Surely by now you have heard of Microsoft’s Bing search engine.  Microsoft has been heavily advertising Bing through TV commercials, content deals, and even offering cash back deals via major vendors such as Best Buy, Walmart, and others. A few days ago Microsoft announced an upgrade to its Bing Health experience that medical professionals should definitely take note of – it could change the current landscape of how medical content is accessed and shared with patients.

What makes Bing Health’s experience so valuable is they aggregate data, much like Wikipedia does, but only from legitimate medical sources.  Later in this article I’ll go through an example using sarcoidosis as the search term and compare it to Wikipedia and WebMD – then explain how the data can be used with patients.

Bing Health’s newest content partners include trusted medical sources: Harvard Health Publications, the CDC, and the Natural Standard.  Bing Health already uses content from the Mayo Clinic, and the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus.  The search engine is also adding integration with social media, such as Twitter – but will only allow tweets from authoritative medical content providers, such as the National Psoriasis Foundation.

So lets go through a test search using Sarcoidosis and compare with WebMD and Wikipeda.

If you search Sarcoidosis with Bing, you get the following result:

If you click on the Sarcoidosis link, you get the following page (there is more information, but the following is a one page screen shot)

As you can see, Bing clearly tells you the source of the information.  The above content is from the Mayo Clinic, a trusted source of medical content.

Now lets compare the search result to WebMD:

And the search result to Wikipedia:

As you can see, WebMD does not yield  the same level of patient oriented content that Bing does when entering a simple search of sarcoidosis.  Plus, there is no ability to email out, or share with social media tools.  Wikipedia on the other hand, provides entirely too much information.  You would almost never want to show your patient a Wikipedia page of their pathology – it could easily confuse them and give them way too much information to digest.  Plus, with Wikipedia you can never trust the content 100 percent, and never want to use the information when advising patients or for patient care.

With that said, Wikipedia is a great tool for medical research.  We’ve highlighted before how it’s fantastic for looking up research studies.  Bing Health even provides a tab where you can look up the same content in Wikipedia – but again, the utility of Bing Health is you are able to avoid sources that are not 100% verified – so don’t use the Wikipedia tab.

How can health care providers use Bing Health for patients?

Bing Health’s new search focus now allows health care providers to have access to vast databases of medical content made for patients, all aggregated into one medium, and most importantly, derived from trusted sources.

Providers can use Bing Health to share information with patients.  The e-mail out functionality is key for this, or you could even print the information in your office and hand it to you patient on their way out.

This one click access to trusted data is key for providers who are short on time, don’t want to read through a full Wikipedia entry to make sure the information is legitimate, or feel the content could overwhelm a patient.  Providing this type of content to patients is a proactive way of dealing with the flood of medical data available on the web – and lets them know you aren’t afraid of the web either

You can even use Bing Health for patient information when prescribing new medications, such as a statin.  Below is a sample screen shot that appears when you search for Levostatin:

When you click through the link, you are still within Bing Health, but you see the full Gold Standard article, again, a trusted source of medical content.

However, there are definitely some improvements that could be made with Bing health. Two things we want to see are more images, and an integration with the Bing iPhone app. If you provide e-mail service to your patients, it would be great to have the ability to use the iPhone app to look up a pathology or medication, and then e-mail out the information while talking to the patient.

As Bing adds more trusted medical content providers its utility will only grow. But as it is, medical providers should definitely take notice, and consider using the search engine’s Health section when educating patients.

The medical apps section on the iPhone and iPod Touch has a lot to offer, this is apparent from the medical app reviews we’ve done on this site.  When I think about my most heavily used medical apps, one that comes to mind has to be my Wikipedia app.  Obviously, Wikipedia is no complete substitute for reference applications such as Epocrates, or the Merck Manual Professional Edition.  But if used properly, it provides a great service.

The problem is finding a suitable Wikipedia app to use.  I’ve tried a number of free Wikipedia applications and have found one that really helps me find the medical information I’m looking for the best.

Its no secret that Wikipedia has been used extensively by those in the medical community to look up medical information and understand topics better.  I use it most when I begin researching a topic or if I need to find the mechanism of action for a drug.  The reference section is my favorite part of Wikipedia.  It’s a great way to find excellent journal articles and other medical resources.  The best way to utilize Wikipedia is to read up on the legitimate reference articles provided.  Clearly, you don’t want to use Wikipedia for actual clinical decision making, rather as a portal to finding articles from reputed sources.

There are three main Wikipedia apps that are free.  Wikipedia Mobile, Wikiamo, and Wikipanion.  Wikipedia Mobile is actually made by the Wikipedia people so one would think they would do a better job than these other two apps, but not so.  I’ve tried all these Wikipedia apps extensively, but my favorite Wikipedia application has to be Wikipanion. Many of the other free Wikipedia apps offer the same features as Wikipanion, but Wikipanion’s fluid user interface is why it’s the best.

Key features that I use the most:

• Ability to to E-mail out current article, Search Within the Page, Bookmark, and other comprehensive choices for each Wikipedia entry. Often I’ll bookmark key articles to view later when I’m out of the hospital or clinic.
• Application opens to the last screen you were viewing before you close the app.
• The Contents page provides a great summary of the Wikipedia entry, making it significantly easier to navigate and get directly to where you want to go.  In this case, looking up the mechanism of action via the Pharmacology section.
• No advertisements
• The references are properly linked within the article, and clicking them opens up safari, often providing you a peer reviewed source of data.  In this case, a paper on the side affects of Statins.

This layout of Wikipedia is somewhat emulated by UpToDate.com, often considered a legitimate medical source.  Just a word of caution, UpToDate is almost always on point, but sometimes the references they use can be from questionable articles, so just like any source, make sure the information you’re using is synthesized from a reputable article or book.

That said, UpToDate is a great source for medical providers and I’ve definitely used it plenty of times in clinic and in the hospital. You can use it on your iPhone or iPod touch via mobile form if your academic institution or private practice has a subscription. They’ve done an excellent job of making their site compatible with the Safari browser in the iPhone OS.  At the end of the day though, its fair to say we’re all waiting for a legitimate UpToDate app, much like the Wikipedia apps for the iPhone that have been mentioned above.

The development team at Wikipanion also offers Wikipanion plus, for $4.99.  This version allows you to download entries directly to your iPhone and other features.  Although these add ons are nice, I’ve found the free version to be sufficient for everyday use.

WikiPanion Website