Healia is a health

vertical search engine A vertical search engine is distinct from a general web search engine, in that it focuses on a specific segment of online content. They are also called specialty or topical search engines. The vertical content area may be based on topicality, media ...

and online health community. Healia's search engine uses algorithms to assess quality and to categorize Web documents. Healia Communities is composed of online health support groups that enable people to share health experiences, connect with others, and ask questions of peers and health professionals. Healia, Inc. is located in

Bellevue, Washington Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area and has variously been characterized as a s ...

, USA.

Quality Index Score and Personalization Algorithms

Healia use patent-pending

Quality Index Score Quality may refer to: Concepts *Quality (business), the ''non-inferiority'' or ''superiority'' of something *Quality (philosophy), an attribute or a property *Quality (physics), in response theory * Energy quality, used in various science discipl ...

to judge the quality of search results. Healia uses algorithms to assess the content and audience focus of health Web pages and allows users to filter search results by those characteristics.

Management team

President & Founder: Thomas R. Eng (VMD, MPH). Thomas (Tom) Eng received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Award from the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(NIH) in 2001 to develop this website. The

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

(part of the NIH) assisted with research and development, and Healia was incorporated in March 2005. It became available to the public in September 2006. Healia was acquired by

Meredith Corporation Meredith Corporation was an American media conglomerate based in Des Moines, Iowa, that owned magazines, television stations, websites, and radio stations. Its publications had a readership of more than 120 million and paid circulation of more ...

in June 2007. Healia's CTO is Mike Schultz (PhD) who runs the technology development.

AMSA Partnership

In 2009, Healia partnered with the

American Medical Student Association The American Medical Student Association (AMSA), founded in 1950 and based in Washington, D.C., is an independent association of physicians-in-training in the United States. AMSA is a student-governed national organization.They have a membership ...

(AMSA) to provide medical students an opportunity to answer health questions posed in Healia Communities alongside licensed professionals.

Drawbacks

The searching results are heavily US biased with many initial search results finding information from American web sites.Minervation > News > Health Current Awareness
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References

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External links