marissa Mayer took the keynote stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Mayer outlined the ways in which Google plans to bring its large data storage to the field of medical care and patient records.

As Mayer pointed out, the company is already the starting point for a majority of the health-related searches on the Internet.

Mayer said "if you look at health care, there's already a huge user need. People are using Google more than any other tool to find health-related information. On any given day, the health care sector generates a huge amount of information requests. For us, and as far as search is concerned, it's a bit like a natural core competency."

In August, Marissa Mayer took over the health care initiative, after Google's original leader, Adam Bosworth, left the company. Mayer said she's been holding daily 90-minute meetings with the team developing the Google Health software, working on product refinements, improving features, etc.

Mayer said that while some parts of the system will be free, the health care services and applications could be subscription-based. Earlier in 2007, Microsoft acquired Medstory, a Foster City, CA.-based startup specializing in search software optimized for finding health information.

Generally speaking, Microsoft hasn't disclosed its plans for a health-related product, but is said to be working on an offering that combines some software with an online component.

Steve Shihadeh, G.M. of Microsoft's health solutions group said in August "we're building a broad consumer health platform."

Mayer also confirmed that Google has developed a prototype online platform for its health offering that incorporates personal medical records, health care-related search features, diet and exercise regimens, a localized Find-a-Doctor application, and other elements.

Google has in fact shown the prototype to unspecified partners and is having both its employees and "trusted testers" beta-test its new system.

As in other areas of its business, Google faces a big competitor in the race to bring the resources of the Web to personalized health care in the form of Microsoft.

While the focus will be on improving health care and making records more accessible and portable for patients, Google will also improve life for physicians, Mayer noted.

For the past few years, the online health care field has had some startups, not all of whom have met with success. Web-based medical data provider Web-MD is already a Google partner, and saw its share price drop by about 14 percent today alone, after it reported disappointing quarterly results.

Mayer added "the overall goal for most doctors is how many patients can they see in a single day. This means their minutes per patient needs to go down. The less time they have to spend finding and going over patient records the better. Ultimately, Google will design a search product that's useful for users, while at the same time will help doctors do their job more efficiently and faster."

After the markets closed today, Google delivered quarterly earnings and sales that beat Wall Street's expectations. Google reported that revenues in the third quarter were over $4.2 billion, up 57.03 percent from 2006's levels.

Excluding TAC (traffic acquisition costs or advertising sales that Google shares with its partners), the company reported revenue of slightly over $3 billion, ahead of the $2.938 billion that Wall Street analysts were forecasting. Net income was $1.07 billion, or $3.38 a share, an increase of 46 percent from 2006's levels.

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Source: Information Week