Google to return information on over 900 health conditions

Google health information

Google’s health conditions feature, which was launched in February, is getting a big update and will soon provide symptoms, treatments, prevalence, and more on over 900 health conditions. Users will also benefit from visual design improvements and some more specific triggering making it easier to get the info you need — for example, users can now search for “pink eye symptoms” and get straight to the symptoms tab. Also, there are “Download PDF” links for printing this information for a doctor’s visit. The last mentioned feature is apparently something doctors were asking for.

As part of the update, the search giant is adding neglected tropical diseases, a set of infections that affect over 1.5 billion people including 500 million children in poorer regions. According to Google, it is important for people to have facts on these diseases, such as Dengue Fever, Chikungunya, and Leishmaniasis.

The health condition information feature is still limited to U.S. English users but the plan is to expand it to more languages and regions.

As that was the case when the service launched, Google consulted and worked closely with a team of doctors to curate and validate this information.

On the other side of the spectrum, the search giant is collaborating with the FDA to find adverse drug reactions. However, it has recently decided to shut down its Google Flu Trends service for the general public, and make the data available exclusively to researchers.