Web 2.0 News : Microsoft buying search firm in health-care push

Category Web2.0, webmasters | Permalink | 27. February 2007

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Microsoft has agreed to buy a small consumer health search engine called Medstory and Steve Ballmer announced the purchase today

Medstory has 10 employees, and is one of numerous health care search engines to have launched recently, each of them seeking to help consumers and health care professionals in different ways. Medstory is a tiny start-up, based in Foster City, Calif, and is relatively unknown. It is backed by inviduals Esther Dyson, Zach Nelson and Marty Tenenbaum.

It is backed by inviduals Esther Dyson (editor-at-large at CNET Networks, which has also, interestingly, mentioned the company in early coverage), Zach Nelson, (President and CEO of NetSuite) and Marty Tenenbaum (Internet commerce pioneer and Chairman of CommerceNet).

According to the WSJ, Microsoft hopes to help bring a standard to what is currently a very
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Doctors, hospitals and other healthcare facilities currently use a host of different software programs that lack standard ways to input and retrieve healthcare records and other data. Microsoft hopes that it can help standardize that process, making healthcare easier to use — while building a new business for itself.