Google symptom search feature to empower patients

Google’s symptoms search feature aims to empower patients with required information about major health problems like flu, chest pain, pneumonia etc.

Many tech companies across the globe are collaborating with reputed hospitals in India to provide better eHealth services to patients and individuals. Government is also playing a key role in supporting such organizations, as they believe the health of an individual is a primary factor amongst all. The government of Israel and India have recently collaborated to support eHealth innovation across both countries.

Moreover, tech giant Google is also supporting Indian Hospitals such as Apollo Hospital by providing informative search results for medical symptoms.Their research is going on with the support of Apollo’s healthcare professionals.

This partnership will provide better search results when user will search for any symptom on Google.

The search results will be displayed via Symptom Search feature. This new feature of Google is specifically designed to provide symptom search results and queries. To make better use of this feature, Google India has decided to display the feature at the top of search results page. Symptom Search feature will be available to a user in English and Hindi. To test the feature, the company has decided to add commonly searched symptoms such as cold, cough and pain.

While searching for such symptoms on Google, a user will get the list of related symptoms such as flu, chest infection, acute bronchitis and pneumonia. All such results will be displayed on “Symptom Search” tab.

With the help of this feature, the user in India would be able to determine his visit to the doctor, as these digital cards will enable him or her to get the overview description of symptoms such as a headache, migraine, Asthma etc. As per Google reports, 1% of searches in India are related to symptoms. Considering this fact, they have introduced their health condition cards in 2016.

By doing this, Google aims to help users navigate and explore health conditions related to various symptoms, and quickly get to the point where they can talk to a health professional or do more in-depth research on the web.

To make sure the information is tailored to India, Google has been working closely with a team of medical doctors at Apollo Hospitals, the statement said.

Sangita Reddy- Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Joint Managing Director, said “The abundant experience and expertise of our consultants was drawn towards providing clinical validation of the symptoms to spread the message of awareness and prevention of diseases. With the launch of the Symptom Search Project, we aim to provide quality healthcare information, which can be accessed by a billion Indians.”

The team at Google is working hard to launch this application full-fledged across India. However, the team said that the Symptom Search feature will be more informative to the individuals across India. This online platform would enable the individual to gain more insight about their recurring symptoms hence giving them the detailed overview of the infection and home remedies.